Oetzi, the 5,100-year old mummified iceman found in a Tyrolean glacier in 1991, bled to death after being hit in the back by an arrow, Swiss scientists said Wednesday following X-ray analysis.

"A lesion of a close-to-the-shoulder artery has been found thanks to a CT scan," said Frank Ruehli from the Institute of Anatomy at the University of Zurich.

The arrowhead itself had already been detected, but the new scans show that it lacerated the artery, causing massive internal bleeding, Ruehli told AFP, adding that it appeared Oetzi died shortly after being hit.

The broader circumstances of his death remain unclear, but Ruehli said it could have been a "friendly fire" injury sustained during a hunting expedition, or an intentional attack.

In any case, Oetzi fell down a cavity and became entombed in a glacier, where he rested undisturbed 3,210 metres (10,531 feet) above sea level until being discovered by German mountaineer Helmut Simon in 1991.

The discovery aroused great interest worldwide -- and even gave rise to a so-called "curse" because many of the people associated with the remains have met untimely ends.

Simon fell to his death in 2004 while hiking in the same area, and archaeologist Konrad Spindler, 55, who first inspected the corpse, died in April 2005 of complications from multiple sclerosis.

The head of the forensic team examining Oetzi, Rainer Henn, meanwhile died in a car crash on his way to give a lecture about the iceman.

Scientists have determined that Oetzi was 45 years old when he died and stood about 1.6 metres (five feet three inches) tall, with European size 38 (British size 5.5, US size six).

He had blue eyes, long brown curly hair and numerous tattoos, and at the time of his death he was carrying an axe, a 1.8-metre (five foot nine inch) longbow and a dozen arrows.

Ruehli is the co-chair of the Swiss Mummy Project based at the University of Zurich which uses non-invasive methods such as X-rays to uncover more information about the life and death of such ancient corpses.

He was one of the scientists chosen in 2005 to determine the cause of death of the ancient Egyptian boy king Tutankhamun, whose tomb dating back 3,300 years was discovered in 1922.

© 2007 AFP

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Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek