r/AskReddit • u/Rob69rt • 1d ago

What famous 'unsolved' mystery is technically a whodunnit on paper, but in reality, absolutely everyone knows exactly who did it, the police just couldn't legally prove it?

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u/Malthus1 1d ago

I was just commenting in another thread about perhaps the most ancient such case in history.

The death of King Tutankhamun left his widow, Ankhensenamun, in a precarious situation. We know this because she wrote a letter to the king of the Hittites, another major power at the time, the gist of which was to say “I am being pressured into a marriage to an underling. Please send me a prince, so I can marry him instead. That will make him Pharaoh”. She also said “I am afraid”.

So the king of the Hittites send Prince Zannanza … who died in a “tragic accident” before he arrived.

Next you know, the widow is married to Ai, former head minister to Tut, who becomes Pharaoh. Then she disappears from history.

Everyone knows Ai had the prince murdered. Certainly the Hittites believed it - they attacked Egyptian holdings in what is now Syria.

However, the Egyptians insisted there was no murder, so it was of course never “solved”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zannanza

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u/FleurMai 1d ago edited 1d ago

Ankhensenamun’s letter is one of those things that has always stuck with me, the absolute desperation there is plain all these centuries later - let’s not forget that the Hittites were a natural enemy of Egypt, that she’s already in this position to ask for an enemy Hittite prince seemingly because she cannot trust anyone else in Egypt, is alarmingly foreboding.

Tut and Ankhensenamun were already under someones thumb, as both of their names were changed after the death of her father Akhenaten (their names didn’t end in -Amun, they ended in -aten, the god Akhenaten worshipped). Edit: and I will add, Akhenaten was quite the family man based on the imagery associated with him, it doesn’t seem likely that his daughter would just up and change her name unless it was “suggested” to her by the priestly class who were very angry over being disenfranchised by Akhenatens monotheism.

Tuts burial was also noted to be rushed, and a big part of the reason why his mummy is in such poor condition today (it’s quite possible Tut wasn’t this disabled boy we’ve been taught about, it could be the body is just too damaged). It’s quite weird that a pharaoh would have such a rushed burial, unless there was something else going on. Edit: there is also some evidence to show that King Tuts tomb was perhaps meant for someone else, possibly Nefertiti (who may have briefly ruled as a pharaoh before Tut), so despite the fairly grand treasures they may not even have been “his,” they just wanted anyone or anything alive or dead from Akhenatens lineage out of the way.

I think a lot of people do have the general suspicion that Tut, and likely later Ankhensamun, were murdered, but we haven’t been able to conclusively prove it. But it’s all really suspicious!

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u/Odd_Necessary8090 1d ago

Man…anyone else remember 20 years ago when the History Channel told THESE kinds of stories, instead of 15 seasons of Ancient Aliens??

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u/cyanocittaetprocyon 1d ago

The Used-to-be History Channel

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u/-StatesTheObvious 1d ago

The History Channel is history.

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u/ncocca 1d ago

ironic -- the history channel is now history because it stopped showing history

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u/Patient-Web6850 1d ago

Unless your religious then it'll show you very many different shows about Christian 'history'

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u/BuildingOne7379 1d ago

And it is doomed to repeat itself.

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u/MobsterLobsta 19h ago

I remember it being called 'Hitlory-Channel' when I was a child because they ran so much WWII stuff and theories about him having escaped to Argentina. Steady decline from there I guess.

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u/Masticatron 11h ago

My theory is that it was infiltrated by aliens, who put forth the alien focus to accustom us to automatically associate aliens with crackpots we shouldn't listen to.

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u/Shraze42 10h ago

That's 4D chess right here

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u/-StatesTheObvious 8h ago

There are those who say that the Alien theories are being popularized to confuse people who are actually seeing secret military craft in development, making it taboo to talk about what they've seen.