Miklós Kásler - Zoltán Szentirmay (szerk.): Identifying the Árpád Dynasty Skeletons Interred in the Matthias Church. Applying data from historical, archaeological, anthropological, radiological, morphological, radiocarbon dating and genetic research (Budapest, 2021)
CHAPTER THREE – Archaeological, anthropological and radiological data
challenged the professional consensus on the royal couple, as he deemed the grave goods to be too archaic for Béla Ills time. One of the items, for example, he believed to have been a processional cross and emphasized that it is not the insignia of a king, but one used by bishops. Medical science supports the identification as Béla III and Queen Anne. After the birth of Queen Anne’s seven children, the condyles of the pubic bones departed significantly from each other. Régöly-Mérei (1968) also noted that the womans earthly remains show signs of a type of osteoporosis that is caused by giving birth many times, while Kálmán the Learned’s first wife, Felicia only had three children. We know that there was a purulent inflammation in Kálmán the Learned’s right ear and nearby ethmoids and that a massive amount of pus flowed out from his ear. Such diseases always cause serious damage to nearby bones, and this can be verified with imaging diagnostics. Dr Mária Gödény created detailed computed tomographic (CT) images of Béla Ill ’s skull. The skull reconstructed in 3D based on several hundred high resolution layers clearly shows that the skull, the viscerocranium and the neurocranium are all intact. Based on this knowledge, Endre Tóth ’s proposal was rejected. Éry ’s colleagues conducted detailed investigations on the skeletons interred in the Matthias Church and presented their results in the monograph entitled “ A székesfehérvári királyi bazilika embertani leletei 1848-2002”. Of the myriad of valuable results of their working group, we would only like to highlight two: Béla Ill ’s figurative skull trepanation, the purpose of which is unknown, and the supposed swapping of the skeleton found by Érdy in grave 3 in 1848. Figurative trepanations were only observed in 90
