Nifty. I've always liked Egyptology stuff.
King Tut Gets Paternity Test
By Rossella Lorenzi,
Discovery.com News
Nov. 10, 2000 — A team of Japanese and Egyptian researchers will conduct the first-ever DNA tests on the mummy of King Tutankhamun in an attempt to solve one of history's greatest mysteries — who fathered the boy pharaoh.
Since Howard Carter discovered the splendors of Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor in 1922, King Tut has become the best-known pharaoh of ancient Egypt.
Yet only a few facts about his life are know: Tut.ankh.Amun, "the living image of Amun," ascended throne in 1333 B.C., at the age of nine, and reigned until his death at 17 or 18. He was a pharaoh of the 18th dynasty, probably the greatest of the Egyptian royal families.
But he was the last of the line. What struck down a family whose rule lasted for nearly 200 years? Had the dynasty indulged in so much incest to the point of dying out from a genetic disease?
In the effort to answer these questions, on Dec. 12 scientists from the Waseda and Nagoya universities in Japan will join experts from the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities and Cairo's Ain Shams University and remove hair, bone or nail samples from King Tut's mummified body. It will be the first time that the remains of the boy king have been examined since British researchers took X-rays in 1969.
"The Egyptian authorities were worried that examining the mummy would damage it. But with archaeology now using more and more sophisticated equipment, we've been trying to convince them that it carries no risks," Atushi Nishikawa, Waseda University's representative in Egypt, told London's The Independent.
Mapping out the lineage of the kingdom is the final goal of the research. Scientists will try to check whether King Tut's DNA matches that of Amenhotep III, credited by some historians to be his father. But many Egyptologists have questioned the patriarchal link, and are convinced that King Tut was the son of Akhetaten, the revolutionary pharaoh who overthrew the pantheon of the gods.
A recent study of Tut's clothes by the British researcher Gillian Vogelsang Eastwood suggests that King Tut may have been cursed with a genetic disease which left him with fatty hips. That same pear-shaped trait is displayed in the statues and pictures portraying Akhetaten, and would indeed bolster suspicion that the boy king was a son of Akhetaten, rather than his son-in-law.
"It is a fascinating project. Date-wise, I believe that Tutankhamun was Akhenaten's son, by his minor wife Kiya," says archaeologist Joann Fletcher, the author of Chronicle of a Pharaoh: Amenhotep III.
She believes that the investigation should also explore tomb KV.55 in the Valley of the Kings, which contains a mummy said to be either that of Akhenaten or the elusive "Smenkhare," the pharaoh who succeeded Akhenaten and who was possibly Tut's brother.
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"I will gather myself around my faith, for light does the darkness most fear." - Jewel
King Tut Gets Paternity Test
By Rossella Lorenzi,
Discovery.com News
Nov. 10, 2000 — A team of Japanese and Egyptian researchers will conduct the first-ever DNA tests on the mummy of King Tutankhamun in an attempt to solve one of history's greatest mysteries — who fathered the boy pharaoh.
Since Howard Carter discovered the splendors of Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor in 1922, King Tut has become the best-known pharaoh of ancient Egypt.
Yet only a few facts about his life are know: Tut.ankh.Amun, "the living image of Amun," ascended throne in 1333 B.C., at the age of nine, and reigned until his death at 17 or 18. He was a pharaoh of the 18th dynasty, probably the greatest of the Egyptian royal families.
But he was the last of the line. What struck down a family whose rule lasted for nearly 200 years? Had the dynasty indulged in so much incest to the point of dying out from a genetic disease?
In the effort to answer these questions, on Dec. 12 scientists from the Waseda and Nagoya universities in Japan will join experts from the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities and Cairo's Ain Shams University and remove hair, bone or nail samples from King Tut's mummified body. It will be the first time that the remains of the boy king have been examined since British researchers took X-rays in 1969.
"The Egyptian authorities were worried that examining the mummy would damage it. But with archaeology now using more and more sophisticated equipment, we've been trying to convince them that it carries no risks," Atushi Nishikawa, Waseda University's representative in Egypt, told London's The Independent.
Mapping out the lineage of the kingdom is the final goal of the research. Scientists will try to check whether King Tut's DNA matches that of Amenhotep III, credited by some historians to be his father. But many Egyptologists have questioned the patriarchal link, and are convinced that King Tut was the son of Akhetaten, the revolutionary pharaoh who overthrew the pantheon of the gods.
A recent study of Tut's clothes by the British researcher Gillian Vogelsang Eastwood suggests that King Tut may have been cursed with a genetic disease which left him with fatty hips. That same pear-shaped trait is displayed in the statues and pictures portraying Akhetaten, and would indeed bolster suspicion that the boy king was a son of Akhetaten, rather than his son-in-law.
"It is a fascinating project. Date-wise, I believe that Tutankhamun was Akhenaten's son, by his minor wife Kiya," says archaeologist Joann Fletcher, the author of Chronicle of a Pharaoh: Amenhotep III.
She believes that the investigation should also explore tomb KV.55 in the Valley of the Kings, which contains a mummy said to be either that of Akhenaten or the elusive "Smenkhare," the pharaoh who succeeded Akhenaten and who was possibly Tut's brother.
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"I will gather myself around my faith, for light does the darkness most fear." - Jewel