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First Royal Mummy Found Since Tut is Identified
brian0918 writes "In what is being described as the most important find in the Valley of the Kings since the discovery of King Tut, a single tooth has clinched the identification of an ancient mummy as that of Queen Hatshepsut, who ruled Egypt about 3,500 years ago. A molar inscribed with the queen's name, discovered in a wooden box in 1881 in a cache of royal mummies, was found to fit perfectly in the jaw of 'a fat woman in her 50s who had rotten teeth and died of bone cancer.' Reuters also reports on the DNA analysis: 'Preliminary results show similarities between its DNA and that of Ahmose Nefertari, the wife of the founder of the 18th dynasty and a probable ancestor of Hatsephsut's.'"
Interesting. Did the Egyptians do that after she died or when she was alive? I feel kind of silly asking if it was done while she was alive but they did some other bizarre stuff, at least by todays standards.
I am interested in what medical techniques they might uncover by examining the evidence. It is reported that this lady not only had bone cancer, but probably liver cancer and diabetes.
What lengths did the Egyptians, so often given credit for advanced medicine for their era, go to to save a ruler considered divine?
Regards.
In addition, the Bibles recording of the Jews as leaving KMT with Moses (A KMT name) is odd because the people of the Nile were meticulous record keepers. If so many people had departed as suggested in the Bible, then many critical tasks would have gone undone or would have been performed poorly due to low staffing or unskilled workers performing the tasks in the place of the slaves.
There are no records to indicate any such crisis to the KMT economy.
Anyway, they did achieve a sort of immortality. You do know the names of many of these people despite the fact that you don't know which body belongs to which name.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
Do we have enough of any pharaoh's DNA to sequence their full genome? Or at least enough DNA from relatives so that a particular's dynasties genome can be figured out.
Does anyone know?
No one that knows anything about Biblical archaeology believes the Hebrews built the pyramids anyway. By all accounts the pyramids were built a good long while before there were any Hebrews around in the first place. There are also a number of interesting theories about where the Exodus fits into Egyptian history, although most of them do require a certain amount of reinterpretation of traditional dates. I wouldn't really expect to see too many accounts of it in Egyptian sources, though, because the pharoahs didn't generally seem to want to brag about the low points in their history for some reason.
Why do Americans call the boy king "King Tut"? His full name was Tutankhamun (or Tutankhamen)! Is this name so hard to spell or pronounce? Tut makes him sound like some fifth rate Batman villain! Grrrrrr!
My web domain.
No one wants to brag about their low points but the KMT people did keep meticulous records about everything. The only records they would not keep were names. In KMT culture passing your name down meant you had acquired a level of immortality. If you pissed off someone who gained power after your death, that person might be tempted to remove your name, thus remove you from everlasting life.
It would be very difficult to hide the fact that herds were abandoned, crops were not brought in, ships were not built, and many other menial tasks were not done because some jackass let the Jews go. The effect on the KMT economy would have been felt quickly and would have lasted for a while. It's kind of hard to imagine not finding these records if there had been any exodus of any appreciable size.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
The thing is, the nile floods for 3-4 months of year (which the egyptians call 'the inundation') Heavy rains from the mountains of ethiopia make their way down the nile and flood everything. People are left with nothing to do during this time so the pharoahs/kings took advantage of this downtime.. it's difficult to say whether they were forced/coerced into building the pyramids during this time. There are some inscriptions within the pyramids that suggest the men building them were proud of their work, ie. "Khufu's gang was here and we kicked ass!" (not in so many words.) After the nile receeded everybody went back to the fields to plant seeds and harvest the annual crop... I think Herodotus corroborates this general breakdown of the annual going-ons of the egyptians in his Histories.
I heard the same thing from the 48 lecture course on Egyptology from "The Teaching Company", they never wrote a loosing battle, we sometimes infer that they lost because in the context of a war they keep on wining battles closer to home.
How do you hide the fact that the cows were not milked, or a road was not paved, or homes not painted, or cargo from boats was not offloaded?
You can remove official mention from all documents but the effect will be felt everywhere and recorded implicitly. For instance, if my boats were not loaded or unloaded while in KMT ports, I'm very likely to shift my fleet to another port leaving cargo in KMT or not bringing them goods they are expecting.
No matter how you slice it, if an appreciable number of slaves depart, it will be felt and recorded.
Hell, I just had a thought. Let's remove all Mexicans from the United States right now. Do you think you could hide that even if you wanted to? Whose gonna' break their backs picking my damn strawberries? Even if you could find someone dumb enough to do it, what's going to happen to the price of strawberries? Do you really think I'm not gonna' notice that a basket of strawberries now costs me twelve dollars? Do you really think that's not gonna' make it into many varied records even though you don't specifically mention that we kicked all the Mexicans out?
Yeah, I'm being a smart-ass with that analogy, but I think it works. :)
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
Feel free to explain. Both of my parents read, write and speak ancient Hebrew. (Job requirement for my father, my mother just loves languages) I personally don't speak any of it, but I'll get help from them if you'll pass on whatever you need to.