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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.'"
Anyone else find it ironic that these rulers enslaved entire races of people for generations to build gigantic pyramids so that they would never be forgotten only to have grave robbers steal everything and Western archaeologists show up thousands of years later asking, "Who the fuck were you?"
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Queen 'Sut.
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 recently finished listening to a lecture series on the history of ancient Egypt. Fascinating stuff. As I recall, Queen Hatshepsut was kind of erased from history by a later pharaoh. Lady leaders just didn't fit in with the Way Things Were Supposed to Be.
Lots of ancient Egyptians had bad teeth. Flour tended to have lots of sand in it thanks to the grinding process, and chewing wore away tooth enamel very efficiently.
Stefan
I'm sure many here remember Queen Hatshepsut from Civilization IV!
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.
Can I get my inheritance, now?
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But the decisive evidence was a molar in a wooden box inscribed with the queen's name, found in 1881 in a cache of royal mummies collected and hidden away for safekeeping at the Deir al-Bahari temple about 1,000 metres (yards) away.
During the embalming process, it was common to set aside spare body parts and preserve them in such a box.
Orthodontics professor Yehya Zakariya checked all the mummies which might be Hatshepsut's and found that the tooth was a perfect fit in a gap in the upper jaw of the fat woman.
"The identification of the tooth with the jaw can show this is Hatshepsut," Hawass said. "A tooth is like a fingerprint."
"It is 100 percent definitive. It is 1.80 cm (wide) and the dentist took the measurement and studied that part. He found it fit exactly 100 percent with this part," he told Reuters
So, no new mummy discovery, just new understanding of the evidence, as is often the case with the PYRAMIDS of data that science-types have still to de-cypher. (If I understand the articles right...)
"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."
Do you mean to suggest that something written in the BIBLE might not be literal truth? Boy, them's fightin' words!
The Metropolitan Museum of Art had a special exhibit on Hatshepsut last year. It was not located with their egyptian wing but in a separate location. I had taken my parents there as my mom is our resident egyptologist and there were two other exhibits I wanted to see (the arms and armor permanent collection and the travelling tibetan armor exhibit).
It was certainly interesting seeing all the pieces from her reign that had been destroyed in an attempt to erase her memory from history. Despite the pieces having been carved by hand, my dad would bring up the subject of how hard it is for him to use a dremel tool to carve things and how he would like to know how they did the intricate carvings. Needless to say, we would look around after he would say that and hope no real egyptologist was around.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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!
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