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First Royal Mummy Found Since Tut is Identified

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the ancient-grills dept.

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.'"

27 of 192 comments (clear)

  1. The Irony by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?"

    1. Re:The Irony by It+doesn't+come+easy · · Score: 3, Funny

      Ironically, I agree with you.

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    2. Re:The Irony by sayfawa · · Score: 5, Funny

      The fools. They should have had their slaves build something like this.

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    3. Re:The Irony by CyberLord+Seven · · Score: 4, Interesting
      I'm not so certain KMT used so many slaves as we once thought. New evidence is coming to light that suggests that the builders of the pyramids were paid employees rather than slaves.

      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.

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    4. Re:The Irony by GreyPoopon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      A couple thoughts here -- note that I'm only speculating with almost no knowledge to back it up -- perhaps some Egyptian History scholar can provide more information. First, you assume that the tasks performed by the slaves really had much of an impact on the economy. It might be more helpful to know what jobs they actually performed. If all they were doing was building pyramids and monuments for the pharaohs, cessation of such activity wouldn't have much of an impact on anyone but the pharaoh. On the other hand, if they were responsible for the food supply or something, that would have a larger impact. Second, keep in mind that subsequent pharaohs habitually wiped out nearly all mention of certain previous rulers seemingly on a whim. I would imagine that even the most meticulous records could and would suddenly disappear if so ordered by the pharaoh at the time.
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    5. Re:The Irony by IDontAgreeWithYou · · Score: 5, Funny

      Even more ironically I agree with you.

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      Finding other idiots on /. that agree with your opinion doesn't make it any less stupid.
    6. Re:The Irony by CyberLord+Seven · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Take all of the slaves out of Georgia in 1840. Just that one state. Imagine trying to hide the impact.

      If you don't like that year pick another. If you don't like that state, pick another. Or pick another society like ancient Rome. Remove the slaves and then try to hide the impact on the economy. Then remember there's a reason we all know of Spartacus.

      If what we call menial tasks don't get done, someone else has to do it or it will not be done. Suddenly menial tasks are so menial.

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      We have always been at war with Eurasia!
    7. Re:The Irony by ari_j · · Score: 3, Funny

      I give you three and a half stars. For full points, you would have needed to work it "The fools! If only they had..." to be fully Futurama compliant.

    8. Re:The Irony by Patoski · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Ancient Egyptians were meticulous record keepers, but notorious revisionists. In their written records the ancient Egyptians sought to hide their military defeats.

      Undoubtably the pharaoh would seek to blot out anything connected to what would have been one of Egypt's more embarrassing military defeats.

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    9. Re:The Irony by rleibman · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

    10. Re:The Irony by CyberLord+Seven · · Score: 3, Interesting
      You can try to hide important details but it will be obvious.

      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. :)

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    11. Re:The Irony by sacrilicious · · Score: 3, Funny
      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.

      One of the tasks previously performed by the slaves was that of record-keeping.

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  2. Queen Sut by Jozxyqk · · Score: 3, Funny

    Born in Arizona,
    Moved to Babylonia,
    Queen 'Sut.

  3. Inscription by kevin_conaway · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A molar inscribed with the queen's name...

    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.

    1. Re:Inscription by EveryNickIsTaken · · Score: 5, Funny

      This was the original "Grill." That's right.. Kickin' it *really* old school, egypt-style.

    2. Re:Inscription by TubeSteak · · Score: 4, Informative
      FTFA:

      During the embalming process, it was common to set aside spare body parts and preserve them in such a box.
      I other words: After she was dead, they put her tooth in a box.

      It's lucky they did, because as TFA also explains, her tomb was looted and the mummy removed, though not in the article is the fact that her son removed her cartouche and representation from all the monuments and temples he could find.
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    3. Re:Inscription by timelorde · · Score: 3, Informative

      Nice editing in the summary. The actual article says that the Queen's name was on the box, not on the tooth.

      Sheesh.

      I do love that Egyptian stuff, however.

    4. Re:Inscription by Rob+T+Firefly · · Score: 5, Funny

      So in another 3500 years, archeologists will dig up Flava Flav and assume he was a wise and great leader? *shudder*

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  4. Bad Teeth by StefanJ · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  5. Medical procedures by ushering05401 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Medical procedures by Dunbal · · Score: 5, Informative

      It is reported that this lady not only had bone cancer, but probably liver cancer and diabetes.

            I'm not a forensic anthropologist, but as a physician I can say there are a lot of signs to tell you that a patient has cancer even if you only recover a fragment. Especially osteosarcoma (bone cancer), which tends to produce lytic lesions (areas where the bone is less dense) in most of the bones of the body. A quick x-ray of the jaw could reveal this. Plus osteosarcoma will alter calcium and PTH levels and dramatically change bone formation and reabsorbtion. See, bone is LIVING tissue. It's constantly being absorbed and recreated.

            Now I don't know where they get liver cancer from - it's very unlikely that a patient will have TWO separate types of cancer. But the liver lesions are probably just metastases of the primary osteosaarcoma.

            The egyptians were rather advanced in the field of medicine - FOR THEIR DAY. There is no possible way they could approach the level of medicine we had say 200 years ago, much less today. Diabetes is a complex disease that is eventually lethal when left untreated. I doubt very much they had discovered that feeding patients pig pancreases could mitigate this disease somewhat, since this was discovered early last century. We won't talk about sulfonyl-ureas and other oral hypoglycemiants.

            They were pretty good at basic surgery, they had a pretty good idea of which tumors NOT to touch (because they got worse if you touched them), and it's rumored that some were even capable of drilling burr holes in patients' skulls to treat subdural hematomas (from trauma/battle injuries) or encephalitis/meningitis (to relieve the pressure inside the skull from a swollen brain/membranes). However we MUST bear in mind that we have NO record of what their actual success rate was with these procedures. It's easy to attribute supernatural powers to a vanished culture, however reality is they had no antibiotics, precious little by way of anesthetics, and more importantly no scientific method.

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    2. Re:Medical procedures by Dunbal · · Score: 4, Informative

      Not to split hairs, but the honey is actually working as an anti-septic.

            We do use sugar and/or honey from time to time to treat large, difficult ulcers in our hospitals here. The idea is that the sugar is something that stimulates growth in the wound while at the same time the huge osmotic pressure prevents bacterial growth. Honey is high in fructose, but it will work with plain old sugar, too.

            An antibiotic is a drug that targets specific types bacteria by inhibiting growth or cell wall synthesis, etc. Honey, on the other hand will kill ALL cells, bacteria or otherwise. Fortunately for us, however, our circulation helps minimize the osmotic gradient and the only cells that die are the ones on the fringe of the wound - which are probably injured anyway.

            Another thing we use - funnily enough - is epamin - an anti-covulsant medication that somehow is very similar to certain tissue growth factors and does help heal wounds faster.

            So, to make my point - yes ok, the egyptians probably used honey, wine, and even vinegar as antiseptics. However this is not as effective as say cepahlexin :)

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      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  6. I have a 98% similarity in DNA... by Short+Circuit · · Score: 4, Funny

    Can I get my inheritance, now?

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  7. So close to TFA, but not exactly... by Cragen · · Score: 3, Informative
    The mummy "was found in 1903 in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings, where the young Pharaoh Tutankhamun was buried, and Hawass himself thought until recently that it belonged to the owner of the tomb, Hatshepsut's wet-nurse by the name of Sitre In.

    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...)

  8. Hold your horses, buddy by Lurker2288 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "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!

  9. Re:Oh baby... by Forge · · Score: 3, Funny

    I really should stop commenting on Moderation but how did this become off topic?

    The guy is obviously turned on by fat, long dead Egyptians. Now if he was moderated troll or just "-1 sick, twisted, pervert" ...

    What? No such moderation option? OK. I'll take it back.

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  10. Re:King Tut? by TechnicolourSquirrel · · Score: 5, Funny

    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! I'm afraid I must object to your use of this one-syllable colloquialism, 'Grrrrrr!' Would it have been so difficult to type 'This makes me very angry,' in proper English?