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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?"
This was the original "Grill." That's right.. Kickin' it *really* old school, egypt-style.
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
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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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.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.