- Title: EGYPT: Ancient Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut identified from single tooth
- Date: 28th June 2007
- Summary: EGYPTIAN MINISTER OF CULTURE, FAROUK HOSNI, AND HEAD OF SUPREME COUNCIL OF EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES, DR. ZAHI HAWASS, ENTERING MEDIA CONFERENCE EGYPTIAN MINISTER OF CULTURE, FAROUK HOSNI, AND HEAD OF SUPREME COUNCIL OF EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES, DR. ZAHI HAWASS SEATED AT MEDIA CONFERENCE
- Embargoed: 13th July 2007 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Egypt
- Country: Egypt
- Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment / Showbiz,History
- Reuters ID: LVA5U8ZYVZEADUL2VOU7K5XTCSXW
- Story Text: DNA used to identify three thousand year old Queen.
A single tooth has clinched the identification of an ancient mummy as that of Queen Hatshepsut, who ruled Egypt about 3,500 years ago, the country's chief archaeologist said on Wednesday (June 27).
The right mummy turned out to be that of an overweight woman in her 50s who had rotten teeth and died of bone cancer, Zahi Hawass told a news conference to announce the identification.
It 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.
At a media conference at the Egyptian museum today, Hawass said the use of modern forensic technology had been the key to identifying the Queen's remains.
"The minister of culture, Farouk Hosni, did announce today an Egyptian team did find the mummy of Queen Hatshepsut. The search took one year and we are using for the first time, he said, the technology of science and archaeology because we do have under the basement of the Cairo museum a DNA lab that donated to us by Discovery channel and the other is a a CT-SCAN machine donated to us by the National Geographic," he said.
Orthodontics professor Yehya Zakariya, a member of the all-Egyptian team responsible for the discovery, 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 overweight woman.
At today's press conference, Dr. Hawass said the tooth finally settled the longstanding riddle.
"We have one box at the Cairo museum and this box we put all the artifacts of Hatshepsut under the CT-SCAN machine -- in this box every Egyptologist believe that it is the liver of the Queen, it has the throne name of Queen Hatshepsut. Then we put it under the CT-SCAN machine and we found out that it has a stomach plus the liver and we found one tooth inside that box. Dr. Ashraf Selim and Dr. Beheiry were able to identify that tooth with the upper part of that mummy that is in KV-60 that we moved two months ago from the Valley of the Kings," he said.
During the embalming process in ancient Egypt, it was common to set aside spare body parts and preserve them in a wooden box like the one that contained Hatshepsut's internal organs as well as the all important tooth.
The team examining the mummy are also doing DNA tests and 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.
DNA analysis is complicated because Hawass recently concluded that the mummy once assumed to be that of Tuthmosis I, Hatshepsut's father, is not in fact his. It belongs to a much younger man who died from an arrow wound, he said.
Not all archaeologists are confident that the identification is watertight, with many of them skeptical about the reliability of the forensic data that Hawass's team is relying so heavily upon.
But Brando Quilici, the producer of a program the Discovery Channel will air next month about the discovery, said the evidence was no longer in doubt.
"This proof is one hundred percent proof, it's a proof that -- this sort of proof, the tooth in the mouth, is the proof that they use in forensic. Its the proof that is used to judge to how to recognize bodies in normal cases all over the world now. So the proof is one hundred percent sure. There is the measurements, the measurements of the tooth match to a zero point four of a millimeter the mouth. The density is the same, one hundred percent the same -- there is no way that this is not the tooth of Queen Hatshepsut," he said.
The identification of Hatshepsut was made more difficult by political events that took place after her death, a factor that often complicates identifying royal mummies.
Hatshepsut's tomb, for example, was found looted and without any mummified female, possibly because her son and successor, Tuthmosis III, tried to wipe out all traces of her memory after she died in about 1482 BC. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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