 |
"Long
before it's in the papers"
April 29, 2009
RETURN TO THE WORLD SCIENCE HOME PAGE
Egyptian queen’s mummy ID’d based on tooth
June 28, 2007
Staff and wire reports
Egyptologists believe they have identified the mummy of Hatshepsut, the most famous queen to rule ancient Egypt, found in a humble tomb in
Egypt’s Valley of the
Kings. An unidentifi female mummy from tomb KV60, later identified as
Hatshepsut. ( Image courtesy Discovery Channel)
Send us a comment
on this story, or send
it to a friend
Egypt’s chief archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, held a news conference in Cairo on Wednesday
to announce the find.
Archaeologists said the mummy was one of two females found in 1903 in a small tomb believed to be that of Hatshepsut’s wet-nurse, Sitre In.
Several Egyptologists have speculated over the years that one of the mummies was that of the queen, who ruled from between 1503 and 1482 BC—at the height of ancient Egypt’s power.
The decisive evidence was a molar tooth in a wooden box inscribed with the
queen’s name,
Hawass said. The box was found in 1881 in a cache of royal mummies collected and hidden away at the Deir al-Bahari temple about 1,000 metres (yards)
away from the tomb.
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.
He found that the tooth was a perfect fit in a gap in the upper jaw of
one of the two females, a fat woman believed to have suffered
from cancer and diabetes. “The identification of the tooth with the jaw can show this is
Hatshepsut,” Hawass said. “A tooth is like a fingerprint.”
Egyptologist Elizabeth Thomas speculated many years ago that one of the mummies was Hatshepsut’s because the positioning of the right arm over the woman’s chest suggested royalty.
It was supposed that the mummy might have been hidden in the tomb for safekeeping because her stepson and successor, Tuthmosis III, tried to obliterate her memory.
More powerful than Cleopatra or Nefertiti, Hatshepsut stole the throne
from her young stepson, dressed herself as a man and in an unprecedented
move declared herself pharaoh. Though her reign was prosperous,
her legacy was systematically erased: records were destroyed, monuments
razed and her corpse removed from her tomb. Her death is shrouded in
mystery.
* * *
|
||||
|
Egyptologists believe they have identified the mummy of Hatshepsut, the most famous queen to rule ancient Egypt, found in a humble tomb in the Valley of the Kings, an archaeo logist said on Monday.