Most important Egyptian mummy found

By Hazel Heyer l eTN Middle East

Has Egypt found its most important mummy to date?

The secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), Dr. Zahi Hawass, on Wednesday announced his latest finding--Hatshepsut’s mummy inside tomb KV 60 in the Valley of the Kings on Luxor’s West Bank.

Perhaps the most important and most significant discovery ever unearthed by an Egyptian scientific and archeological team, the quest to find the mummy of Pharaoh Queen Hatshepsut began last year when Hawass examined four unidentified New Kingdom royal female mummies.

Hatshepsut Khenmet-Amun (which means “the united of Amun in front of the Nobles”) was one of the New Kingdom queens, and the best known of the women who ever ruled Egypt as Pharaoh. She was the daughter of King Thutmose I, the third king of the 18th Dynasty (1525-1516 BC), and her mother was Ahmose Hetep Temhu. She was married to her step brother, King Thutmose II, who held Egypt’s throne from 1516-1504 BC. They had a daughter Princess Neferure.

Some Egyptologists believe that Thutmose II died because of a disease and left Egypt’s throne to Thutmose III, his son from another wife. Because of Thutmose’s young age, Hatshepsut became a co-regent. They ruled happily for two years, and then she declared herself Egypt’s king and Pharaoh. Although, she was keen for some time to write Thutmose’s name beside her own on all papers and documents, in her ninth year Thutmose’s name vanished and Hatshepsut’s name was the only king name that appeared on all documents. To legitimize her role as Egypt’s ruling Pharaoh, Hatshepsut dressed in men’s attire; she assumed the regalia and symbols of Pharaonic office, including the khat head cloth topped with a uraeus, the traditional false beard, and the shendyt kilt. She held male titles and used masculine grammatical forms in official documents in an attempt to stop any opposition, as well as to make Egyptians feel that nothing had changed in their tradition by her assuming the throne. She even, eventually, dropped the female ending from her name ('t') and became His Majesty, Hatshepsu. As it was not accepted in ancient Egypt that a woman should take Egypt’s throne and assume all the attendant religious and political duties, Amun’s priests created a myth promoting the belief that Hatshepsut was the god Amun-Re’s daughter. This myth was depicted on the walls of El-Deir El-Bahari temple on Luxor’s West Bank.

Upon revealing the latest finds, three of them were found already stored in the Egyptian Grand Cairo Museum’s third floor and the fourth was inside Tomb KV60 in the Valley of the Kings. Tomb KV 60 was discovered by Howard Carter in 1903. In its burial chamber, Hawass found two mummies. The first one belonged to a small woman laid inside an 18th Dynasty coffin inscribed for Hatshepsut’s wet nurse, Sitre-In; the second belonged to a hugely obese woman laid on the floor next to In’s coffin. The left hand of the second mummy is held across the chest with its fist clenched, suggesting that it is of royal remains. Bald on the front of the head, but has long hair at the back, she’s kept in very good condition.

Carter transported the mummy of Sitre-In to the Egyptian museum and left the other mummy alone inside the tomb. Exploring the third floor of the Egyptian Museum, Hawass sought the help of museum curator Somaya Adel Samea in locating Sittre-In’s mummy, which was found inside a sarcophagus double its size. On the museum’s third floor, they also began to search for other unidentified New Kingdom mummies that might be of royal descent. Two of these mummies were found in the cache of royal mummies discovered by the Abdel Rassul family in 1881 at Deir El-Bahari in tomb DB320. The first one was the mummy of a woman, designated “Unknown Woman B,” and the second is for another female mummy referred to as “Unknown Woman A.”

All of these mummies passed through CT-scans revealing the mummy called Unknown Woman B from DB320 belongs to an older woman of the New Kingdom, who had white curly hair with artificial black locks attached as hair piece. From the first appearance it had seemed that it was not royal, but CT-scan examination revealed that the mummy’s arms were originally on its chest, which suggests that it was royal or was given royal mummification rites. As for the second mummy from DB320, Unknown Woman A, the CT-scan revealed that it belonged to a woman who was mummified in an unusual position. Her head bends to the side, and the two legs were crossed below the knees. The mouth is wide open, which suggests that she suffered some kind of trauma at the time of death.

The mummies of Kings Thutmose II and III also underwent CT-scan examination as they are remains of Hatshepsut’s husband, and probably her half-brother, or stepson respectively. The mummy thought to be that of Thutmose I, Hatshepsut’s father, was also scanned. Only the mummy of the overweight lady found in KV 60 remained subject to a CT-scan. Hawass had it transported to the Egyptian Museum. The examination revealed that the mummy is that of a 50-year-old fat lady who suffered from some tooth decay during her lifetime, along with several other diseases. The direct cause of her death may have been cancer, or complications from diabetes.

Hatshepsut’s canopic jars were found in tomb KV 20 - dedicated to her and her father Thutmose I. This tomb was found by Carter; it has unique architectural style. It consists of a long curved tunnel carved in four sections, which descends 210 meters into the bedrock before passing through a roughly cut, undecorated antechamber and ending in a rectangular burial chamber with three storerooms. These canopic jars went through series of CT-scans.

Finally, a wooden box inscribed with Hatshepsut’s throne name, found in DB320 was also scanned. It included the key to the riddle. In addition to the mummified viscera, there was a single tooth - a molar – inside the box. From other embalming caches it is known that anything associated with the body or its mummification became ritually charged and had to be buried properly. It shows that during the mummification of queen Hatshepsut, embalmers put in the box anything that came loose from the body during the mummification process.

Dr. Galal El-Beheri, Professor of Orthodontics at Cairo University, examined the CT scans of the four unidentified female mummies to check whether any of them had a missing molar. The surprise was that the obese mummy from KV60 was indeed missing a molar, and the hole left behind and the type of molar that was missing were an exact match for the loose one in the box from DB320. This constitutes scientific proof that the mummy of the obese lady is that of Queen Hatshepsut.

This was not the only important result of the team’s search for Hatshepsut. They also finally made a deal with the Discovery Channel to build in the Egyptian Museum the first ever DNA laboratory exclusively dedicated to the study of ancient mummies. The lab, costing $ 5 million, was built for the filming of a documentary on Queen Hatshepsut, which will be screened on Egyptian TV. The SCA supervised the construction of the lab itself, and the equipment was brought in by the Discovery Channel from Applied Biosystems.

Yehya Zakariya Gad, a professor of molecular genetics from the National Research Centre, is in-charge of this laboratory. DNA samples from Hatshepsut, her grandmother Ahmose Nefertari, her father Thutmose I, and the wet-nurse Sitre-In were taken by entering the same puncture hole from a number of different angles with a bone marrow biopsy needle, a less invasive technique than ones that had been used by previous researchers .

The team of Egyptologists who made this significant discovery possible was composed of Hawass, head of the scientific mission, Dr. Ashraf Selim, Professor of Radiology from Cairo University, Dr. Galal El-Beheri, Professor of Orthodontics from Cairo University, Dr. Yehya Zakariya, Professor of Molecular Genetics from the National Research Center, Dr. Hani Abdel Rahman, CT and MRI Applications Specialist with Siemens Ltd. and Hisham El-Leithy, Hawass’ assistant Egyptologist.

Printable Version | published Jun 28, 2007

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