And That's Not All...
Moreover, Ashraf Selim, the radiologist at Cairo University who examined the mummy, told Discovery News that she did "have exaggerated abdominal folds," another unmistakable sign of obesity.
"The presence of exaggerated folds in the anterior abdominal wall is the only marker of which I am aware for the recognition of obesity in a mummy," Arthur Aufderheide, professor of pathology at the University of Minnesota and author of "The Scientific Study of Mummies," told Discovery News.
"After death, there is a stage at which the fat of the abdominal wall has largely decayed, but its overlying skin is still largely intact. If the decay process is arrested by mummification at this point, the redundant skin, no longer supported by the underlying fat, arranges itself into multiple, prominent folds," Aufderheide said.
According to Frank Ruhli, paleopathologist at the Institute of Anatomy at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, assessing precise weight in a mummy is a very difficult task.
"Breasts itself would not be the best assessment for an individual weight. Abdominal circumference is correlated with weight, as to a certain extent is also upper arm circumference. Yet all these measures are dependent on subcutaneous fat presence and this gets completely distorted by mummification," Ruhli told Discovery News.
But Brier has no doubt. "Hatshepsut was a fatty," he said.
The Discovery Channel and Zahi Hawass, Egypt's secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, will unveil details of how Hatshepsut's mummy was found in the documentary "Secrets of Egypt's Lost Queen" on Sunday, July 15 at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
