Hawass believes that DNA tests might help solve this riddle and even more mysteries around King Tut. The fetuses might help identify "the lineage and the family of King Tutankhamun, particularly his parents," he said. Tutankhamun's lineage has piqued the curiosity of Egyptologists ever since his mummy and treasure-packed tomb were discovered. It is unclear if King Tut was the son of Kiya and the "heretic" pharaoh Akhenaton, or of Akhenaton's other wife, the famously-beautiful queen Nefertiti. Only a few facts about King Tut's life are known. King Tut-ankh-Amun, meaning "the living image of Amun," ascended the throne in 1333 B.C., at the age of nine, and reigned until his death at about 19. He was a pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty, probably the greatest of the Egyptian royal families. He married 13-year-old Ankhesenpaaten, Nefertiti's daughter, on his accession to the throne. Although many diseases have been attributed to the teenage king, the 2005 CT scan suggests he was a mostly healthy young man with no signs of childhood malnutrition. "I strongly believe he was fertile," Rühli, a member of the small Egyptian-led research team that examined King Tut's CT scan images in 2005, said. Indeed, many scholars believe that the fetuses are the stillborn children of King Tut and Ankhesenpaaten, who had changed her name to Ankhesenamun. If so, DNA analysis on the fetuses could help determine whether Ankhesenamun was King Tut's half-sister or full sister. "If the fetus DNA matches King Tut's DNA and Ankhesenamun's DNA, then they shared the same mother," Hawass said. In their 1979 research, Harrison and Connolly also analyzed blood types to try and determine how the fetuses fit into the relationship of King Tut and other Pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty. According to the 30-year-old analysis, the stillborn children may have been the baby daughters either of King Tut and Ankhesenamun, or Pharaoh Amenhotep III and his wife (and most likely his daughter) Sitamun, or Pharoahs Tutankhamun or Smenkhkare (a predecessor of King Tut) and Sitamun. "I am pretty sure the fetuses were Ankhesenamen's," Egyptologist and paleopathologist Bob Brier, one of the world's foremost experts on mummies, told Discovery News. Connolly agrees: "Since these two fetuses were found in the tomb of Tutankhamen, there is no reason to think that they were other than his offspring, a matter supported by my 1979 blood group studies." The two fetuses will be studied at a new ancient DNA lab opening at Cairo University to supplement research at a similar lab created at the Egyptian Museum, with funding from the Discovery Channel. The DNA tests and CT scans should be finished by December. Related Links: Discovery News blog: Archaeorama |
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