Half of European men share King Tut's DNA
Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, has announced on Sunday he would hold a press conference on Feb. 17 to reveal the results of DNA tests on the world's most famous pharaoh.
The long awaited announcement will be "about the secrets of the family and the affiliation of Tutankhamun, based on the results of the scientific examination of the Tutankhamun mummy following DNA analysis," Hawass said in a statement.
King Tut's DNA results will be most likely compared to those made of King Amenhotep III, who may have been Tutankamen's grandfather.
The best-known pharaoh of ancient Egypt, King Tut has been puzzling scientists ever since his mummy- and treasure-packed tomb was discovered in 1922 in the Valley of the Kings by British archaeologist Howard Carter.
Only a few facts about his life are known.
While he lived in Amarna, his name was Tutankhaton ("honoring Aton" -- the sun god).
When he ascended the throne in 1333 B.C., at the age of nine, and moved to Thebes, he changed his name to Tutankamun ("honoring Amun" -- a traditional cult).
He married 13-year-old Ankhesenpaaten, the daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, on his accession to the throne.
As the last male in the family, his death in 1325 B.C. at age 19 ended the 18th dynasty -- probably the greatest of the Egyptian royal families -- and gave way to military rulers.
What struck down a family whose rule lasted for nearly 200 years? Had the dynasty indulged in so much incest that they were dying out from genetic disease?
In an effort to answer these and other questions, a $5 million DNA lab was created at the Egyptian Museum, with funding from the Discovery Channel.
Egyptian authorities plan to check the DNA of hundreds of Egyptian mummies, including all royal mummies and nearly two dozen unidentified ones stored in Cairo's Egyptian Museum.
The project started in 2008, with samples taken from Tutankhamun's mummy and from two fetuses found in his tomb.
Egyptologists have long debated whether these fetuses were the stillborn children of King Tut and his wife Ankhesenpaaten, who had changed her name to Ankhesenamun, or if they were placed in the tomb with the symbolic purpose of allowing the boy king to live as newborns in the afterlife.
As for King Tut, he has been believed to be either the son of the minor king Smenkhkare or the offspring of Amenhotep III, the father of the "heretic" pharaoh Akhenaten, (1353-1336 B.C.)
Another leading theory suggest that King Tut was sired by Akhenaten, the revolutionary phaoroah who established the capital of his kingdom in Amarna, introducing a monotheistic religion that overthrew the pantheon of the gods to worship the sun god Aton.
Doubts also remain about King Tut's mother. Scholars have long debated whether he is the son of Kiya, Akhenaten's minor wife, or Queen Nefertiti, Akhenaten's other wife.
DNA analysis on the fetuses could help shed light on the boy king’s mother and 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 we would know that they shared the same mother," Hawass said.
Evidence that Tutankhamun was the child of Akhenaten has come from an inscribed limestone block pieced together by Hawass in December 2008.
The block shows the young Tutankhamun and his wife, Ankhesenamun, seated together. The text identifies Tutankhamun as the "king's son of his body, Tutankhaten," and his wife as the "king's daughter of his body, Ankhesenaten.”
According to Hawass, "the only king to whom the text could refer as the father of both children is Akhenaten."
According to Swiss anatomist and paleopathologist Frank Rühli, head of the Swiss Mummy Project at the University of Zurich, the DNA results will be of foremost interest not only to archeologists but also biomedical researchers.
"I would not be surprised if King Tut and Amenhotep III were related. However, the genealogy may be complex. Ancient DNA analysis is difficult, particularly from Egyptian mummies, thus the investigations are usually replicated in a second independent lab,” Rühli, who participated in the 2005 CT scan analysis of Tutankhamun, told Discovery News.
Source: discovery
