Was Mummy King Tut A Daddy?

August 15, 2008

Some of the top mummy experts believe so. "I go for Tut as father!," Robert Connolly, a scientist who carried serological analysis on the mummified remains of two female fetuses buried in the tomb of Tutankhamun, told me.

Egyptologists have long debated whether these mummies were the stillborn children of King Tut and his wife 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.

Never publicly displayed, the two tiny fetuses will soon undergo CT scans and DNA testing to determine possible diseases and their relation to the famous pharaoh.

To know more about this fascinating story, just read my article . To experience the legendary treasure, just as it was when it was first discovered, I strongly suggest the exhibition "Tutankhamun: his tomb and his treasures" at Zurich's Toni Areal, which is basically a walk-in reconstructon of the tomb complex .

More than 1,000 items of Tutankhamun’s burial treasure have been faithfully reconstructed by Egyptian artisans over five years.
Why replicas? Basically, because you can't move the original items. Just think that the insurance for the original gold mask of the Pharaoh, weighing eleven kilograms, currently costs six billion US dollars, making it the most valuable work of art in history.

Here is a slideshow of some items on display -- and here is a video

Picture: Rossella Lorenzi/Semmel Concerts

Comments

[DianaGainer]

The odd thing about Connolly is that, not only does he think the premature babies are Tutankhamun's daughters, which is quite logical, but he also thinks they are twins! I read this on a British site. However, most experts assess the ages of the 2 infants at months apart! We shall see, of course, but it would be quite astonishing if they were to prove to be twins, although not impossible, since one twin can be larger than the other, and size is the primary way that age is determined (but other methods are also used, such as the development of the cranium, and so on). Also, it will be interesting to see whether the father & mother were full siblings, half-siblings, or some other close relation, as was common among the ancient Egyptian royal families for reasons of religious "purity."