Fetus Mummies Were Likely King Tut's

Fetus Mummies Were Likely King Tut's
Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News


Aug. 15, 2008 -- Ongoing analysis on the mummified remains of two female fetuses buried in the tomb of Tutankhamun will most likely show that at least one of the stillborn children is the offspring of the teenage pharaoh, a scientist who carried serological analysis on the mummified remains told Discovery News.

"I studied one of the mummies, the larger one, back in 1979 [and] determined the blood group data from this baby mummy and compared it with my 1969 blood grouping of Tutankhamun.

"The results confirmed that this larger fetus could indeed be the daughter of Tutankhamen," said Robert Connolly, senior lecturer in physical anthropology from the University of Liverpool's Department of Human Anatomy and Cell Biology.

The fetuses have been stored at the Cairo University's Faculty of Medicine since archaeologist Howard Carter first discovered them in Tutankhamun's tomb on the west bank of Luxor, Egypt in 1922.

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 fetuses will soon undergo CT scans and DNA testing to determine possible diseases and their relation to the famous pharaoh, and possibly "identify the fetuses' mother," Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said in a statement.

"This is a very important project, as these fetuses have never been fully studied," Swiss anatomist and paleopathologist Frank Rühli told Discovery News.

The smaller fetus, about five months in gestational age, has only been examined by Carter in 1925. The mummy is less than 30 centimeters (11.8 inches) in height and is well preserved, according to Rühli.

Rühli, head of the Swiss Mummy Project at the University of Zurich, added that the mummy showed no signs of brain removal or abdominal incision, the umbilical cord was still there, and a funerary mask was still in place.

The older, larger fetus is estimated to be between seven and nine months in gestational age. It is less well preserved than the other and measures 38.5 centimeters (15.16 inches).

"The mummy was subjected to X-rays in 1978 and a number of skeletal malformations were observed," Rühli said

At that time, Connolly and British scientist Ronald Harrison, along with colleagues from Cairo University, suggested that the older stillborn fetus displayed what could have been the earliest evidence of Sprengel's deformity, a relatively rare and congenital skeletal disorder where a scapula sits too high on one side.

Moreover, the female mummy was diagnosed with a vertebral dislocation, spina bifida and scoliosis. Now Connolly is less certain about those conclusions.

"I did publish a paper with Harrison and others in which we suggested Sprengel's disease. However, recently I have concluded that the elevated clavicle was simply a result of manipulation of the baby during mummification," Connolly said.

He is also cautions about the diagnosis of spina bifida, and suggests a more accurate examination of the body could yield other explanations.

So who were these stillborn girls? Why were they buried with King Tut? Was the boy king their dad? And what was their cause of death?

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.