The mummy in tomb KV55 is King Akhenaten

[bob12]

At the press conference, I announced that the mummy in tomb KV55 is King Akhenaten who bewildered scientists and researchers either in their search for his mummy or in studying the conditions of his time...CT-Scanners showed that KV55 is the mummy of a 60-year old male. Moreover, the DNA showed that he is the son of King Amenhoteb III, and as we mentioned earlier, the father of King Tutankhamen...The other significant discovery is that the study emphasized that KV55 belongs to a normal male who did not suffer any deformities and his body showed no signs of feminine traits.


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KV55


The desecrated royal coffin found in Tomb KV55...One scenario, suggested by Nicholas Reeves, is as follows: Akhenaten and his mother, Queen Tiye, were originally entombed at Akhenaten's new capital Akhetaten (modern Amarna) but their mummies were moved to KV55 following the total abandonment of Akhetaten during the reign of Tutankhamun, who was Akhenaten's son. The door to KV55 was sealed with Tutankhamun's name. There the mummies remained for about 200 years, until the tomb was rediscovered by workmen excavating the tomb of Ramesses IX nearby. By this time, Akhenaten was reviled as the "heretic king"; consequently, Queen Tiye's sarcophagus was hastily removed from his defiling presence, except for its surrounding gilded wooden shrine which would have had to be dismantled for removal. Akhenaten's likeness was chiseled off of the shrine's carved relief. Moreover, the gold face mask was ripped from Akhenaten's sarcophagus and his identifying cartouche was removed from its hieroglyphic inscription, thus consigning its occupant to oblivion. As a final insult, a large rock was thrown at the coffin. However, a finely made vulture pectoral—a symbol of royalty in Ancient Egypt—was still found placed around this mummy's head.


The Ancient Egyptian vulture pectoral found on the head of the mysterious Pharaoh in tomb KV55

www.aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=7&id=19943

Where the Great Akhenaten Lies

20/02/2010
By Zahi Hawass



At a press conference for international media figures held by the Supreme Council of Antiquities last Wednesday at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, I announced that important [archeological] discoveries had been made that shed more light on the dynasty of the golden pharaoh Tutankhamen. These discoveries marked the beginning of a new chapter in using modern techniques and advanced technology in the field of archeological discoveries.


For many years, Egyptian mummies remained silent, disclosing only a few of their secrets until modern science came and presented to us a new key to the secrets of the mummies, particularly those belonging to the same dynasty. These methods are represented in the deoxyribonucleic acid technique, known as DNA testing, and the CT-Scan. At long last, after a full comprehensive 18-month study of the mummy of King Tutankhamen that is preserved in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, and of other mummies believed to be from the same dynasty, we have set up a DNA laboratory at the basement of the Egyptian Museum and another at Cairo University’s Faculty of Medicine where two teams of distinguished scientists worked. Each team worked separately in its own laboratory away from the other, and both were assisted by German scientists who specialize in studying DNA.


At the press conference, I announced that the mummy in tomb KV55 is King Akhenaten who bewildered scientists and researchers either in their search for his mummy or in studying the conditions of his time. Akhenaten was the first to call for monotheism and sought to change the multiple religions in ancient Egypt. We also confirmed that Akhenaten was the father of King Tutankhamen and this confirmation came after earlier attempts that indicated that in KV55 was most probably the mummy of Akhenaten. But this contradicted studies that indicated that the mummy is of a 25-year old male, which made us think that it could in fact be the mummy of a king that we do not know much about i.e. Smenkhkare who has also baffled scientists. Was he the brother of Tutankhamen? Or was he actually the beautiful queen who perhaps was the co-regent of King Tut in his 17th year of rule and changed her name to Smenkhkare?


Therefore the problem lied in the assumption that the mummy was of a 25-year old male, whilst the studies we carried out with scientists using CT-Scanners showed that KV55 is the mummy of a 60-year old male. Moreover, the DNA showed that he is the son of King Amenhoteb III, and as we mentioned earlier, the father of King Tutankhamen. This discovery has revived historical facts and closed a gap that has been open since the discovery of the mummies of known or unknown kings.


The other significant discovery is that the study emphasized that KV55 belongs to a normal male who did not suffer any deformities and his body showed no signs of feminine traits. Some believed that King Akhenaten might have had feminine traits based on the statues and drawings that depicted him in this way. This was represented in his flabby abdomen and thighs and his feminine chest. It is our duty now to explain such artistic characteristics during Akhenaten's reign and we can find the answer in the Great Hymn to Aten, who was worshipped by Akhenaten, and whose power is depicted in an image that shows the disk of the sun with rays that end in human hands. The Great Hymn to Aten says “you are male and female...”

[bob12]

Renegade Pharaoh Akhenaton - the "Son of the Sun" (Aton).

His Cult of Aton was, and is, identical to the pre-diluvian "Brotherhood of the Snake."




Statue of Akhenaten displaying artistic deformities and feminine characteristics rather than showing how he actually looked.

The other significant discovery is that the study emphasized that KV55 belongs to a normal male who did not suffer any deformities and his body showed no signs of feminine traits.

Some believed that King Akhenaten might have had feminine traits based on the statues and drawings that depicted him in this way. This was represented in his flabby abdomen and thighs and his feminine chest.

It is our duty now to explain such artistic characteristics during Akhenaten's reign and we can find the answer in the Great Hymn to Aten, who was worshipped by Akhenaten, and whose power is depicted in an image that shows the disk of the sun with rays that end in human hands. The Great Hymn to Aten says “you are male and female...”


hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_EGYPT_KING_TUT?SITE=WTICAM&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2010-02-16-16-54-16

Feb 16, 4:54 PM EST

A frail King Tut died from malaria, broken leg

By PAUL SCHEMM
Associated Press Writer

CAIRO (AP) -- Egypt's most famous pharaoh, King Tutankhamun, was a frail boy who suffered from a cleft palate and club foot. He died of complications from a broken leg exacerbated by malaria and his parents were most likely brother and sister.

Two years of DNA testing and CT scans on Tut's 3,300-year-old mummy and 15 others are helping end many of the myths surrounding the boy king. While a comparatively minor ruler, he has captivated the public since the 1922 discovery of his tomb, which was filled with a stunning array of jewels and artifacts, including a golden funeral mask.

The study, which will be published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, provides the firmest family tree yet for Tut. The tests pointed to Pharaoh Akhenaten, who tried to revolutionize ancient Egyptian religion to worship one god, as Tut's father. His mother was one of Akhenaten's sisters, it said.

Tut, who became pharaoh at age 10 in 1333 B.C., ruled for just nine years at a pivotal time in Egypt's history. Speculation has long swirled over his death at 19. A hole in his skull fueled speculation he was murdered, until a 2005 CT scan ruled that out, finding the hole was likely from the mummification process. The scan also uncovered the broken leg.

The newest tests paint a picture of a pharaoh whose immune system was likely weakened by congenital diseases. His death came from complications from the broken leg - along with a new discovery: severe malaria.

The team said it found DNA of the malaria parasite in several of the mummies, some of the oldest ever isolated.

"A sudden leg fracture possibly introduced by a fall might have resulted in a life threatening condition when a malaria infection occurred," the JAMA article said.

"Tutankhamun had multiple disorders... He might be envisioned as a young but frail king who needed canes to walk," it said.

The revelations are in stark contrast to the popular image of a graceful boy-king as portrayed by the dazzling funerary artifacts in his tomb that later introduced much of the world to the glory of ancient Egypt.

They also highlighted the role genetics play in some diseases. The members of the 18th dynasty were closely inbred and the DNA studies found several genetic disorders in the mummies tested such as scoliosis, curvature of the spine, and club feet.

Dr. Howard Markel, a medical historian at the University of Michigan, said some of King Tut's ailments including his bone disease likely were the result of his parents' incestuous marriage. Children born to parents who are so closely related to each other would be prone to genetic problems, he said.

Like his father, Tutankhamun had a cleft palate. Like his grandfather, he had a club foot and suffered from Kohler's disease which inhibits the supply of blood to the bones of the foot.

In Tut's case it was slowly destroying the bones in his left foot - an often painful condition, the study said. It noted that 130 walking sticks and canes were discovered in Tut's tomb, some of them appeared to have been used.

Egypt's top archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, who co-authored the study, noted that more than 80 years after Tutankhamun's discovery, technology was revealing secrets about the pharaoh.

The study is part of a wider program to test the DNA of hundreds of mummies to determine their identities and their family relations. To conduct the tests, Egypt built two DNA labs to follow international protocols for genetic testing.

Hawass, who had long opposed DNA testing on Egypt's mummies because it would have been performed outside the country, acknowledged his original skepticism. "I never thought that we would really reach a great important discovery," he said in an interview with The Associated Press.

The new study answered long-standing questions about Tutankhamun's family, tracing his grandfather to Pharaoh Amenhotep III. While some archaeologists have speculated that Tut's father was a little-known figure, Smenkhkare, it now appears that it was Akhenaten, who attempted to change millennia of religious tradition by forcing the country to worship the sun god Aten, instead of a multiplicity of deities.

DNA tests pinpointed the mummy of Tut's mother - and confirmed she was a sister of his father - but the mummy has not yet been firmly identified. Brother-sister marriages were common among Egypt's pharaohs.

"There is a lot fuzziness about the succession and that's why knowing Tutankhamun was the son or direct blood descendant would make a difference," said Salima Ikram, an Egyptologist at the American University in Cairo and an expert on mummies.

The tests also disproved speculation that Tutankhamun and members of his family suffered from rare disorders that gave them feminine attributes and misshapen bones, including Marfan syndrome, a connective tissue disorder that can result in elongated limbs.

The theories arose from the artistic style and statues of the period, which showed the royal men with prominent breasts, elongated heads and flared hips.

"It is unlikely that either Tutankhamun or Akhenaten actually displayed a significantly bizarre or feminine physique," the article said.

Hawass' first high profile discovery involving DNA tests, the identification of the mummy of Queen Hatshepsut, came under criticism because it didn't follow accepted scientific protocols and was not published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

The tests were also not confirmed by a second, independent DNA lab.

This time the work by the Supreme Council of Antiquities DNA lab was replicated by a second DNA lab set up at Cairo University and the results were then published in the American medical journal.

Angelique Corthals, an assistant professor of forensic science at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York helped set up the first Egyptian lab and said the work is being conducted according to international standards.

Hawass predicted that many more discoveries were in the works for King Tutankhamun and the mummy project.

"It will never be revealed completely, still we need more research," he said. "We finished the first great part of the mystery and the second one is coming soon in one year."

© 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[bob12]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutankhamun

Tutankhamun
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pharaoh of Egypt
Reign 1333–1324 BC, 18th Dynasty

Consort(s) Ankhesenamen
Children 2 possibly, both female, names unknown
Father Akhenaten
Mother unidentified mummy, "The Younger Lady"
Born 1341 BC
Died 1323 BC
Burial KV62



Mask of Tutankhamun's mummy, the popular icon for ancient Egypt at The Egyptian Museum.


Cartouches of his birth and throne names are displayed between rampant Sekhmet lioness warrior images (perhaps with his head) crushing enemies of several ethnicities, while Nekhbet flies protectively above

Tutankhamun (alternately spelled with Tutenkh-, -amen, -amon), Egyptian twt-ˁnḫ-ý͗mn; tVwa:t-ʕa:nəx-ʔaˡma:n (1341 BC – 1323 BC) was an Egyptian pharaoh of the 18th dynasty (ruled 1333 BC – 1324 BC in the conventional chronology), during the period of Egyptian history known as the New Kingdom. His original name, Tutankhaten, means "Living Image of Aten", while Tutankhamun means "Living Image of Amun." In hieroglyphs the name Tutankhamun was typically written Amen-tut-ankh, because of a scribal custom that placed a divine name at the beginning of a phrase to show appropriate reverence. He is possibly also the Nibhurrereya of the Amarna letters. He was likely the 18th dynasty king 'Rathotis' who, according to Manetho, an ancient historian, had reigned for nine years — a figure which conforms with Flavius Josephus's version of Manetho's Epitome

The 1922 discovery by Howard Carter of Tutankhamun's intact tomb received worldwide press coverage. It sparked a renewed public interest in ancient Egypt, for which Tutankhamun's burial mask remains the popular symbol. Exhibits of artifacts from his tomb have toured the world. In February 2010, the results of DNA tests confirmed that Tutankhamun was the son of Akhenaten (mummy KV55) and his sister/wife (mummy KV35YL), whose name is unknown but whose remains are positively identified as "The Younger Lady" mummy found in KV35.

[bob12]

Dynasty XVIII - Head of a statuette representing Queen Tiye, the mother of the Younger Lady

Recently, DNA test have shown conclusively that the mummy is that of a female, and that she was the mother of Tutankhamun, and by extension a wife of Akhenaten. The results also show that she was also a full-sister to her husband, and that they were both the children of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye.


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Younger_Lady_(mummy)

The Younger Lady (mummy)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


The Younger Lady is the informal name given to a mummy discovered in the ancient Egyptian tomb KV35 by archeologist Victor Loret in 1898. Through DNA tests this mummy has recently been identified as the mother of the pharaoh Tutankhamun. The mummy also has been given the designation KV35YL ("YL" for "Younger Lady") and as 61072,[2] and currently resides in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

The mummy was found adjacent to two other mummies in KV35: a young boy who died at around the age of ten, and another, older woman, who has been called The Elder Lady (recently positively identified through genetic testing as being Queen Tiye, as well as being The Younger Lady's mother). All were found together, lying naked side-by-side and unidentified in a small antechamber of the tomb. All three mummies had been extensively damaged by ancient tomb robbers.

There has been much speculation as to the identity of the Younger Lady mummy. Upon finding the mummy, Victor Loret had initially believed it be of a young man as the mummy's head had been shaved. A closer inspection later made by Dr. Grafton Elliot Smith confirmed that the mummy was that of a female, though Loret's original interpretation lasted for many years. Recently, DNA test have shown conclusively that the mummy is that of a female, and that she was the mother of Tutankhamun, and by extension a wife of Akhenaten. The results also show that she was also a full-sister to her husband, and that they were both the children of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye. This family relationship would lessen the possibility that The Younger Lady (and, by extension, Tutankhamun's mother) was Akhenaten's secondary wife Kiya, because no known artifact accords Kiya the title or attribute "the god's daughter." For similar reasons Nefertiti is also made a less likely candidate.[4] The report concludes that the mummy is likely to be either Nebetah or Beketaten, both of whom are daughters of Amenhotep III not known to have married their father, as the most likely candidates for the KV35 Younger Lady.

[bob12]

The Mummy from KV55

www.guardians.net/hawass/articles/Mystery%20of%20the%20Mummy%20from%20KV55.htm


The Shrine of Queen Tiye. Photo by Mohamed Megahed



Dr. Hawass inspects the KV 55 mummy before its CT scan.



Scans of Tutankhamun’s mummy (left) and the bones from KV 55 seem to show similar elongated shape.

Click on the URL below to watch Max Igan talks with Freeman Part 1 of 6:

freemantv.whynotnews.eu/?p=193

[bob12]

Entrance to KV55


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KV55

KV55

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

KV55 is a tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. It was discovered by Edward R. Ayrton in 1907 while he was working in the Valley for Theodore M. Davis. Genetic tests published in February 2010 have confirmed that the body found in this tomb was the father of Tutankhamun and the son of Amenhotep III, and is therefore Akhenaten.

Both the tomb's history and the identification of its single occupant have been problematic. It is assumed to be a royal cache and reburial dating from the late 18th Dynasty, prepared after the abandonment of Amarna and the dismantling of the royal necropolis there. The mummy found in the tomb has been identified by DNA testing as the biological father of Tutankhamun, confirmed through inscriptional evidence to be Akhenaten. On the basis of the recovered artefacts, it is also suggested that the burial once contained more than a single occupant, either interred on one occasion or over a period of time. Queen Tiye is most often named in this context.

It is also clear that the tomb was re-entered at a later time, almost certainly during the 20th Dynasty. At this time, any additional, hypothetical occupants of the tomb would have been removed and (possibly) relocated to KV35, while the remaining mummy and some of the other artefacts were desecrated and abandoned.

The tomb is often referred to as the Amarna cache, given the mixed nature of its contents.