Was mummy a daddy? Tests underway on fetuses in Tut's tomb
Last Updated: Wednesday, August 6, 2008 | 2:08 PM ET
The Associated Press
A French team built this model of King Tutankhamun based on facial reconstructions from CT scans of his mummy. It is generally thought that he did not have any children who survived him. (Associated Press)Egyptian scientists are carrying out DNA tests on two mummified fetuses found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun to determine whether they would have been the young pharaoh's offspring, the country's antiquities authority said Wednesday.
The two tiny female fetuses, between five to seven months in gestational age, were found in King Tut's tomb in Luxor, Egypt, when it was discovered in 1922.
DNA samples from the fetuses "will be compared to each other, along with those of the mummy of King Tutankhamun," Zahi Hawass, the head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said in a statement.
The testing is part of a wider program to check the DNA of hundreds of mummies to determine their identities and family relations.
Hawass said the program could help determine Tutankhamun's family lineage, which has long been a mystery.
No heirs apparent
Scholars believe that at age 12, Tutankhamun married Ankhesenamun — a daughter of Akhenaten by his chief wife Nefertiti — but the couple had no known surviving children.
There has been no archeological evidence that Tut, who died around age 19 under mysterious circumstances over 3,000 years ago, left any offspring.
Tutankhamun was one of the last pharaohs of Egypt's 18th Dynasty.
Since being found in King Tut's tomb, the mummified fetuses were kept in storage at the Cairo School of Medicine and were never publicly displayed or studied.
If the tiny mummies are unrelated to Tut, one theory is that they might have been placed in his tomb to allow him to live as a newborn in the afterlife.
Hawass has announced ambitious plans for DNA tests on Egyptian mummies, including tests on all royal mummies and the nearly two dozen unidentified ones stored in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
