Who's Your Daddy Revisited

So we thought we knew who Tut's daddy was, and the family line was now relatively firmly established, based on the last most comprehensive round of DNA analysis?  Guess again, darlings...

Royal rumpus over King Tutankhamun's ancestry
14:09 21 January 2011 by Jo Marchant

Can we be sure which mummy was the daddy? When a state-of-the-art DNA analysis of Tutankhamun and other ancient Egyptian royals was published last year, its authors hailed it as "the final word" on the pharaoh's family tree. But others are now voicing doubts.

The analysis of 11 royal mummies dating from around 1300 BC was carried out by an Egyptian team led by Egypt's chief archaeologist Zahi Hawass. The project was overseen by two foreign consultants, Albert Zink of the EURAC Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Italy, and Carsten Pusch of the University of Tübingen, Germany.

The researchers used the DNA data to construct a family tree of Tutankhamun and his immediate relatives. The study, published last February in the Journal of the American Medical Association (vol 303, p 638), concluded that Tutankhamun's father was the pharaoh Akhenaten, that his parents were brother and sister, and that two mummified foetuses found in Tutankhamun's tomb were probably his stillborn daughters – conclusions that have since become received wisdom.

But many geneticists complain that the team used inappropriate analysis techniques. Far from being definitive, the study is "not seen as rigorous or convincing", says Eline Lorenzen of the Center for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark. "Many of us in the DNA community are surprised that this has been published."

Degraded DNA
Ian Barnes, a molecular palaeobiologist at Royal Holloway, University of London, is also concerned. "In my experience it is not very easy to get these results," he says. "I can't do it, and I've spent a long time trying."

Zink and his colleagues used a genetic fingerprinting approach that involves testing variable regions of the genome called microsatellites, which are made up of short sequence repeats. The numbers of repeats vary between individuals, and by comparing the number of repeats across several microsatellites it is possible to work out whether or not individuals are related.

However, researchers rarely attempt this approach with ancient samples because the original DNA is likely to be degraded, and dwarfed by modern contamination. It's more common to sequence mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) – cells contain around a thousand times more copies of mtDNA than of genomic DNA, improving chances of finding large intact samples.

Zink and Pusch defend their choice, saying that they took extensive precautions to guard against contamination. For instance, they extracted samples from deep inside the mummies' bones, and genotyped lab staff to rule out contamination.

Not deep enough
But others doubt the precautions were sufficiently rigorous. Robert Connolly of the University of Liverpool, UK, who carried out blood typing of Tutankhamun's mummy in the 1960s, argues that it would be difficult to reach deep enough inside Tutankhamun's thin, fragile bones – or those of the two fetuses – to reach uncontaminated material.

Lorenzen adds that many people – not just the Hawass team – have handled the mummies since they were first unwrapped. The authors should have tested non-human samples from the tombs as negative controls, she says.

To judge the quality of the team's results, Lorenzen and others are asking for access to raw data not included in the Journal of the American Medical Association paper – but Zink is reluctant to oblige, fearing the data would spark "a lot of arguing" over technicalities.

However, Zink, Pusch and colleagues insist that they will soon be able to put any doubts to rest. They say they have also extracted the mtDNA that Lorenzen and others consider necessary for rigorous genetic analysis and are still working on the data. They hope to publish the results this year.

But the critics are still advising caution. "When working with samples that are so well-known, it is important to convince readers that you have the right data," says Lorenzen. "I am not convinced."

King Tut Loved His Fashionable Footwear!

This from Isis - thanks 'Sis!

King Tut Wore Orthopedic Sandals
By Rossella Lorenzi | Wed Apr 7, 2010 04:54 AM ET

King Tutankhamun might have worn some sort of orthopedic shoes specially designed to cope with his club foot condition, an investigation into the pharaoh's footwear has suggested.

Published in the book, "Tutankhamun's Footwear: Studies of Ancient Egyptian Footwear," the research is the first detailed analysis of the 3,300-year-old footwear since King Tut's mummy and treasure-packed tomb were discovered by Howard Carter in 1922.

Even though the mummy had been X-rayed several times, it was only recently, during a major genetic investigation into King Tut's family, that researchers found a series of malformations in the pharaoh's feet.
Apart from a foot bone disorder known as Kohler disease II, King Tut might have had seriously deformed feet which left him hobbling around with the use of a cane.

Indeed, the second toe in King Tut's right foot lacked the middle bone, making it shorter, while the left foot was clubbed, rotating internally at the ankle.  The foot condition might have required appropriate shoes with a tight strap in order to avoid them being dragged over the floor.

Indeed three pairs of shoes found in King Tut's tomb have horizontal straps just below the toes. One of the pairs also features semi-circular panels at the shoe's sides.

"These features are not known in any other footwear, sandal or shoe alike," book author Andre Veldmeijer, a Dutch archaeologist who specializes in ancient Egyptian leatherwork, footwear and cordage, told Discovery News in an exclusive interview.

Over 80 pieces of footwear of different sizes were buried with the boy king. Some are much deteriorated, with just fragments or isolated straps remaining. Others, however, have survived in decent condition.

Veldmeijer studied 81 specimens, including simple sewn sandals as well as other elaborately decorated, gold ornamented, brightly colored open shoes.  "They were very colorful, shiny shoes. Some are really unique as they combine shape, special materials and new manufacturing techniques," Veldmeijer said.

Veldmeijer believes it is unlikely that the most elaborate shoes, complete with gemstone inlays and gold sheets, ever touched the ground.  "King Tut might have been carried around wearing them. Some shoes, such as the elaborate marquetry veneer sandals, might have been carried by a servant," Veldmeijer said. [Image: a rendition of the Narmer Palette, c. 3300 BCE, the images on both sides shows the smaller figure of the King's sandal-bearer directly behind the King (he's the tallest figure on both sides, in one he's wearing the crown of Upper Egypt, in the other the crown of Lower Egypt.]

On the contrary, the seemingly simple sewn sandals, made of palm leaf, grass and papyrus, were the most important items.  "They were a status symbol, only used by those elite who were rewarded by the king and royalty. These sandals were so important that they were even imitated in gold," Veldmeijer said.

According to the archaeologist, the group of smallest size footwear might have fit King Tut when he was 10, the approximate age when he became king in 1333 B.C, while the largest could have been worn just before his death at age 19.  "This suggest that only the shoes he wore as a king were buried with him. Indeed, many sandals show wear, including the print of King Tut's foot on the sole," Veldmeijer said.

Two pair of open shoes were made to be extra comfortable, with the middle part of the sole stuffed to be more soft on the plantar.  Together with a German specialist in reproduction of ancient footwear, Veldmeijer is now testing the "orthopedic" shoe hypothesis by remaking King Tut's leather open shoes.

"We are collaborating with a professor in anatomy to see how deformed the foot was and how the shoes would have helped," Veldmeijer said.

According to Salima Ikram, professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, the speculation is interesting.  "It is entirely feasible that tighter straps on Tut's shoes were due to a possible club foot, as these would hold them in place and enable easy maneuvering," Ikram told Discovery News.

Tut Statue Found in Kurdistan Is Fake

Here is my prior post on the subject. Article at kurdishaspect.com March 14, 2009 Kurdistan’s Tut Ank Amun faked Kurdsat Kurdistan archeologists union on Thursday announced that the statute of Tut Ank Amun recently found in the city of Duhok was faked. Last month, sources from Kurdistan’s Duhok city declared that a statute of Tut Ank Amun, the well known pharaoh of Egypt, was found and raised speculations about possible historical relations between the ancient Egyptians and the authorities in Kurdistan thousands of years ago. Historians said that finding the statute could be only interpreted as a sign of two possibilities, either the possibility of having diplomatic relations between the Egyptians and Kurds or that of Kurdistan’s invasion by the Pharaohs. However, time and investigations proved the interpretations incorrect. Speaking in a press conference, Dilshad Aziz, expert in the science of archeology and head of the union said the statute was faked, as the investigations came to the conclusions that the substance from which the statute made does not match with those found in Egypt. He said that kind of statute was currently made in Egypt and Kurdistan either, adding that the owner of the neo -Tut Ank Amun could have hidden it for purposes of misleading people of doing something else. ********************************************************************** I wonder if this is the last we'll hear of this story... What if the statue is genuine but was carved out of local materials elsewhere and imported into Kurdistan?

King Tut's Father Identified

At least, Zahi Hawass says so :) King Tut's Father ID'd in Stone Inscription Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News Dec. 17, 2008 -- An inscribed limestone block might have solved one of history's greatest mysteries -- who fathered the boy pharaoh King Tut. "We can now say that Tutankhamun was the child of Akhenaten," Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, told Discovery News. The finding offers evidence against another leading theory that King Tut was sired by the minor king Smenkhkare. Hawass discovered the missing part of a broken limestone block a few months ago in a storeroom at el Ashmunein, a village on the west bank of the Nile some 150 miles south of Cairo. Once reassembled, the slab has become "an accurate piece of evidence that proves Tut lived in el Amarna with Akhenaten and he married his wife, Ankhesenamun," while living in el Amarna, Hawass said. The text also suggests that the young Tutankhamun married his father's daughter -- his half sister. "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,'" Hawass said. "We know that the only king to whom the text could refer as the father of both children is Akhenaten, himself. We know from other sources that Ankhesenamun was the daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti. Now, because of this block, we can say that Tutankhamun was the child of Akhenaten as well," Hawass said. Found among other sandstone slabs in the storeroom of El Ashmunein's archaeological site, the block was used in the construction of the temple of Thoth during the reign of Ramesses II, who ruled around 1279-1213 B.C. But the block wasn't freshly cut by the workers of the temple. Instead, it was recycled and brought there from el Amarna, along with some other thousand blocks, originally used to build the Amarna temples. Now known as el Amarna, the city was once called Akhetaten after the "heretic" pharaoh Akhenaten (1353-1336 B.C.) had established the capital of his kingdom, introducing a monotheistic religion that overthrew the pantheon of the gods to worship the sun god Aton. When Akhenaten died, a state decree was issued to purposefully destroy Amarna and its building materials were distributed for use elsewhere. According to Hawass, the block comes from the temple of Aton in Amarna and the forms of the inscribed names clearly date it to the reign of Akhenaten. 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 the Valley of the Kings by British archaeologist Howard Carter. Only a few facts about his life are known. While he lived in el 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). 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. Mapping out the lineage of the Egyptian pharaohs is one of Hawass's latest challenges. King Tut has been either credited to be the son of Akhenaten or the offspring of Amenhotep III, who was Akhenaten's father. 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. Egyptian researchers are currently carrying out DNA testing on two mummified fetuses found in King Tut's tomb, believed to be his offspring. "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. According to Swiss anatomist and paleopathologist Frank Ruhli, head of the Swiss Mummy Project at the University of Zurich, Hawass' finding is very important. "It supports one of my favorite theories about King Tut's parentage. DNA of proven relatives would help if it matches with the one of King Tut," Ruhli told Discovery News.

Senet Game Recovered from 5,000 Year Old Tomb

5,000-year-old cemetery found in S Egypt
http://www.chinaview.cn/ 2008-07-06 05:59:34

CAIRO, July 5 (Xinhua) -- An Egyptian archeological mission has unearthed a 5,000-year-old royal burial ground in southern Egypt, the official MENA news agency reported on Saturday.

The cemetery was discovered in Umm el-Ga'ab area, south of the historical city of Abydos in Sohag governorate, about 400 km south of Cairo, said the report.

The burial ground, which contains 13 tombs, is believed to be of senior royal employees or people who contributed to the construction of the cemetery.

The team of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities also found objects of an ancient Egyptian game called "Senet," which resembles chess.

MENA said this is the second time the "Senet" game has been discovered. The first one was found in the tomb of boy King Tutankhamen near the southern Egyptian city of Luxor.

Editor: Yan Liang
*********************************************************************************** It seems incredible that this is only the second time Senet has been discovered in an ancient Egyptian tomb, but come to think of it, I believe all examples I've seen in museum exhibits did come from Tut's tomb, including a beautiful very small painted ivory game board in the 2006 exhibit at the Field Museum in Chicago (see photo - this is the board we saw). More than one senet board was recovered from Tut's tomb - I believe at least 4 boards were found in the tomb. This board, however, is NOT showing senet - it's showing the twenty-squares game! Senet has 30 squares! Perhaps it's on the other side of the board; it was not uncommon for Egyptian game boards to have the twenty-squares game on one side the Senet on the other side.

Here is the announcement from AFP.