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Up to 70 percent of British men and half of all Western European men are related to the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun, geneticists in Switzerland said. Scientists at Zurich-based DNA genealogy center, iGENEA, reconstructed the DNA profile of the boy Pharaoh, who ascended the throne at the age of nine, his father Akhenaten and grandfather Amenhotep III, based on a film that was made for the Discovery Channel. The results showed that King Tut belonged to a genetic profile group, known as haplogroup R1b1a2, to which more than 50 percent of all men in Western Europe belong, indicating that they share...

Ever since mummy KV55 was discovered in 1907, it has generated deep interest, debate, and controversy. The big issues have been identifying the KV55 mummy in ancient Egyptian history and combining its most probable identity with that person's proposed age of death....The mummy was found with grave goods attributed to different people and a desecrated coffin in the undecorated tomb KV55 in the Valley of the Kings in 1907 by an Egyptologist named Edward R. Ayrton.This tomb is just a few meters from Tutankhamun's tomb.Upon excavation, mummy KV55 disintegrated into dust and bones, so today it's only a skeleton.It was...

The statue is featured in a Dutch exhibition that pairs Egyptian antiquities with works from Black culture.What did the ancient Egyptians look like? A new exhibition at National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, the Netherlands, has sparked controversy by including a contemporary artwork that appears to depict the Pharaoh Tutankhamun as Black. “Kemet: Egypt in Hip-Hop, Jazz, Soul and Funk” pairs Egyptian antiquities from the museum’s collection with work inspired by ancient Egyptian culture by created by musicians of the African diaspora, including Miles Davis, Erykah Badu, Beyoncé, and Rihanna. The Leiden exhibition acknowledges that while generations of Black musicians...

Many people died after visiting King Tut's tomb in Egypt. What exactly happened, and how does it involve the Aspergillus fungus?The tomb of the 19-year-old pharaoh who ruled ancient Egypt from 1323-1332 BCE was discovered by British archaeologist Howard Carter and has since become one of Egypt's most popular archaeological attractions. Tourists from all over the world come to the Valley of the Kings on the Nile's west bank to see the tomb. To this day, it remains surprisingly intact, decorated with frescoes, statues and the gilded sarcophagus containing the original mummy of King Tut. But all of this beauty...

Rendering was published in Italian science journal this weekScientists from Australia, Italy and Brazil have digitally rendered King Tutankhamun’s face, the first time this has been done. The boy king ascended to the throne of Egypt aged nine as one of the rulers of the 18th dynasty, until he died aged 19. The researchers, whose efforts to reconstruct King Tutankhamun's face encountered several obstacles, such as access to his skull, eventually published their findings in a new study in the Italian Journal of Anatomy and Embryology. The team used computer-generated models supplemented with pre-recorded measurements of King Tutankhamun's remains to...

Tutankhamun and the Tomb that Changed the World with Dr. Bob Brier | 22:16World History Encyclopedia | 73.9K subscribers | 3.1K views | 7 months ago

One of the world’s foremost Egyptologists says that recent hieroglyphics discoveries in King Tut’s tomb give further credence to a theory he put forth more than seven years ago: that Queen Nefertiti’s body is inside a hidden chamber next to that of her stepson, King Tutankhamun.Nicholas Reeves, an Egyptologist and former curator at the British Museum, realized that cartouches—carved oval or oblong tablets that enclose a group of Egyptian hieroglyphs—showing Tutankhamun being buried by Ay, his successor, had been painted over other cartouches that showed Tutankhamen burying Nefertiti, according to the Guardian.“I can now show that, under the cartouches of...

The British Egyptologist Howard Carter (employed by Lord Carnarvon) discovered Tutankhamun's tomb (since designated KV62) in The Valley of The Kings on November 4, 1922 near the entrance to the tomb of Ramses VI, thereby setting off a renewed interest in all things Egyptian in the modern world. Carter contacted his patron, and on November 26 that year both men became the first people to enter Tutankhamun's tomb in over 3000 years. After many weeks of careful excavation, on February 16, 1923 Carter opened the inner chamber and first saw the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun. Lord Carnarvon financed Carter's search...

CAIRO, Egypt -- For the past 36 years journalist and author Desmond Zwar has shared a great secret: that it was not archaeologist Howard Carter who was responsible for the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb, but a humble British corporal whose very presence on the site had to be kept confidential; who in the last days of the dig took a photograph that changed history. Richard Adamson was a 23-year-old spy. He had infiltrated the Wafdist Party -- dedicated to overthrowing British rule in Egypt -- and as a result 28 Egyptians were arrested in Cairo, four of them sentenced to...

A new exhibition at the University of Oxford's Bodleian Libraries - Tutankhamun: Excavating the Archives - marks the 100th anniversary of the discovery by the British Egyptologist Howard Carter and his team.Dramatically lit images captured by the photographer Harry Burton, along with letters, plans, drawings and diaries from Carter's archive shed new light on the story of the 10-year excavation of the tomb, which was the first known intact royal burial from ancient Egypt.They also challenge the perception of Carter as a solitary hero, highlighting the contribution of the many skilled Egyptian workers who are often overlooked.Four Egyptian foremen -...

From axes to swords to chariots, see the weapons that helped make ancient Egyptian warriors formidable.The Egyptian military became one of the ancient world’s greatest fighting forces during the New Kingdom period (1550 B.C. - 1070 B.C.), but it did so using borrowed weapons technology. For much of its early history, Egypt relied on simple stone maces, wooden-tipped spears, axes and bows and arrows to fight off neighboring Nubian and Libyan tribesmen. Then came the Hyksos, an invading army from Syria that conquered Egypt around 1650 B.C. with vastly superior weapons like speedy chariots and powerful composite bows. During the...

A settlement that was buried beneath the sand for thousands of years—and eluded archaeologists for centuries—is believed to be one of the largest ancient Egyptian cities ever unearthed. The site was discovered by a stroke of good luck when archaeologists began searching for the mortuary temple of the boy pharaoh Tutankhamun (r. ca. 1336–1327 B.C.) along the west bank of the Nile in Luxor. What they found instead was a well-preserved urban settlement filled with houses, streets, and walls, some of which still stand 10 feet tall. Hieroglyphic inscriptions indicate the city was called tehn Aten, or “dazzling” Aten, and...

A nine-year project has been completed to restore the tomb of ancient Egypt's boy king, Tutankhamun, and address issues that threatened its survival. Experts from the Getty Conservation Institute repaired scratches and abrasions on the wall paintings caused by visitors to the burial chamber. The paintings were also affected by humidity, dust and carbon dioxide introduced by every person who entered. A new ventilation system should reduce the need for future cleaning. New barriers will restrict physical access to the paintings, while a new viewing platform, lighting and interpretive signage will also allow visitors to better see the tomb and...

King Tut owned a dagger that was out of this world—literally. Researchers have recently published a study in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science that supports what has long been suspected: The ancient Egyptians were using meteoritic iron well before the spread of iron smelting technology. The recent study on King Tut’s dagger, led by researchers from Italy and Egypt, used X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry to analyze the composition of the iron blade. Iron meteorites mostly contain iron and nickel, and the results of the XRF analysis on King Tut’s dagger confirm that the blade is mostly composed of iron...

Italian and Egyptian researchers analyzed the metal with an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer to determine its chemical composition, and found its high nickel content, along with its levels of cobalt, “strongly suggests an extraterrestrial origin”. They compared the composition to known meteorites within 2,000km around the Red Sea coast of Egypt, and found similar levels in one meteorite.

King Tut was buried with a dagger made of an iron that literally came from space, says a new study into the composition of the iron blade from the sarcophagus of the boy king. Using non-invasive, portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometry, a team of Italian and Egyptian researchers confirmed that the iron of the dagger placed on the right thigh of King Tut's mummified body a has meteoric origin. ...

Eight Egyptians involved in a botched repair of the famed burial mask of King Tut, which was corrected late last year, were referred to a disciplinary court on Sunday for "gross negligence" after prosecutors said that the golden treasure was scratched. The 3,300-year old mask, whose beard was accidentally knocked off and hastily glued on with epoxy in 2014, was scratched and damaged as a result of the amateur repair job, prosecutors said in a Sunday statement, which implicated the then-head of the Egyptian Museum and the chief of the restoration department. "In an attempt to cover up the damage...

In May 2018, media outlets around the world ran the headline: “Secret Chamber Does Not Exist”, referring to the possible burial chamber of Queen Nefertiti behind the walls of the tomb of King Tutankhamun in the Valley of the King's in Egypt. So you’ll image my surprise when this week I see that the major media outlets across the world are once again reporting that Nefertiti could be hiding behind a wall in King Tutankhamen’s tomb. The story was ran by a number of well known publications, including The Sun, New York Post, Fox News and more, but why have...

As a diplomatic dispute rages between Egypt and the auction house Christie's in London over a sculpture depicting the head of the pharaoh Tutankhamun, set to be auctioned on July 4, a Live Science investigation reveals several clues as to where this sculpture comes from. The sculpture, being auctioned off by an anonymous owner through Christie's, is made of quartzite (a type of stone). Estimates for how much the sculpture will fetch vary around $5.1 million (4 million pounds). However, Egypt believes that it was looted from the Karnak temple sometime after 1970, and the country's embassy in the U.K....

Legendary pharaoh Tutankhamun was probably killed by the genetic blood disorder sickle cell disease, German scientists said Wednesday, rejecting earlier research that suggested he died of malaria. The team at the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in the northern city of Hamburg questioned the conclusions of a major Egyptian study released in February on the enigmatic boy-king's early demise. That examination, involving DNA tests and computerised tomography (CT) scans on Tutankhamun's mummy, said he died of malaria after suffering a fall, putting to rest the theory that he was murdered. But the German researchers said in a letter published...