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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...

An ancient Egyptian woman had an ovarian tumor with teeth and was buried with a possible healing object.While excavating an ancient Egyptian cemetery, archaeologists made a rare discovery: an ovarian tumor nestled in the pelvis of a woman who died more than three millennia ago. The tumor, a bony mass with two teeth, is the oldest known example of a teratoma, a rare type of tumor that typically occurs in ovaries or testicles.A teratoma can be benign or malignant, according to the Cleveland Clinic, and it is usually made up of various tissues, such as muscle, hair, teeth or bone....

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...

In an innovative endeavor to create a sensory bridge to the ancient past, a team of researchers led by Barbara Huber of the MPI of Geoanthropology has recreated one of the scents used in the mummification of an important Egyptian woman more than 3,500 years ago...The team's research centered on the mummification substances used to embalm the noble lady Senetnay in the 18th dynasty, circa 1450 BCE. The researchers utilized advanced analytical techniques—including gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, high-temperature gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, and liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry—to reconstruct the substances that helped to preserve and scent Senetnay for eternity. Their research has...

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...

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 art in question is part of a series discovered at the Amarna site on the east bank of the Nile, in modern day Minya. Excavations conducted in 1924 revealed a palace featuring several lavishly decorated rooms that include numerous plaster panels illustrated with natural scenes in stunning detail...Here the team looked at artwork in what's known as the Green Room, a place most likely used for rest and relaxation, if not occasional socializing and music playing.Some birds, including the pigeons and kingfishers, had already been identified, but the researchers were able to expand on the catalogue of known animals...

A prominent Egyptologist has boldly claimed to have solved one archaeology’s greatest mysteries: the location of Queen Nefertiti’s mummified remains. Zahi Hawass, the previous Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs in Egypt, is part of the Egypt-led team that undertook a high-profile excavation in Luxor’s Valley of the Kings that allegedly uncovered amulets once owned by King Tut. The team announced last December that they had also unearthed several unnamed mummies, one of which Hawass believes is the famed ruler. “We already have DNA from the 18th dynasty mummies, from Akhenaten to Amenhotep II or III, and there are two...

Takafumi Matsui, director of the Chiba Institute of Technology’s Planetary Exploration Research Center in Japan, and his colleagues visited the weapon at the Egyptian Museum of Cairo in 2020 to find out... their chemical analyses of the dagger's blade and gold hilt, combined with historical knowledge of ancient manufacturing techniques, now cast doubt on whether it was crafted in ancient Egypt at all...Four years later, aided by the Grand Egyptian Museum’s conservation center, Matsui and his colleagues used a portable scanning X-ray fluorescence instrument to map out the elements on the surface of the blade; not just iron, nickel and...

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 -...

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...

One particularly important find is a cylinder-shaped seal made from the mineral hematite, with a cuneiform inscription from Mesopotamia (present day Iraq), which the archaeologists were able to decipher.“The text consists of three lines and mentions three names. One is Amurru, a god worshiped in Mesopotamia. The other two are historical kings, father and son, who we recently succeeded in tracking down in other texts on clay tablets from the same period, i.e., the 18th century BC. We are currently trying to determine why the seal ended up in Cyprus more than 1000 kilometres from where it was made.”Among the...

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...

One of these Amarna letters (EA 39) came to light just before the turn of the previous century (1900). Researchers noted references to "ameluti Ia-u-du" and "ameluti tsabe Ia-u-du." The spelling of Ia-u-du is identical to that of later Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions referring to Judah (Judah is our Anglicized form of the Hebrew Yehuda). As such, we would have a translation of the above two passages as "men of Judah" and "soldiers of Judah." Prof. Morris Jastrow Jr. (1861–1921) wrote an article titled "'The Men of Judah' in the El-Amarna Tablets"... the inscription was related to territory in the extreme...

Ancient Egyptian art frequently depicts people wearing cone-shaped headgear, but none has ever been found. Now an international team of archaeologists has uncovered the first ever physical evidence of Egyptian head cones in the ancient city of Armarna, 194 miles south of the capital Cairo. The head cones, made from wax, were discovered at two graves in 2010 and 2015. They were found in fragments but researchers have been able to reconstruct their shape. They provide the first conclusive evidence that the objects actually existed and were worn by Egyptians, according to the archaeologists.

Ancient Egyptians have long been depicted wearing so-called head cones, but until now, archaeologists had no physical evidence of their existence. Now, two such head cones, made of wax, have been discovered on the skulls of two individuals buried about 3,300 years ago at the site of Amarna in Egypt. Between 1550 B.C. and 30 B.C., Egyptian art depicted people wearing what look like cones on their heads. Because no examples of these cones had ever been found, archaeologists wondered whether they actually existed or were an artistic motif that had no basis in reality The two cone-wearing individuals were...

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....

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...