Hi Tamara,

I'm not sure why you submitted an article that is two years old--with no DNA
facts having yet emerged.

Marianne Luban
http://thetimetravelerreststop.blogspot.com/

Tamara wrote:
>Mummy Identified As Egyptian Female Ruler

>Queen Hatshepsut Was Egypt's Most Powerful Woman Pharoah, But Mummy Had Been
Misidentified

>http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/06/27/world/main2986281.shtml

Mummy Identified As Egyptian Female Ruler

Queen Hatshepsut Was Egypt's Most Powerful Woman Pharoah, But Mummy Had Been
Misidentified

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/06/27/world/main2986281.shtml

Sam has been cross-posting on this topic to several groups, some of whose
members are by now confused as to what is going on.  I will post the original
answer I gave him, reaching some of those groups.  Sam--this is not on topic for
"Egyptian Mummies", as that group discusses only mummies and things related to
the same. I am not sure, at this point, whether or not Sam accepts that the
"aAmw" can be counted among the "Hyksos", but as he put the tomb inscription of
the nomarch, Khnumhotep, on his list of references, I suppose he does.  There
the foreign people are styled "aAmw" and are shown wearing  their "coats of many
colors".  Their leader is called "Abisha", a Semitic name.  This is what I told
Sam previously, when he wondered what dealings Hatshepsut could have had with
the Hyksos:

"Hatshepsut may have had dealings with the people of Avaris.  In her Speos
Artemidos
inscription, she calls them the "Aamu".    They may have or may not have been
the same people who warred with Ahmose I.  From a contemporary account, we know
that
Ahmose drove the so-called "Hyksos" as far as Sharuhen, which, being at the
southernmost tip of Canaan, was not that far.  After a siege of some years
there, Ahmose
went south to Khenty-hen-nefer to deal with rebellious Nubians.  Can the Hyksos
eventually have returned or some other peoples become ensconced at Avaris?  I
think it's
possible.  Here is the language of the Speos Artemdidos inscription:

"Ever since the Aamu were in Avaris of the Northland, wanderers among them,
destroying what had been made. They ruled without Ra...down to the time of my
Majesty."

So that can even indicate more than one kind of people.  Actually, it can't
really be
said that the 15th Dynasty Hyksos , whom Ahmose fought, ruled without Ra because
Ra was
certainly contained in their prenomina.  Perhaps Hatshepsut was referring to
some other
Asiatics.   In his tomb biography, where he mentions having served under Ahmose
I, Ahmose
son of Ebana does not call the Asiatics "Aamu".   He refers to them as
"mntyw Stt"."

Now anyone familiar with Manetho will recall that he thought "Hyksos" was
combination of "Hyk " in high Egyptian [by which he means "HqA" or "ruler"] and
"sos" in the vulgar tongue [by which he means "sAw" or "herdsman".]  The "s" on
the end is merely the ubiquitous Greek sibilant and doesn't signify.  And what
does the term "aAm" mean?  "Herdsman", of course!  The "aAmw" are just the
"herdsmen" of whatever they herded.  In the Speos Artemidos inscription,
Hatshepsut calls the people of Avaris "aAmw", as I mentioned, and says there
were "SmAw" among them.  This "SmAw" has to do with "wandering" and could be
just about any peoples, refugees, etc.  You will notice that the queen says
Avaris was inhabited "down to the time of my Majesty".  That is stated in no
uncertain terms.  The language is unambiguous.  That made philologists like Sir
Alan Gardiner accuse Hatshepsut of lying, taking credit away from her
predecessors, but I don't think it necessarily follows that she was.  Egypt was
a revolving door for foreigners.  A sovereign had to be constantly vigilant
there.  The reign of a woman-king might have been thought a perfect scenario for
some aliens to return to the grazing lands of the eastern Delta.


Marianne Luban
http://thetimetravelerreststop.blogspot.com/

The Egyptians of the 18th Dynasty did not have to use the term "Hyksos"  in
connection with Avaris, even though Manetho did.  "Hyksos" is a generic term,
anyway, that could include just about any foreign element.  Manetho thought the
term meant "shepherd kings" and modern scholars have concluded "rulers of
foreign lands".  But there is no specific ethnic group called "Hyksos". 
Regardless, by what I have just written, the Aamu definitely qualify as "Hyksos"
if they ruled the Northland from their seat at Avaris.

Marianne Luban
http://thetimetravelerreststop.blogspot.com/

Hatshepsut may have had dealings with the people of Avaris.  In her Speos
Artemidos inscription, she calls them the "Aamu".    They may have or may not
have been the same people who warred with Ahmose I.  From a contemporary
account, we know that Ahmose drove the so-called "Hyksos" as far as Sharuhen,
which, being at the southernmost tip of Canaan, was not that far.  After a siege
of some years there, Ahmose went south to Khenty-hen-nefer to deal with
rebellious Nubians.  Can the Hyksos eventually have returned or some other
peoples become ensconced at Avaris?  I think it's possible.  Here is the
language of the Speos Artemdidos inscription:

"Ever since the Aamu were in Avaris of the Northland, wanderers among them,
destroying what had been made. They ruled without Ra...down to the time of my
Majesty."

  So that can even indicate more than one kind of people.  Actually, it can't
really be said that the 15th Dynasty Hyksos , whom Ahmose fought, ruled without
Ra because Ra was certainly contained in their prenomina.  Perhaps Hatshepsut
was referring to some other Asiatics.   In his tomb biography, where he mentions
having served under Ahmose I, Ahmose son of Ebana does not call the Asiatics
"Aamu".   He refers to them as "mntyw Stt".


Marianne Luban
http://thetimetravelerreststop.blogspot.com/

The book you need to read:

Ernst Kantorowicz THE KING'S TWO BODIES : A STUDY IN MEDIAEVAL POLITICAL
THEOLOGY

A classic. Still in print. Easy to get through the usual sources (Amazon,
your friendly neighborhood bookstore.)

He deals only with the medieval period, but, as a starting point, you
couldnt wish anything better. Indeed, the little bit of historical trivia
that you quote from THE TUDORS obviously comes straight from Kantorowicz.

On the sacred character (mystical, thaumaturgical) I recommend Marc Bloch:
LES ROIS THAUMATURGES, another classic, translated from the french as THE
ROYAL TOUCH (alas, not so easy to get, and fairly expensive, but you could
get it from interlibrary loan.

Pierre Bellemare


On Fri, 21 Aug 2009, tamarabower wrote:

> Forgive me this is somewhat off topic -
>
> In the TV show "The Tudors" it mentioned that the King was not allowed to
attend funerals. Is this accurate? I am interested to know more about why the
King was not allowed to attend funerals. Was this true of all European Kings of
that period? Were Queens allowed to attend funerals? I tried to google this to
no avail.
>
> The TV show explained that the people should not see the King at a funeral,
because they should not associate the King with death. They should always
associate the King with life.
>
> Of course a TV show is not a good reference, so I am trying to find a better
source.
>
> I am interested in this because I heard the same thing about Egyptian
Pharaohs,that they did not attend funerals. But I don't have any real
information on this.
>
> Thank you.
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

Forgive me this is somewhat off topic -

In the TV show "The Tudors" it mentioned that the King was not allowed to attend
funerals. Is this accurate? I am interested to know more about why the King was
not allowed to attend funerals. Was this true of all European Kings of that
period? Were Queens allowed to attend funerals? I tried to google this to no
avail.

The TV show explained that the people should not see the King at a funeral,
because they should not associate the King with death. They should always
associate the King with life.

Of course a TV show is not a good reference, so I am trying to find a better
source.

I am interested in this because I heard the same thing about Egyptian
Pharaohs,that they did not attend funerals. But I don't have any real
information on this.

Thank you.

Hi have just found the 2007 National Geographic documentary "Nefertiti and the
Lost Dynasty" has been posted to youtube and the first part can be found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3i-jTvyEms

It was interesting but of course no definite conclusions. However I was
surprised to see that the younger mummy from KV35 was ruled out at being
Nefertiti.

This was decided upon as the flexed forearm identified as belonging to the mummy
in the Joann Fletcher investigation was here deemed not to belong to it. Instead
the also found straight arm was a fit for the her missing limb. With neither arm
therefore flexed on this mummy this was not a royal pose and so therefore could
not be Nefertiti.

However the same was not said for the KV55 mummy which was stated could indeed
be Akhenaten. Now this mummy only had one arm bent across the chest when found,
not two as all the other kings of the period.

Therefore if Akhenaten, then this posture would be a break from the norm for
male royal mummification. Why then couldn't there have been a variation for
royal females as well? I'm not saying the younger mummy is Nefertiti but the
logic here was not that scientific or logical at times.

Anyway so for those who have not seen it take a look and see what you think. I
wonder how long before all the new DNA evidence may shake things up again?

Kind regards,
Jon Wicken



--- In royalmummies@yahoogroups.com, "marianneluban" <Mluban@...> wrote:
>
> This evening the National Geographic Channel treated North
> American viewers to a documentary with the title "King Tut
> and the Lost Dynasty".  Once again, CT-scans was the focus
> and unidentified mummies came under scrutiny.  Most attention
> was paid to the "Younger Lady" from KV35.  The mummy is
> definitely a female and a wide age-at-death range was assigned,
> that being 22-45.  The lady was determined to have borne children,
> seemingly scotching the "nulliparous" theory of another investigator.
> Not only that but it was suggested that the "Younger Lady" had
> probably been murdered, this being indicated by signs that the severe
> damage to her face was antemortem and also a wound on her torso.
> The mouth was packed with linen, in this case, in order to "seal off
> the wound" and fix up the face somewhat.  I am still left wondering
> how the entire flesh of the cheek was removed from the living person.
> Axed-off?  Quite a gruesome demise, in that case, and an
> unnecessarily brutal way to get rid of a royal woman when there are
> other, perhaps "neater", ways to murder someone if that is the intent.
>
> But the "Younger Lady" was most emphatically declared by Zahi
> Hawass not to be Queen Nefertiti.  The only reason given was
> that a loose right arm with a clenched hand "did not fit to the body"
> when the break was examined.  I suppose I'm not certain, given
> the rest of the information, why that should disqualify this female
> mummy from being Nefertiti.  Thus far, we have only seen *left*
> arms being raised in a queenly pose.  The left arm of the "Younger
> Lady" is not raised--but now there appears to be *no* right arm
> that originally belonged to  her.  In this program the theory was
> advanced that this could be Kiya on account of a skull anomaly
> like that of Tutankhamun.  However, I have noticed that, on a
> relief depicting Kiya and subsequently altered for Meritaten, the
> elongated head seems not to have been there originally but
> corrected to fit to the head-shape of the eldest Amarna princess
> beneath a wig.  Regardless, Kiya supposedly required no raised
> arm at all.
>
> Also scanned was the "Elder Lady" from KV35 but, even though
> Susan James was onhand with her theory that this is Nefertiti, that
> doesn't pan out according to the examiners.  Much was made of the
> beauty of the features of this mummy, but her age was concluded to be
> from 40-60 due to mild degeneration of the spine and other joints.  In
> other words, too old to be Nefertiti and probably still Queen Tiye.
>
> The KV55 skeleton received its share of radiological attention--a
> male of "at least 25" with a dolicephalic skull like that of
> Tutankhamun and also a cleft palate--like Tut's.  The program stated
> there was "only a fraction of a centimeter" difference in the two
> skulls--but I, personally,wonder if this is really so, since Derry
> measured them and came up with a bit more of a variation.  At any
> rate, conclusion--Akhenaten, himself.
>
> I don't know why the "Little Prince" from KV35 was not scanned.
> Something to learn there, too, perhaps.
>
> Marianne Luban
>

I was watching this amusing video and she mentions a couple minutes into it a
"Lazarus relex". Someone who is brain dead, but the doctors are keeping their
body alive for organ donations, may make movements. She demonstrated the
movement of her arms - crossing them over her chest just as how the pharaoh's
mummies were posed.
So that must be where the pose originated, I
imagine that the ancient Egyptian embalmers came across that pose often enough.

Anyway, the video is "Mary Roach: 10 things you didn't know about orgasm" -
about a third of the way in to the video:
http://tinyurl.com/q7nomz

I googled "Lazarus reflex" and found only a little bit more:

Here's a reference from a Catholic site to the Lazarus reflex. Often it involves
the corpse sitting up, and the corspe may or may not cross his/her arms:
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=50919
"Dr. Conrado Estol, a neurologist from Argentina, spoke strongly in favor of
harvesting human organs. He presented a dramatic video of a man diagnosed as
`brain dead' who attempted to sit up and cross his arms (an act Estol called a
`Lazarus reflex.')"

I found an interesting reference here, from a book titled "The Facts of Death".
The author says that often the reflex happens when the doctors make an abdominal
incision to remove organs. This is very,very interesting because ancient
Egyptian embalmers also made abdominal incisions to remove organs.
http://tinyurl.com/pg4zu7

  - Tamara

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/opinion/22schiff.html?th&emc=th

New York Times April 22, 2009

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Who's Buried in Cleopatra's Tomb?

By STACY SCHIFF

WHAT becomes a legend most? If you're a woman, the formula is straightforward.
Your best bets are the three D's: delusion (Joan of Arc), disability (Helen
Keller), death (Sylvia Plath). You get extra points for the savage, sudden or
surprising demise, as Evita, Amelia or Diana attests. At the head of the list of
untimely self-destructors comes of course Cleopatra VII, for whose tomb a search
begins shortly, on an Egyptian hilltop west of Alexandria.

Cleopatra died 2,039 years ago, at the age of 39. Before she was a slot machine,
a video game, a cigarette, a condom, a caricature, a cliché or a synonym for
Elizabeth Taylor, before she was reincarnated by Shakespeare, Dryden or Shaw,
she was a nonfictional Egyptian queen. She ruled for 21 years, mostly alone,
which is to say that she was essentially a female king, an incongruity that
elicits the kind of double take once reserved for men in drag.

From her point of view there was nothing irregular about the arrangement.
Cleopatra arguably had more powerful female role models than any other woman in
history. They were not so much paragons of virtue as shrewd political operators.
Her antecedents were the rancorous, meddlesome Macedonian queens who routinely
poisoned brothers and sent armies against sons. Cleopatra's great-grandmother
waged one civil war against her parents, another against her children. These
women were raised to rule.

Cleopatra had a child with Julius Caesar. After his death, she had three more —
two sons and a daughter — with his protégé, Marc Antony. Motherhood confirmed
her hold on the throne. She was a little bit the reverse of Henry VIII; she too
needed a male heir, though she was rather more successful in securing one.
Almost certainly Marc Antony and Julius Caesar represent the extent of
Cleopatra's sexual history. She was self-reliant, ingenious and plucky, and for
her time and place remarkably well behaved. Having inherited a country in
decline, she capably steered it through drought, famine, plague and war.

What good can be said of a woman who sleeps with two of the most powerful men of
her age, however? The fathers of Cleopatra's children were men of voracious and
celebrated sexual appetites. Cleopatra has gone down in history as a wanton
seductress. She is the original bad girl, the Monica Lewinsky of the ancient
world. And all because she turns up at one of the most dangerous intersections
in history, that of women and power.

She presides eternally over the chasm between promiscuity and virility, the
forest of connotations that separate "adventuress" from "adventurer." Women
schemed while men strategized in the ancient world, too. And female power
asserted itself regularly, if more covertly than it had on the Greek stage. In a
first century B.C. marriage contract, a woman promises to be faithful and
attentive — and to not add love potions to her husband's food. Clever women,
Euripides had already warned, are dangerous women.

Granting that the double standard has outlived Cleopatra by at least 2,000
years, what are we doing today on that Egyptian hill, under the ruins of the
temple of Taposiris Magna? "This could be the most important discovery of the
21st century," says Egypt's antiquities director, Zahi Hawass, of the dig.
Certainly it would be a relief to cross Cleopatra off our list of objects we
have lost, or believe we have lost: Atlantis, Jamestown, an entire tribe of
Israel, good manners, Jimmy Hoffa.

If we find Cleopatra's tomb — and certainly we will find something relevant, as
Dr. Hawass seems determined to make a discovery to rival the 1922 one of King
Tut — we may well be able to solve the mystery of Cleopatra's death. Surely
there will be no asp preserved at her mummified side. It was likely retrofitted
to the tale. It's not difficult to figure out what someone is trying to say when
he pairs a lady with a snake.

We may be able to determine if Cleopatra committed suicide or was in fact
murdered, however. As a prisoner, she was an embarrassment to the Romans, unsure
how to triumph resoundingly yet sympathetically over a woman. They may have
beaten her to the punch.

To a great extent her enemies have insured our fascination with Cleopatra. It
was the Roman civil war that secured her immortality. And it was Octavian, her
nemesis and the future Augustus Caesar, who established her as a femme fatale.
He may well have offered up the Classic Comics version of the debauched,
duplicitous Egyptian queen and paved the way for Joseph L. Mankiewicz. But he
magnified Cleopatra to hyperbolic proportions in the process — so as to do the
same with his own victory. Cleopatra's story differs from most women's stories
in that the men who wrote it, for their own reasons, enlarged rather than erased
her role.

Octavian hardly needed to inflate the tale: Here is a royal woman who could be
said to have died, after all, for love. Romantic tragedies don't get any better,
which explains why Shakespeare had a difficult time improving on Plutarch. And
Cleopatra puts a vintage label on something we have always known existed:
mind-altering female sexuality. It's that love potion again.

She does not so much bump up against a glass ceiling as tumble through a
trapdoor, the one that dismisses women by sexualizing them. As Margaret Atwood
has written of Jezebel, "The amount of sexual baggage that has accumulated
around this figure is astounding, since she doesn't do anything remotely sexual
in the original story, except put on makeup." In Cleopatra's case, the sheer
absence of truth has guaranteed the legend. Where facts are few, myth rushes in,
the kudzu of history.

It would be a relief to settle once and for all the burning question of whether
or not Cleopatra was beautiful, though the answer affects next to nothing. Even
if she had every aesthetic weapon in her arsenal, we know already the ones she
so expertly deployed. "It was impossible to converse with her without being
immediately captivated by her," asserts one of our two best sources. Her voice
was velvety; her conversation stimulating; her powers of persuasion matchless;
her presence an event, reports the other. None of those commodities is likely to
be extracted from Egyptian limestone, to travel on an international tour.

Cleopatra served most effectively as a weapon with which Octavian could club
Marc Antony, in a particularly virulent civil war. It was his weakness for a
foreign seductress that debased and undid Antony. Will he turn out to have
shared a tomb with Cleopatra, as ancient accounts claim? After all it was his
request — either real or concocted by Octavian — that he be buried alongside her
that cost Antony Rome. Cleopatra is said to have buried him with her own hands,
lavishly, royally and feverishly. (She was attempting to starve herself to death
at the time.) The quest for his tomb is not the stuff of headlines however.
Antony is a bit player in someone else's story.

The search is, too, a topical one. The Cambridge classicist Mary Beard points
out that for many years archaeologists' Holy Grail was the (still undiscovered)
tomb of Alexander the Great. We find ourselves no longer in the market for an
imperialistic white male. While this dig will resolve none of the great
questions, it could, notes Professor Beard, conceivably offer clues to
Cleopatra's ethnicity. Was she pure Macedonian, or all or part African? (My
guess is Macedonian with, possibly, a bit of Persian blood.) Indeed the mixed
ancestry question appears to be the issue of the day: A month ago British
scientists suggested that they had answered it definitively, producing computer
simulations of Cleopatra's sister, based on a skull found in Turkey.

Here we engage in a familiar exercise: Cleopatra too spent her life trying to
reconcile East and West, with as little success as we do today. A Roman could
not get past the idea of a civilized, virtuous West and a decadent, opulent
East. He could not pry apart the exotic and the erotic. The East was by
definition beguiling and voluptuous — like a woman, as it happens. Think of
Coffee, that second-act marvel in Balanchine's "Nutcracker." She is a sultry,
intoxicating presence, too potent for any partner, by no means critical to the
story, really there, I have always suspected, to wake up the fathers in the
audience.

Of course we mean to resolve the unresolved. We clamor for the black box of
history. In some essential way we want confirmation too that we live on the same
planet as did the legend that inspired two millenniums of overheated prose, that
what feels like myth was really history. We thirst for exactitudes. We want to
see and fondle the myth in all its scintillating splendor, forgetting that as we
do so it turns back — the reverse Midas touch — into the dross of history. If
and when we find Cleopatra, if and when a face can be fitted to her, do we
promise to give up Elizabeth Taylor once and for all? Will we opt for the lady
or the legend? Is something lost when she is found? Octavian had his agenda, and
we have ours.

No matter what the tombs of Taposiris yield, they are unlikely to offer up an
answer to the vexed question of women and power. For that we have to dig
elsewhere. It may take a little longer.

Stacy Schiff, the author of "A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France and the
Birth of America," is working on a book about Cleopatra.

The Spring 2009 KMT has reported that Donald Ryan is re-excavating
some of the smaller tombs in the Valley of the Kings which he has
previously investigated.

His webpage at http://www.plu.edu/~ryandp/egypt.html outlines his
earlier findings in undecorated tombs 21, 27, 28, 44, 45 and 60.

Donald Ryan last year did a talk on these and thanks to a message on
the EEF a report of this lecture can be found at
http://luxor-news.blogspot.com/2008/11/mummification-museum-lecture-recent.html


Kind regards,
Jon Wicken

Continuing story (The 30 new mummies):
Egypt unveils ancient mummy, part of new discovery

Associated Press, February 11, 2009

Illuminated only by torches and camera lights, Egyptian laborers used
crowbars and picks Wednesday to lift the lid off a 2,600-year-old
limestone sarcophagus, exposing — for the first time since it was
sealed in antiquity — a perfectly preserved mummy. The mummy, wrapped
in dark-stained canvas, is part of Egypt's latest archaeological
discovery of a burial chamber 36 feet (11 meters) below ground at the
ancient necropolis of Saqqara. The find, made three weeks ago, was
publicly announced Monday and shown to reporters for the first time
Wednesday. Egypt's archaeology chief Zahi Hawass has dubbed it a
"storeroom for mummies," because it houses eight wooden and limestone
sarcophagi as well as at least two dozen mummies. The find dates back to
640 B.C., or the 26th Dynasty — Egypt's last independent kingdom
before a succession of foreign conquerors.

http://snipr.com/bul9m

Egyptian pyramid had its own afterlife

Scientists discover that a tomb built in the 6th Dynasty was tapped into nearly
2,000
years later to house new mummies.

By Thomas H. Maugh II

3:42 PM PST, February 13, 2009

In Egypt, apparently even pyramids can be recycled.

Archaeologists from the country's Supreme Council of Antiquities said this week
that they
had discovered a cache of 30 mummies dating from the country's 26th Dynasty in a
tomb
constructed during the 6th Dynasty nearly 2,000 years earlier.

The 26th Dynasty was the last period of rule by Egyptian pharaohs before the
country was
conquered by the Persians and other foreigners, a time when it was becoming more
difficult for rulers to muster the manpower necessary for more grandiose burial
sites.

The 6th Dynasty pyramid is actually a mastaba tomb -- a simpler precursor to a
pyramid -
- of a man named Sennedjem. It is located in Saqqara, about 12 miles south of
Cairo, the
final resting place of most of the Egyptian rulers who lived in the Old Kingdom
capital of
Memphis.

The new cache was discovered at the end of a 36-foot shaft drilled into the side
of the
tomb during the 26th Dynasty. Zahi Hawass, head of the council and director of
the
expedition, said the team had found 24 mummies in niches along the walls of the
chamber and on shelves along one wall.

Some of the mummies were of children and one was of a dog. All were badly
decomposed,
indicating that they had not been adequately prepared for burial.

The team also found two sarcophagi of fine white limestone and four wooden
coffins. One
of the sarcophagi was still sealed.

Hawass said that when he opened it, he found a body mummified in the style
typical of the
26th Dynasty, covered in linen and resin. He said the mummy would be temporarily
removed for a CT scan because there may be funerary amulets hidden among the
wrappings.

An inscription on the coffin identified the occupant as Padi-Heri, son of
Djehuty-sesh-
nub and grandson of Iru-ru. It gave no information about his station in life,
but the fact
that he was buried in a coffin made of limestone from Thebes suggested he was
very
wealthy, Hawass said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-pyramid14-
2009feb14,0,7079275,print.story

--

'Green Magic' Protected Egyptian Child Mummies
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

Feb. 5, 2009 -- A rare mummified child from the early period of Egyptian history
was
discovered buried with a bright green amulet stone once believed to hold magical
powers,
according to a new study.

The finds help to explain why hieroglyphics and historical texts record that
Egyptian
children wore green eye makeup. It also adds to the growing body of evidence
that ancient
Egyptians thought color itself held sacred energy that could help or hurt
individuals.
Lead author Raffaella Bianucci explained that the first Egyptian colored amulets
occurred
as early as the predynastic Badarian period, from 4500 to 3800 B.C. The recently
analyzed
child mummy, containing the remains of a 15- to 18-month-old toddler, dates to
4,700
years ago.

"Even in limited forms and materials, these earliest amulets give a good
indication of the
dangerous forces that the early Egyptians felt were present in their world and
needed to
be harnessed by magical means," said Bianucci, a scientist in the Department of
Animal
and Human Biology at Via Accademia Albertina in Turin, Italy.

She and her colleagues first examined the child's remains, which were wrapped in
linen
bandages. Immunological evidence determined that the youngster died from an
acute
malarial infection.

The researchers then turned their attention to a fossilized leather bag tied
with linen
twine, which was wrapped in the bandages with the mummy. Two stones were found
within the bag. The researchers focused on a bright green one, found poking
through the
fossilized leather.

Powerful X-rays, as well as scanning electron microscope analysis, revealed that
the stone
was chrysocolla, or hydrated copper silica, according to the paper that will be
published in
the March issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science. To this day,
chrysocolla is valued
as an ornamental stone that, in its bluer forms, is sometimes confused with
turquoise.
Bianucci said malachite was a more common green mineral in early Egypt, since
chrysocolla ores were limited to very few in the Sinai and the Eastern Egyptian
Desert.
Chrysocolla may have been special for children, as archaeologists previously
unearthed a
small figure of a child made of the green material in another grave.

"In ancient Egypt, color was an integral part of the substance and being of
everything in
life," she said, explaining that green -- the color of new vegetation and
growing crops,
including the treasured papyrus plant -- was linked to health and "flourishing."
Chapter
30 of the Book of the Dead, an ancient Egyptian funerary text, instructs that a
scarab
beetle amulet be made of green minerals and placed at the heart of mummies.

Bianucci continued that, based on such records, red was the color of life and
victory, white
suggested omnipotence and purity, black was a symbol of death and the night,
blue
symbolized life and rebirth and yellow was thought to be eternal and
indestructible, like
the sun and gold.

In terms of the child mummy's green amulet, she said, "We can hypothesize that
(the
parents) wished their child to be protected from unwanted influence and to be
healthy in
its afterlife."

Salima Ikram, a professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo,
told Discovery
News that "the study was very well executed" and "is just what we need to shed
light on
the cultural practices and beliefs of the ancient Egyptians."

"The fact that the child was buried with a chrysocolla bead is very interesting
as it is rare
to have such an identification," Ikram added. "Clearly this was an amulet that
was interred
with the child in an effort to ensure its safety in the afterworld -- a pity it
did not protect
the infant in this one."


http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/02/05/child-mummy.html

A further update has now been made to the KV-63 website with a Dig
Diary entry from Otto Schaden.

http://www.kv-63.com/

Photographs have also been uploaded to the site of some of the latest
items found in some of the jars.

http://www.kv-63.com/photos2009.html

Kind regards,
Jon Wicken

The KV63 website has had some updates in January. There's nothing
major to report but it does state that:

"This has already proved to be a most enjoyable and productive season.
We have been busy opening jars, taking delivery of new bookcases for
storage, chemicals for the conservators and making an inventory of
some of our many locker boxes. The newly opened storage jars continue
to bequeath some surprising objects! A report on some of our findings
and images will be forthcoming soon."

Full details at http://www.kv-63.com/

Kind regards,
Jon Wicken

It has been announced that bones have been found in a sarcophagus
inside a sixth dynasty pyramid.

Zahi Hawass has announced that they are most likely belonged to the
mother of King Teti, Queen Seshestet.

However without knowing anything else about the excavation and given
Zahi Hawass' previous statements on the Hatshepsut mummy and the
coffin from KV63 belonging to Kiya, this should perhaps be taken as
very tentative at this stage.

The full article can be read here:

http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSTRE50732020090108

Kind regards,
Jon Wicken

--- In royalmummies@yahoogroups.com, jonwicken <no_reply@...> wrote:

> In the tomb of Tutankhamun there was in fact found a chest containing
> two balls of hair.


There is further details on this chest at this link:

http://www.touregypt.net/MUSEUM/chest3page.htm

It is inscribed with the names of both Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun.

Kind regards,
Jon Wicken

--- In royalmummies@yahoogroups.com, "roheryn2002" <spurman@...> wrote:

> (Oh for a laden hairbrush labelled with Ankh's name  from Tut's tomb...)

In the tomb of Tutankhamun there was in fact found a chest containing
two balls of hair. These have been theorised to be the hair of
Tutankhamun and Anhkesenamun as part of their wedding contract.
Perhaps these may well be tested as part of these ongoing scientific
tests.

Kind regards,
Jon Wicken

> --- In royalmummies@yahoogroups.com, "roheryn2002" <spurman@> wrote:
>
Hawass says ""If the fetus DNA matches King Tut's DNA and Ankhesenamun's DNA,
then
we would know that they shared the same mother"

> > Perhaps I'm a little slow, but where, exactly, will Hawass find
> Ankhesenamun's DNA ?

>--- In royalmummies@yahoogroups.com, jonwicken <no_reply@...> wrote:
>
> Her DNA will be found in the maternal DNA sequenced from the mummified
> fetuses from Tutankhamun's tomb.
>


My point is that this is a circular argument.We do not have an independant
stand-alone
source of Ankhesenamun's DNA. Hawass is making it sound like we do. All we have
is the
maternal DNA not yet extrapolated from the fetus.
So there is nothing concrete to compare the fetal  maternal DNA to.

(Oh for a laden hairbrush labelled with Ankh's name  from Tut's tomb...)

Respectfully,
Dee Hinson

Hi, Jon

You asked about Akhesenpaaten Jr. and the theory that she may have been the one
to marry Tutankhamun.  I believe that was in Allen's article at this website:

http://history.memphis.edu/murnane/

--- In royalmummies@yahoogroups.com, "roheryn2002" <spurman@...> wrote:

> Perhaps I'm a little slow, but where, exactly, will Hawass find
Ankhesenamun's DNA ?


Her DNA will be found in the maternal DNA sequenced from the mummified
fetuses from Tutankhamun's tomb. Ankhesenamun is presumed to be the
mother of these two infants so some of her genetic line will have been
passed down.

Also Marianne I was interested in the recent theory you mentioned that
the younger Ankhesenamun could in fact be the wife of Tutankhamun. I
wondered where this was first published?

Kind regards,
Jon Wicken

--- In royalmummies@yahoogroups.com, "tamarabower" <tamarabower@...> wrote:

> "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.


Perhaps I'm a little slow, but where, exactly, will Hawass find  Ankhesenamun's
DNA ?

Dee Hinson

Of course the mummified infants could prove if both Tutankhamun and his queen
were the sons of Nefertiti--via mtDNA.  Woodward had already been able to
sequence both mt and nuclear DNA from the larger foetus.

A way to rule out [or confirm] if Tut is the son of Queen Tiye and Amenhotep III
is via the mummy of Thuya, the mother of Queen Tiye.  Of course, there is the
mummy of Amenhotep III, but it is in pretty bad shape and there is some doubt
about the mummy, "The Elder Lady" being that of Queen Tiye.  However, Thuya is
undoubtedly Thuya and her mtDNA would be the same as that of her daughter.  So,
if the mtDNA of Tutankhamun and Thuya are a match, then the king should be
a son of Tiye and Amenhotep III.  Unless he was the son of Sitamun, who, if she
was the daughter of Tiye [and not a sister of Amenhotep III, as some have
suggested] would share Thuya's mtDNA and then there might be a problem, as
Sitamun was also a wife of A III.  It is obvious that the polygamous lifestyle
of the pharaohs makes the search for the parents of Tut more complex--perhaps
hopelessly so.

In a process of elimination, if the mtDNA of Tut matches neither a foetus nor
that of Thuya, a different mother for the pharaoh than one of the famous queens,
Nefertiti or Tiye [or even a daughter of Tiye], must be implied.  There is Kiya,
whoever she might have been.  In the end, Tut may even have been a son of
Meritaten and the ephemeral
Smenkhkare.  In that case, his mtDNA would still be the same as that of a
foetus, as Nefertiti, Ankhesenamun and Meritaten would all share mtDNA.  Would
his nuclear DNA be helpful then?  Not necessarily, as Akhenaten and Amenhotep
III had the same, being father and son, and so would Smenkhkare, if he was a
brother of Akhenaten!  Perhaps that's why Hawass brought up the block with the
inscription--because it has proved impossible to determine the parentage of
Tutankhamun via his DNA on account of what I have written above.  In the long
run, though, it would be better if Tut's mtDNA showed new blood being
introduced via, say, Kiya.  Then it would be more likely that his father was
Akhenaten as, historically, Tut seems to have been too young at his accession to
have been sired by Amenhotep III, anyway, who should have been long dead by the
time Tut was nine years old.
  Probably, Ankhesenamun was quite a bit older than her husband, perhaps even up
to a decade.  Recently, it has been suggested that it was Ankhesenpaaten Junior
who became the wife of Tut--but who was her mother?  What a tangled web, indeed!

I am inclined to agree with Jon that Tut was the son of Akhenaten, born sometime
around his Year 12.  However, I think Smenkhkare was not a son of Akhenaten but
his younger brother, a man fit to be the husband of Meritaten in the AE way of
thinking.  In fact, Smenkhkare even looks like Akhenaten in his portrait in the
tomb of Meryre II.  I feel doubtful that Akhenaten had any other living son but
Tutankhamun and certainly none that was old enough to be a spouse for Meritaten.
Anyway, Meritaten should have been the "heir presumptive" for quite some time
and, after awhile, I'm sure it occurred to Akhenaten that she have a husband
with whom she could rule jointly rather than give the Egyptians another
woman-king.  However, once Tutankhamun was born to Akhenaten, he became the
heir.  However, it seems to me this was not recognized by Smenkhkare and
Meritaten until after Smenkhkare died.  Some older sister then became the regent
of little Tut [maybe even Ankhesenamun!] until he grew old enough to act the
part of a king, at least.  That's probably why Smenkhkare and even Meritaten
lost some of their funerary equipment to Tut--one was an illegal king and the
other only a temporary one.


Marianne Luban
Author of "The Exodus Chronicles: Beliefs, Legends &
Rumors from Antiquity Regarding the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt", Second
Edition, New and Revised (2008)
http://tinyurl.com/5kbywp

This latest Zahi Hawass evidence doesn't seem to add anything to what
is already known about this block and the wording upon it. We have
known for some time that it states Tutankhamun was the son of a king
but it still doesn't prove beyond doubt his father as Akhenaten.

I don't have a set oppinion myself on Tutankhamun's parentage but
agree it seems likely he was Akhenaten's son, but only DNA evidence
may provide more conclusive proof.

However I have always been very against the claim often stated as fact
that Tutankhamun's mother is Kiya. There is just no firm evidence for
this at all and thinking Nefertiti would be depicted mourning over
Kiya as a dead secondary wife in the Royal Tomb at Amarna is just
nonsensical.

That's not to say I don't think Kiya is not a candidate, but this is
just another theory like the rest. Nefertiti could just as easily have
been Tutankhamun's mother.

It was more traditional for princesses to be depicted with their
parents than princes, as can be seen in the reliefs and statues from
the reign of Amunhotep III.

So it is no surprise that only the six daughters of Akhenaten are
shown with him and Nefertiti at Akhetaten and elsewhere. There could
quite easily have been sons born to this couple as well who were never
depicted with them.

We cannot be certain when the daughters of Akhenaten and Nefertiti
were born, we only know from when they first appear. It is not clear
if these first depictions are their birth years or just when they were
old enough to participate in ceremonies.

If the later then eldest daughter Meritaten could have been born a
handful of years before the start of her father's reign. This also
creates a greater time period for more pregnancies for Nefertiti in
the possible parentage of Tutankhamun, and perhaps Smenkhkare.

However even if Meritaten was born in year one, and I think off-hand
that the last princess Setepenre appears between year nine and twelve,
there could easily have been another pregnancy in Tutankhamun during
this shorter period.

I look forward to seeing the results of the DNA tests on the mummified
infants from Tutankhamun's tomb and the results of the tests on all
the other royal mummies. I think there could be quite a few surprises
in store.

Jon Wicken

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.


http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/12/17/king-tut-father.html

This evening the National Geographic Channel treated North
American viewers to a documentary with the title "King Tut
and the Lost Dynasty".  Once again, CT-scans was the focus
and unidentified mummies came under scrutiny.  Most attention
was paid to the "Younger Lady" from KV35.  The mummy is
definitely a female and a wide age-at-death range was assigned,
that being 22-45.  The lady was determined to have borne children,
seemingly scotching the "nulliparous" theory of another investigator.
Not only that but it was suggested that the "Younger Lady" had
probably been murdered, this being indicated by signs that the severe
damage to her face was antemortem and also a wound on her torso.
The mouth was packed with linen, in this case, in order to "seal off
the wound" and fix up the face somewhat.  I am still left wondering
how the entire flesh of the cheek was removed from the living person.
Axed-off?  Quite a gruesome demise, in that case, and an
unnecessarily brutal way to get rid of a royal woman when there are
other, perhaps "neater", ways to murder someone if that is the intent.

But the "Younger Lady" was most emphatically declared by Zahi
Hawass not to be Queen Nefertiti.  The only reason given was
that a loose right arm with a clenched hand "did not fit to the body"
when the break was examined.  I suppose I'm not certain, given
the rest of the information, why that should disqualify this female
mummy from being Nefertiti.  Thus far, we have only seen *left*
arms being raised in a queenly pose.  The left arm of the "Younger
Lady" is not raised--but now there appears to be *no* right arm
that originally belonged to  her.  In this program the theory was
advanced that this could be Kiya on account of a skull anomaly
like that of Tutankhamun.  However, I have noticed that, on a
relief depicting Kiya and subsequently altered for Meritaten, the
elongated head seems not to have been there originally but
corrected to fit to the head-shape of the eldest Amarna princess
beneath a wig.  Regardless, Kiya supposedly required no raised
arm at all.

Also scanned was the "Elder Lady" from KV35 but, even though
Susan James was onhand with her theory that this is Nefertiti, that
doesn't pan out according to the examiners.  Much was made of the
beauty of the features of this mummy, but her age was concluded to be
from 40-60 due to mild degeneration of the spine and other joints.  In
other words, too old to be Nefertiti and probably still Queen Tiye.

The KV55 skeleton received its share of radiological attention--a
male of "at least 25" with a dolicephalic skull like that of
Tutankhamun and also a cleft palate--like Tut's.  The program stated
there was "only a fraction of a centimeter" difference in the two
skulls--but I, personally,wonder if this is really so, since Derry
measured them and came up with a bit more of a variation.  At any
rate, conclusion--Akhenaten, himself.

I don't know why the "Little Prince" from KV35 was not scanned.
Something to learn there, too, perhaps.

Marianne Luban