When the Discovery Channel contacted me to ask if
I would appear in a documentary on Queen Hatshepsut, I did not believe
that it would actually lead to one of the most important Egyptological
discoveries in living memory. However, through a stroke of inspiration
during the production of the film, I was able with the help of my
all-Egyptian team to identify the mummy of the great queen, shedding new
light on one of the most remarkable women in history.
The Mysterious Queen[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذه الصورة]Dr.
Hawass inspecting KV60-A
Hatshepsut
ruled Egypt during the Golden Age of the New Kingdom. She was not
the first woman to rule the country as a pharaoh, but she was the only
one ever to do so in a time of prosperity and stability rather than
during the upheaval that accompanied the end of a dynasty. Her father
was Thutmose I (r. 1504-1492 BC), a warrior who campaigned in Nubia and
Syria. Hatshepsut was married to her half-brother Thutmose II (r.
1492-1479 BC). She had no male children, however, and it was a secondary
queen who bore her husband's heir, the future Thutmose III (r.
1479-1425 BC). Thutmose II died while his son was still a small child.
Hatshepsut originally stepped in only to serve as regent for the young
pharaoh until he came of age, but as time passed, she began to assume
all of the titles and regalia of a pharaoh, even having herself depicted
in the male garb of an Egyptian king. She controlled the country for
twenty-one years, from 1479 to 1458 BC.
Although we know a fair amount about the events of
her reign,
including
the famous trading expedition to the land of Punt depicted on the walls
of her mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahari, no record exists of how
Hatshepsut met her end. For many years, it was widely believed that her
stepson Thutmose III might have had her killed in order to assume the
throne in his own right. The fact that her monuments were defaced after
her death was taken as a sign that he had sought to eliminate all trace
of her out of jealousy and anger. Although she was buried in the Valley
of the Kings in the tomb known as
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط],
her mummy was lost when her burial was looted in antiquitiy. Scholars
longed for the opportunity to examine the remains of the great queen,
but most believed that we would never learn what became of her after her
death.
The Search for Hatshepsut[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذه الصورة]Descending
into DB320
I began my search for the mummy of Hatshepsut by
exploring the places where her remains might have rested after her
death. I knew that I needed to have a sense of the places connected with
the story.
First, I entered KV20, Hatshepsut's royal tomb in the
Valley of the Kings. It was first cleared at the turn of the twentieth
century by the famous
Egyptologist Howard
Carter. The undecorated tomb is slippery and treacherous, filled
with the smell of the bats that have lived there for countless years.
I am one of only a handful of archaeologists who have explored its
entire length - it was truly an adventure to descend along its winding
passages, supported by a rope so that I would not fall and would be able
to climb out again.
I then visited a tomb at Deir el-Bahari, near
Hatshepsut's famous mortuary temple. Known as DB320, this tomb does not
date to the queen's reign, but was used as cache for the reburial of
royal mummies in the 21st and 22nd Dynasties, after their original tombs
had been ransacked. The remains of many of Egypt's great pharaohs,
including Hatshepsut's father, husband, and stepson, were discovered
there in 1881. To enter DB320, I had to be lowered into the shaft on a
seat suspended from ropes (the picture above shows me descending into
the tomb).
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذه الصورة]Removing
the side of KV60-A's temporary coffin for a closer look
Finally,
I visited a little-known tomb in the Valley of the Kings. Known as
KV60, this simple sepulcher consists of a corridor, a side room, and a
single burial chamber. When it was discovered in 1903 by Howard Carter,
it contained two female mummies. One, known as KV60-B belonged to a
slight woman with long, red hair. This mummy lay inside a coffin
inscribed for a woman named Sitre-In, who is known to have been
Hatshepsut's wet-nurse. The second mummy, KV60-A, was that of an older
woman, who had been quite obese when she died. This mummy lay exposed on
the floor. Carter moved the coffin of the wet-nurse and the mummy it
contained to the
Egyptian
Museum in Cairo, leaving the obese woman behind in the tomb. Donald
Ryan, who re-cleared KV60 in 1989, had a wooden box made to hold the
mummy. It was a deeply moving experience to open the box and look into
the face of this nameless woman.
Unidentified Mummies[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذه الصورة]Left
to right: KV60-B, KV60-A, Unknown Woman D, and Unknown Woman A
In
addition to the two mummies from KV60, my team selected two other sets
of female remains for scientific analysis as part of our search for
Hatshepsut. Both of the additional mummies were in the collection of the
Egyptian Museum, Cairo. One, known as Unknown Woman A (at right in the
photo), was found in the DB320 mummy cache. The other (second to right),
known as Unknown Woman D, was discovered in a cache found in tomb KV35
in the Valley of the Kings. We performed CT scans of each of the four
mummies, in the hope of finding some type of evidence that would show
whether any of them might have belonged to Hatshepsut. We were amazed to
learn that the distorted appearance of Unknown Woman A was in fact due
to trauma suffered at the time of her death. We were no closer, however,
to identifying the mummy of Hatshepsut.
The Tooth in the Box[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذه الصورة]The
box with the organ bundle inside
One evening, I was sitting alone in the Egyptian
Museum, where the CT machine is kept. I considered possible places where
we could search for clues that would shed light on the identity of the
mummies that we were studying. I suddenly remembered a small, wooden box
that had been discovered in the DB320 mummy cache - this box was
inscribed with the cartouches of Hatshepsut, and contained a small
bundle that might have been a mummified internal organ. Although I did
not know how, I felt certain that the box would help lead us to the
mummy of the queen. I immediately asked for it to be brought into the
lab and scanned. To our surprise, in addition to what appeared to be the
remains of a human internal organ, the bundle in the box contained a
molar tooth, to which a single root was still attached. Right away, we
carefully examined the CT scans of the four unidentified female mummies
to see whether one of them was missing a tooth. To our delight, KV60-A,
the obese mummy from the Valley of the Kings, had an empty socket in her
jaw - Galal El-Behri, a dentist from Cairo University, was able to
determine that the socket was a perfect fit for the tooth in the box! As
early as 1966, Egyptologist Elizabeth Thomas had suggested that KV60-A
might be the mummy of the great female pharaoh. Now, modern forensic
science was finally able to prove that this idea was true!
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذه الصورة]CT
images of the box, showing the bundle and the tooth
The discovery of the mummy of Hatshepsut was widely
reported in the international media, and captivated people around the
world. Our examination of the mummy revealed that the queen had died at
between the ages of 45 and 60. She was obese, and suffered from a
variety of painful medical conditions. Her bones were weakened by
osteoporosis, and her joints showed signs of arthritis. Her teeth and
jaws were in terrible condition, which along with her weight may
indicate that she was diabetic. We saw evidence of a tumor in her pelvic
region, which had begun to metastasize and to erode her left iliac
bone. Although she had died in very poor health, however, there was no
sign at all that she had been murdered. We must conclude that Thutmose
III was not in fact responsible for his stepmother's death, and that he
was able to assume the throne peacefully after her passing.
As part of the agreement through which they were
allowed to film our search for the mummy of Hatshepsut, the Discovery
Channel funded the establishment of the first laboratory in Egypt
dedicated exclusively to the analysis of ancient DNA. We took tissue
samples from the mummies found in KV60, along with those of other
members of the Thutmosid royal family - Thutmose II, Thutmose III, an
unidentified man believed to be Thutmose I, and Ahmose-Nefertari, the
matriarch of the line. Our preliminary results are promising, but much
additional work must be done before we can use genetics to confirm the
identities and family relationships of these individuals. We are in the
process of establishing a second, independent DNA lab to verify our
results in accordance with the highest scientific standards. I was
fortunate to direct an amazing team in my quest for the mummy of
Hatshepsut - Dr. Ashraf Selim, professor of radiology at Cairo
University; Dr. Galal El-Behri, professor of orthodontics at Cairo
University; Dr. Yehia Zakaria Gad, professor of molecular genetics at
Egypt's National Research Center; Dr. Hany Abdel-Rahman, CT and
MRI applications specialist with Siemens Ltd.; and Mr. Hisham Elleithy,
Egyptologist. I am looking forward to continuing to work with such
outstanding scientists to reveal the secrets of the great pharaohs of
Egypt's Golden Age.
موضوع: The Quest for Hatshepsut - Discovering the Mummy of Egypt's Greatest Female Pharaoh 
الخميس 13 مايو 2010 - 23:27
