Isn't the Elder lady believed to be Tiye the Great Wife of Amenhotep III.Why would the mummy then be thought to be a male?

What kind of magazine is Kmt?

Actually I think there are several suspects we could consider

Meritaten

Sitamon-sister of Akhenaten

Baketamon-younger sister of Akhenaten

Nefruaten ta-sherit-younger sister of Ankhsenamon by the end of Tutankhamons reign she may have been in her late teens.

An unknown secondary wife or daughter by secondary wife of some pharaoh

By the way even though DNA tests show that it could be male I still think the mummy looks like Nefertiti especially about the jaw.

Even if the mummy were proven to be a male though there are still many questions as to who it might be.

Thutmose-son of Amonhotep III and Queen Tiy

Amonmose-a brother of Hatshepsut who I read was supposed to have been relatively young at death

Wadjmose-also a brother of Hatshepsut

I finally got Kmt which I found at Barnes and Noble. It is a wonderful Journal. Thanks for telling me about it!

Hawass writes in his "Hidden Treasures of the Cairo Museum" that DNA testing of material that old is not yet advanced enough to recover enough data to prove relationships. That's his story, anyway. I don't think it has much to do with respect -- he doesn't mind showing off his Golden Mummies of the Bahariya Oasis every chance he gets. I think in our lifetimes we'll get the answers through DNA testing of who among those Amarna-era mummies is related to whom.


I wonder, though, why no one ever asks who's the young boy found with the so-called "Elder Lady" and "Younger Lady" I've always wondered if he was Thutmose V, Akhenaten's short-lived older brother. Any ideas?

ciao Baketaten!
first I wish to welcome you here at KTO!...
then I wish to ask you if possible to give also a link to a site were Hawass said something like that. I am very curious about the matter of DNA testing, even because, for what we knew, it was not intention of SCA to make any test of DNA....
Please, if you'll have the chance, tell us where did you read these news! I would really appreciate!

Hi, Maatkara! I got the title of the book wrong: it's "Hidden treasures of Ancient Egypt: Unearthing the Masterpieces of Egyptian History," by Zahi Hawass. It came out last year from National Geographic Books and has beautiful pictures.

Anyway, here's what Hawass has to say on page 227:

"Many people woul love to see this debate (on the mummy of the Younger Lady) resolved through the use of DNA analysis. However, a certain uninterrupted length of the DNA chain must be recovered for accurate analysis to be carried out. Much of the DNA within mummies has decayed, and sufficiently long sequences have not yet been able to be recovered. The few positive results gained using current techniques are in each case likely to be the result of modern contamination. In fact, the SCA did do a chromosome test on this mummy, and determined that it was male. However, we consider this result tentative, and leave open the possibility that it is a product of contamination. The available technology for DNA analysis is not yet reliable, and there are no labs in Egypt capable of doing "ancient DNA" research. Once labs have developed effective methods for analyzing shorter sequences of DNA, we will allow them to be used on Egyptian mummies. Perhaps many mysteries will finally be solved!"

I don't know anything about the science and can't evaluate Hawass' claims. But it does sound as if he doesn't want any genetic material from the mummies taken out of Egypt for lab work.

On the same page of the book, Hawass argues for the return of the Nefertiti bust now in the Berlin Museum:

"The loss of this portrait head ... is still a point of contention with Egyptian Egyptologists, and with the many foreign archaeologists who support us ... The German excavations of the pre-World War I seasons were subject to an equitable division of finds: Half went to the country, organization or individual who funded the work, and the other half stayed in Egypt ... Many people, myself included, believe that (excavator Ludwig) Borchardt disguised the head by encasing it in mud plaster so that the Egyptians, believing it to be relatively unimportant, would let it leave the country."