Technology reveals King Tut's Mystery

The kingdom of King Tut was one of the most extraordinary kingdoms. The late18th dynasty gave rise to Akhenaten. This was a very special pharaoh. Before Akhenaten became the pharaoh, Egypt was a polytheist country. However, when he became the king, he made Egypt to switch to a single religion and change the main capital (Thebes) to Tel-el- Amarna. He introduced a new capital and a new god, Aten.

The change of religion and capital made a huge impact in the country. Some people didn’t like Akhenaten; some people refer to him as the “heretic pharaoh”. He became the father of Tutankhamun. When Akhenaten died, Tutankhamun became the new pharaoh at the age of about 9. He switched back to the old religion and switched back the main capital of Tel-el-Amarna to Thebes.

For many years, the cause of death of King Tut and the identity of his ancestors was not well known. In fact, archeologists have found many royal mummies, but technology was not able to reveal their identity and relationship to King Tut.

A multidisciplinary scientific approach based on molecular and medical Egyptology was used to determine the identity and relationship between royal mummies, health problems and their provable cause of death.

It is very impressive how now technology can be used to reveal very specific information of 11 mummies that lived in a period, circa 1410-1324 and 5 mummies that lived in a period, circa 1550-1479 BC. That is like 3,500 years ago.

Results

King Tut’s family tree

Genetic fingerprinting created a 5 generation pedigree of King Tut’ lineage. They look for similar microsatellites in the mummies DNA. Microsatellites are repeats of 1-6 units of DNA. The mummies that had the same repeats are related by blood.

I. Yuya and Tuya were the great-grandparents.

II. Amenhotep III and Tiye were the grandparents

III. Akhenaten and mummy KV35YL (unknown) were the parents and siblings.

IV. Tutankhamun, his wife and KV21A (unknown)

V. Fetus 1 and 2 (unknown) were King Tut’s children

According to the microsatellites they found out that King Tut was the product of a consanguineous marriage. The double line between Akhenaten and his unknown wife represents consanguinity. Inbreeding brought many health problems to king Tut.

King Tut’s foot

King Tut was examined radiologically and a CT reconstruction of his feet reveals that the left foot was deformed and had bone necrosis (bone tissue dying). The image below shows the deformed left foot and the normal right foot. This finding explains why numerous walking sticks were found in King Tut’s tomb.



King’s Tut’s cause of death

The scientist did genetic testing to look for DNA of plasmodium in King Tut. They found that King Tut had plasmodial DNA. Plasmodium is the agent of malaria. According to the study, King’s Tut had the most aggressive form of malaria.

Generally, African populations that are exposed most of the time to malaria develop a self defense mechanism that reduces the mortality of malaria by decreasing the symptoms of the malarial inflammation. When the organism reduces the response to the inflammation, there is enough time to fight and clear the disease. People that cannot reduce the response to the inflammation usually die.

Scientists believe that King Tut died of malaria. He was too week to reduce the response to the malarial inflammation because of the severe bone necrosis.

In addition to malaria tropica, scientists found that King Tut had a leg fracture, cleft palate, pes planus, oligodactyly (fewer than 5 fingers or toes), and kyphoscoliosis (abnormal curvature of the spine). He got a mixture of scoliosis (curvature of the spine) and kyphosis (hunchback). Akhenaten and his sister had scoliosis. When they got married they provably gave King Tut a severe type of scoliosis and many other health problems due to a consanguineous marriage.