Archaeologists finally locate Egyptian Pharaoh Hatshepsuts mummy

Archaeologists have finally located the mummy of Hatshepsut, Egypts greatest female pharaoh.

Washington, June 26 : Archaeologists have finally located the mummy of Hatshepsut, Egypt's greatest female pharaoh.

Hatshepsut was the daughter of Pharaoh Tuthmosis I and wife of Tuthmosis II, her half-brother.

When her husband-brother died, she became regent for the boy-king Tuthmosis III, the child of Tuthmosis II and a concubine.

However, Hatshepsut didn't put up with that state of affairs for long: she started wearing the royal headdress and a false beard, and proclaimed herself pharaoh.

Incidentally, her mummy was never found.

When noted Egyptologist Howard Carter, who had discovered King Tutankhamun's mummy, explored her unfinished tomb KV20 in 1920, he found two empty sarcophagi: one for Hatshepsut and the second for her father Tuthmosis I.

Previously, Carter had also discovered a tomb, which is now known as KV60. It contained stuffed geese and two sarcophagi: one inscribed for Hatshepsut's wet nurse Sitre-In, now at Cairo's Egyptian museum, and another containing an unknown female's mummy.

Zahi Hawass, Egypt's secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, who led the one- year study that led to the identification of Hatshepsut's mummy, used CT scans to link distinct physical traits of Hatshepsut to that of her ancestors, and narrow the search for the Pharaoh to the couple of female mummies in the KV60 tomb.

Hawass said the final clue lay within a box inscribed with the female Pharaoh's name.

A scan of the box revealed a tooth, which, when measured, matched within a fraction of a millimetre to the space of the missing molar in the mouth of the mummy called KV60A. This was the unidentified female originally found by Carter next to Hatshepsut's nanny.

According to Hawass, this is the most important find in Egypt's Valley of the Kings since the discovery of King Tutankhamun.

"The discovery of the Hatshepsut mummy is one of the most important finds in the history of Egypt. Our hope is that this mummy will help shed light on this mystery and on the mysterious nature of her death," said Hawass.

According to Discovery News, DNA testing on the 3,000-year-old mummy and mummies from Hatshepsut family will be the next step to reach conclusive evidence.

ANI