CAIRO — In an unprecedented step, prominent archaeologist and former Egyptian Minister of Antiquities Zahi Hawass performed last month a CT scan and took DNA samples from a mummy belonging to a child who was brought from Tomb KV35 of King Amenhotep II in the Valley of the Kings.
The procedure, which was performed inside Luxor’s Shefaa el-Orman Oncology Hospital dedicated to the free treatment of children with cancer, aimed to identify the mummy and the causes of death and diseases that could have affected the body. This comes within the context of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities project aimed at identifying unknown Pharaonic mummies found in Luxor or elsewhere in Egypt.
Hawass told Al-Monitor that he was inside the corridors of the hospital, which is equipped with modern devices and laboratories, to perform the CT scan and take the DNA sample and then compare those results to other samples of the family in a bid to detect the degree of kinship, if any.
Three mummies lay in the Amenhotep II Tomb KV35. One of them was identified as Queen Tiye, the grandmother of Tutankhamun. During the April 2021 royal parade during which 22 mummies were transferred from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Fustat, the queen’s mummy, nicknamed the Great Lady, had dazzled the world with the beauty of her hair.
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