Mummy may be a daddy

2003-09-02 13:00

Cairo, Egypt - A mummy shown on international television as the probable remains of Queen Nefertiti is actually a male skeleton, according to Egyptian state archaeologists.

"Examinations show that it was that of a male, between the ages of 16 and 19," the spokesperson of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Hassan Nasrallah, said on Monday.

America's Discovery Channel broadcast pictures of the mummy in June, quoting archaeologist Joann Fletcher of Britain's York University as saying there was a "strong possibility" the mummy belonged to Nefertiti.

A queen famed for her beauty - her name meant "the beautiful woman has come" - Nefertiti was married to the Pharaoh Akhenaton, who ruled from 1379 to 1362BC. Two statues of Nefertiti, now in the Egyptian museums in Cairo and Berlin, depict her striking looks and long neck.

The mummy was found more than a century ago in a tomb containing other mummies in the Valley of the Kings, near Luxor, southern Egypt.

Fletcher took a new interest in the mummies after she found a royal wig in their tomb, known as KV35.

The Discovery program said the mummy had a double pierced ear lobe and a bent arm, considered signs of ancient Egyptian royalty. It also "bore a striking profile and swanlike neck comparable to the famed beauty Nefertiti," the program said.

The head of the Supreme Council, Zahi Hawass, said at the time of the Discovery broadcast that any similarity between the mummy's face and Nefertiti's statues would not be valid because in the 18th dynasty, "art was idealistic and not realistic."

Asked about Egypt's assertion that the mummy is that of male, York University's archaeology department held to their opinion. Stephen Buckley told The Associated Press via email that the pelvic bones and the evidence of collapsed breasts showed the remains to be those of a woman between the ages of 18 and 30.

Nefertiti is believed to have died in her thirties.

Supreme Council spokesman Nasrallah said the pelvis was that of a male: "The width of the hips points to a male, not a female."

Buckley said the mummy was originally identified as a that of man, "presumably because of its shaven head," by the archaeologist Victor Loret in 1898. But in 1912 the anatomist Sir Grafton Elliot Smith wrote in his book The Royal Mummies that "it took no great understanding of anatomy to see that this was clearly the mummy of a female."

- AP