PREVIEW: DNA tests may help clear up King Tut's parentage

By Anne-Beatrice Clasmann Feb 15, 2010, 2:08 GMT

Cairo - The riddle of King Tut's parentage may come closer to resolution on Wednesday, when results of DNA tests on his mummy are announced.

Known as ancient Egypt's 'boy pharaoh,' Tutankhamun died young about 3,300 years ago. Tissue samples were taken in 2008.

Is Tutankhamun really the son of Akhenaten, the 'heretic king,' or perhaps a late offspring of King Amenhotep III, on whose mummy DNA tests have already been done? And who was his mother, thought to have died in childbirth?

Results of the tests will be revealed at a press conference by Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt's Supreme Council for Antiquities. A man with a flair for promoting Egyptology via the media, Hawass is will undoubtedly savour the moment.

At a dramatic press conference in 2005, Hawass released pictures of Tutankhamun's reconstructed face and head based on computed tomography, or CT scans. The examination turned up no apparent evidence that Tutankhamun had been murdered, as some scholars had presumed. Hawass speculated that he may have died of gangrene after breaking his leg.

One reason scholars have had so much difficulty in clarifying relations between the various pharaohs and queens of Tutankhamun's era is that the period between the reign of Amenhotep III and the death of Tutankhamun (c. 1310 BC) was marked by radical changes.

Amenhotep IV founded a new, montheistic religion, moved the royal capital from Memphis to Amarna in Middle Egypt, where he built a new city, and changed his name to Akhenaten in honour of Aten, the sun disk. Egyptians had traditionally worshipped a whole pantheon of deities, but Akhenaten made the Aten the sole god.

After his death, Smenkhkare ruled for about three years and began to undo some of Akhenaten's religious reforms. Little is known about Smenkhkare's reign.

The throne then passed to a boy aged about eight named Tutankhaten ('living image of Aten'), who may have been a half-brother of Smenkhkare. Adult regents administered the country on behalf of the child, including Ay, who succeeded him upon his death at the age of about 19.

Under the child pharaoh, many of Akhenaten's policies were reversed. The city of Amarna was abandoned and the court moved back to Memphis. Tutankhaten changed his name to Tutankhamun in honour of Amun, chief god of the old pantheon. Worship of the traditional deities was restored.

Archaeologists have long been intrigued by a wall relief in the royal tomb at Amarna that possibly shows the death of a woman in childbirth, with an infant being handed off to a nurse. It has been suggested that the infant is Tutankhamun and the mother one of Akhenaten's secondary wives, Kiya.

Most scholars believe that Queen Nefertiti, Akhenaten's chief consort, was not Tutankhamun's mother. She had a much greater role than Kiya in the royal court and the new sun-god religion. Nefertiti may have been Tutankhamun's mother-in-law as well as stepmother, however, since Tutankhamun was probably married to one of his half-sisters, Nefertiti's daughter Ankhesenpaaten.

Ankhesenpaaten may have been the mother of the two stillborn girls whose mummified remains were found in Tutankhamun's tomb. Tissue samples from them were also taken for DNA testing.

Doubts about Tutankhamun's parentage could very well continue after Wednesday's press conference. Many Egyptian mummies remain unidentified. One with an elongated skull like Tutankhamun's was found in the famous KV55 tomb in the Valley of the Kings at Luxor. Is it Akhenaten? Scholars are not certain.

Both Akhenaten and Amenhotep III have been named as the possible father of Tutankhamun. The archaeological evidence is ambiguous. An inscription on a block from Hermopolis, near Amarna, describes Tut, as Hawass fondly calls him, as the son of an unnamed king.

Hawass argues that Tutankhamun was likely the son of Akhenaten but played this down in monuments because Egyptian priests opposed Akhenaten's religious revolution.

Akhenaten's historial significance was much greater than Tutankhamun's, but Tutankhamun suddenly became Egypt's most celebrated pharaoh when English Egyptologist Howard Carter discovered his almost completely intact tomb in 1922 in the Valley of Kings.

While other tombs were plundered by robbers, Tutankhamun's was full of priceless treasures including a now-famous gold death mask.