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The identification of the Hatshepsut mummy
was possible after some scientific tests were made by a Egyptian
team on four women mummies dating from the New Empire, according
to a document written by the SCEA (the Supreme Counsel of
Egypt’s Antiques). A tooth discovered in a funerary bowl and
having Hatshepsut’s name on it corresponds to a tooth that was
missing from the maxillary of the identified mummy. In 1903, an
archeologist discovered two mummies in the KV60 tomb. One of the
mummies belonged to the nanny of Hatshepsut and the other one,
unknown, belonging to a fat woman of about 50 years old, proved
to be one of the famous Egyptian queens. The daughter Thutmose
I, Hatshepsut reigned 21 years, between 1479 and 1458 BC under
the 18th dynasty. She is the one who ordered the building of the
extraordinary temple of Deir al Baheiri, on the Nile West bank,
the theatre of a bloody terrorist attack in 1997. The only
pharaoh woman of Egypt had a peaceful and prosper reign. After
her death, her husband Thutmose III order to have her name
erased from the era’s documents, the statues representing her
were broken and the monuments built by Hatshepsut were
destroyed. Disappeared for 3000 years, she took her deserved
place in the hierarchal scale due to the Egyptologists. The
discovery of the Hatshepsut mummy represents the most important
ancient Egypt’s finding since the one of Tuthankamun tomb in
1922. The specialists hope this discovery will help them to find
the reason of the Hatshepsut’s death. The discovery is a great
achievement for the Egyptologists and for the history of Egypt
in general, especially if we think that the Hatshepsut mummy
thought to be lost because of the destruction caused by Thutmose
III. |
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