CAIRO — One of the great remaining mysteries from ancient Egypt , the ancestry of the boy-pharaoh Tutankhamun, may soon be solved, the country's antiquities supremo hinted on Sunday.
CAIRO — One of the great remaining mysteries from ancient
Egypt, the ancestry of the boy-pharaoh Tutankhamun, may soon be solved, the country's antiquities supremo hinted on Sunday.
Zahi Hawass told AFP he has scheduled a news conference for February 17 in the Cairo Museum.
The announcement will be "about the secrets of the family and the affiliation of Tutankhamun, based on the results of the scientific examination of the Tutankhamun mummy following DNA analysis," Hawass said.
The tomb of the boy king, who reigned from the age of nine and died under as yet unknown circumstances at about 19, was unearthed by British archaeologists in the Valley of the Kings in 1922, causing an international sensation.
One of King Tutankhamun’s gold sarcophagi at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo
Egypt's antiquities authorities said in August 2008 that they had taken DNA samples from Tutankhamun's mummy and from two foetuses found in his tomb, to determine whether the still-born children had been fathered by the boy king.
Tutankhamun achieved worldwide fame because of the stunning funerary treasure found in his tomb, including an 11-kilo (24.2-pound) solid gold death mask encrusted with lapis lazuli and semi-precious stones.
Like his ancestry, the circumstances of Tutankhamun's death remain a mystery. He is believed to have reigned from around 1333 BC to 1324 BC.