More re DNA testing to be carried out on fetuses

Discovery Channel

Ongoing analysis on the mummified remains of two female fetuses buried in the tomb of Tutankhamun will most likely show that at least one of the stillborn children is the offspring of the teenage pharaoh, a scientist who carried serological analysis on the mummified remains told Discovery News.

"I studied one of the mummies, the larger one, back in 1979 [and] determined the blood group data from this baby mummy and compared it with my 1969 blood grouping of Tutankhamun.

"The results confirmed that this larger fetus could indeed be the daughter of Tutankhamen," said Robert Connolly, senior lecturer in physical anthropology from the University of Liverpool's Department of Human Anatomy and Cell Biology.

The fetuses have been stored at the Cairo University's Faculty of Medicine since archaeologist Howard Carter first discovered them in Tutankhamun's tomb on the west bank of Luxor, Egypt in 1922.

Egyptologists have long debated whether these mummies were the stillborn children of King Tut and his wife Ankhesenamun or if they were placed in the tomb with the symbolic purpose of allowing the boy king to live as newborns in the afterlife.