KV55 - CT-Scan of mummy (Akhenaten or Smenkhkare?)

National Geographic (Brian Handwerk)


CT Scans have been used on the KV55 mummy with a view to discovering its identity.

The mummy's identity has generated fierce debate ever since its discovery in 1907 in tomb KV 55, located less than 100 feet (30 meters) from King Tutankhamun's then hidden burial chamber.

So an international team of researchers led by Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, used a CT scanner to peer inside the body and those of several other Valley of the Kings mummies. (The expedition was partially funded by the National Geographic Society, which owns National Geographic News.)

The scan revealed a number of striking physical similarities between the mystery mummy and the body of Tut, including a distinctive egg-shaped skull. (Related photo gallery: King Tut's New Face) . . . .

The CT scan supports the idea that the mummy is Akhenaten by revealing it as a male between the ages of 25 and 40 who shares many physical similarities with Tut—assuming Akhenaten was Tut's father, as some experts believe. The mystery mummy's strange elongated, egg-shaped skull, called dolichocephalic, is strikingly similar to Tutankhamun's. The jaw, cheekbones, cleft palate, impacted wisdom teeth, and slight scoliosis of the spine are all also similar to Tut's—suggesting familiar traits that may have been passed on from father to son.

However, even Hawass has recommended caution re the identification, saying that the mummy could actually belong to one of a number of people, and Aidan Dodson believes that the mummy is that of Smenkhkare, but says that there will probably never be universal agreement about the identification of this mummy. The article goes on to mention the failed attempts to identify Nefertiti.

A closer look at the page's image of the scans is also available by clicking on the small image on the first page, or by clicking here. Click on the link immediately beneath the image on the new page to see a six-photograph slide show.

See the above page for the full story (over two pages).

Whilst we're in the Eighteenth Dynasty, there is a short but useful summary of the Hatshepsut DNA test, for anyone who has managed to miss it, on the Courier Mail website.