First Royal Mummy Found Since Tut is Identified 192
brian0918 writes "In what is being described as the most important find in the Valley of the Kings since the discovery of King Tut, a single tooth has clinched the identification of an ancient mummy as that of Queen Hatshepsut, who ruled Egypt about 3,500 years ago. A molar inscribed with the queen's name, discovered in a wooden box in 1881 in a cache of royal mummies, was found to fit perfectly in the jaw of 'a fat woman in her 50s who had rotten teeth and died of bone cancer.' Reuters also reports on the DNA analysis: 'Preliminary results show similarities between its DNA and that of Ahmose Nefertari, the wife of the founder of the 18th dynasty and a probable ancestor of Hatsephsut's.'"
Bad Teeth (Score:5, Informative)
Lots of ancient Egyptians had bad teeth. Flour tended to have lots of sand in it thanks to the grinding process, and chewing wore away tooth enamel very efficiently.
Stefan
Re:Bad Teeth (Score:3, Informative)
The TFA mentions that it might have been her son [wikipedia.org]
Just like modern day meth heads
Re:Inscription (Score:5, Informative)
It's lucky they did, because as TFA also explains, her tomb was looted and the mummy removed, though not in the article is the fact that her son removed her cartouche and representation from all the monuments and temples he could find.
Re:Inscription (Score:3, Informative)
Sheesh.
I do love that Egyptian stuff, however.
So close to TFA, but not exactly... (Score:3, Informative)
But the decisive evidence was a molar in a wooden box inscribed with the queen's name, found in 1881 in a cache of royal mummies collected and hidden away for safekeeping at the Deir al-Bahari temple about 1,000 metres (yards) away.
During the embalming process, it was common to set aside spare body parts and preserve them in such a box.
Orthodontics professor Yehya Zakariya checked all the mummies which might be Hatshepsut's and found that the tooth was a perfect fit in a gap in the upper jaw of the fat woman.
"The identification of the tooth with the jaw can show this is Hatshepsut," Hawass said. "A tooth is like a fingerprint."
"It is 100 percent definitive. It is 1.80 cm (wide) and the dentist took the measurement and studied that part. He found it fit exactly 100 percent with this part," he told Reuters
So, no new mummy discovery, just new understanding of the evidence, as is often the case with the PYRAMIDS of data that science-types have still to de-cypher. (If I understand the articles right...)
Re:Pharaoh genome (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Medical procedures (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not a forensic anthropologist, but as a physician I can say there are a lot of signs to tell you that a patient has cancer even if you only recover a fragment. Especially osteosarcoma (bone cancer), which tends to produce lytic lesions (areas where the bone is less dense) in most of the bones of the body. A quick x-ray of the jaw could reveal this. Plus osteosarcoma will alter calcium and PTH levels and dramatically change bone formation and reabsorbtion. See, bone is LIVING tissue. It's constantly being absorbed and recreated.
Now I don't know where they get liver cancer from - it's very unlikely that a patient will have TWO separate types of cancer. But the liver lesions are probably just metastases of the primary osteosaarcoma.
The egyptians were rather advanced in the field of medicine - FOR THEIR DAY. There is no possible way they could approach the level of medicine we had say 200 years ago, much less today. Diabetes is a complex disease that is eventually lethal when left untreated. I doubt very much they had discovered that feeding patients pig pancreases could mitigate this disease somewhat, since this was discovered early last century. We won't talk about sulfonyl-ureas and other oral hypoglycemiants.
They were pretty good at basic surgery, they had a pretty good idea of which tumors NOT to touch (because they got worse if you touched them), and it's rumored that some were even capable of drilling burr holes in patients' skulls to treat subdural hematomas (from trauma/battle injuries) or encephalitis/meningitis (to relieve the pressure inside the skull from a swollen brain/membranes). However we MUST bear in mind that we have NO record of what their actual success rate was with these procedures. It's easy to attribute supernatural powers to a vanished culture, however reality is they had no antibiotics, precious little by way of anesthetics, and more importantly no scientific method.
Re:So close to TFA, but not exactly... (Score:2, Informative)
So, if I read that wrong, I apologize, but I doubt that I am the only one who read it like that.
Cheers
Re:Medical procedures (Score:5, Informative)
We do use sugar and/or honey from time to time to treat large, difficult ulcers in our hospitals here. The idea is that the sugar is something that stimulates growth in the wound while at the same time the huge osmotic pressure prevents bacterial growth. Honey is high in fructose, but it will work with plain old sugar, too.
An antibiotic is a drug that targets specific types bacteria by inhibiting growth or cell wall synthesis, etc. Honey, on the other hand will kill ALL cells, bacteria or otherwise. Fortunately for us, however, our circulation helps minimize the osmotic gradient and the only cells that die are the ones on the fringe of the wound - which are probably injured anyway.
Another thing we use - funnily enough - is epamin - an anti-covulsant medication that somehow is very similar to certain tissue growth factors and does help heal wounds faster.
So, to make my point - yes ok, the egyptians probably used honey, wine, and even vinegar as antiseptics. However this is not as effective as say cepahlexin