TUT'S FAMILY TREE: A new study sheds light on the boy king's incestuous royal lineage and his early death.
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Despite his brief nine-year reign, Tutankhamen is probably the most famous pharaoh of ancient Egypt. Because his tomb had not been robbed at the time of its discovery in 1922, historians have been able to piece together aspects of the boy king's 19-year life. More than 100 walking sticks and "pharmacies" (medicinal seeds, fruits and leaves) found mingled among funeral offerings and other treasures within the tomb suggested that the pharaoh was frail, and two mummified fetuses implied that his offspring might have suffered from lethal genetic defects. But a new study on the Tutankhamen family mummies themselves, published February 16 in JAMA The Journal of the American Medical Association, has provided biological insight into the king's incestuous royal lineage and his early death.
Secretary General Zahi Hawass of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities teamed up with paleogeneticist Carsten Pusch from the University of Tübingen in Germany, to examine Tutankhamen and 10 royal mummies, including the two fetuses, presumed to be related to him for kinship, inherited disorders and infectious diseases. Five mummies that were thought to be unrelated served as morphological and genetic controls. Hawass, Pusch and 15 other scientists continue to perform detailed anthropological, radiological and genetic studies on the precious mummies in a lab built into the basement of the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo—two floors below the famous golden mask.
After extracting tiny amounts of ancient DNA from the mummies' bones, the researchers amplified 16 short tandem repeats (short sequences in the DNA that create a genetic fingerprint) and eight polymorphic microsatellites (hereditary molecular markers) to testable quantities using techniques commonly employed in criminal or paternity investigations. They also looked for DNA sequences from the malaria pathogen.
Based on their results so far, the researchers were able to name several mummies who were previously anonymous (referred to only by tomb number), including Tut's grandmother "Tiye" and Tut's father, the KV55 mummy probably named "Akhenaten". "This is the most important discovery since the finding of the tomb of Tutankhamen in 1922," Hawass says. The team also identified the mummy likely to be Tut's mother as KV35YL, not Queen Nefertiti as was once thought. "Now I'm sure that it cannot be Nefertiti, and therefore the mother of King Tut is one of the daughters of Amenhotep III and Tiye—and there are five," Hawass says, adding that he plans to investigate this further.
"The more data we collected, the more the museum specimens came back to life," Pusch says, who admits he was worried about working with such ancient "pharaohic" DNA. "We had 16 mummies," Pusch explained. "You have a lot to do in the lab when you have a single mummy!" But the embalming process used to preserve these royal remains worked in Pusch's favor. "Some embalming really enhances the preservation of genetic material," he says.
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25 Comments
Add CommentFascinating article, but why would Pusch refer to ancient Egyptian royalty as "royals and queens"? Queens are also "royals".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy does this article emphasis incest? Anyone who has studied even a modest amount of Egyptian history knows that incest was common practice within the royal family. I think the author would better serve the readers by focusing on the science and not turn Scientific American into a tabloid. A better article on this subject can be found at http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/561303/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNothing personal, but Secretary General Zahi Hawass of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities must be the world's most productive researcher. Any new discovery in Egypt seems to include him as the principal discoverer. Any television program about Egypt seemingly must present, I presume, Dr. Hawass as the star scientists. It almost seems that, even, if not especially, in science, political power is the most critical success factor.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisabyssalmystery - The article you referenced did provide more meaningful information about the study, including a description of description of a number of, presumedly genetic, malformations. Curiously, that article omits any reference to incest. Overall, I agree that it is more informative.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs I understand, not only did Egyptian royals participate in the practice of incest, but the craftsmen involved with making pyramids did also. I wonder whether the association between the practice and practitioners offsprings' genetic abnormalities was not made until it was specifically prohibited in Hebrew culture?
I think the incest happens not because the royals simply think 'Better to stay close'. Maybe they have specifical genetic mutations that make them prone to marry their close family members, and this inclination is carried on as they produce more offsprings. It's notable that such behavior happen not only among royals but also the craftsmen involved with making pyramids, as jtdwyer has pointed out. So it is easy for the mutations to be carried on in a specific group. For the royals, because they are highly priviliged, and for the workers, because they are highly concentrated in a samed group
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishenryqu, I've never heard of a genetic predisposition to incest... is that an actual condition or something you just made up?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are plenty of reasons for early royals to resort to incest that don't require genetic explanations.... the politics of keeping power in the family... proximity and similarity (they probably didn't have access to anyone else of similar rank, education, upbringing), possible belief in being a special group (appointed by a god or otherwise mystically gifted) and the belief (or political need to culture the belief in others) that such magic should be kept in the family or could be made stronger by keeping it in the family.
They certainly wouldn't be the first powerful family to engage in incest for similar reasons.
The kings and gqeens of yesterday had feet of clay ----jsut like our self styled "empereros" of today.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistharriss - Not to disagree with your point about the royals, but none of those would seem to explain the practice among at least one town of skilled pyramid workers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf I recall, about half of those buried in an excavated pyramid worker's city were siblings. Given that only in families with an even number of siblings could incestually marry all of them, that's a very high frequency of married siblings. Perhaps they simply followed the royal fashion of the day...
I should have explained that half of the buried apparently married couples were found to be siblings...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@jtdwyer: Hawass is Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities. As such, his job is to oversee and approve all archaeological pursuits in Egypt. At least, he's taken it on himself to do so...he has his critics, but there's a lot of us who think he's done some good work in reining in amateurs destroying sites.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt doesn't. You are the one making the fuss about a reality. Science is about reality. Scientific American is about journalism with a "scientific" basis, i.e. things happening connected with "science" - I believe..
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe tharriss is correct, especially with the concept that power, magic and divinity need to be kept within the family. I once read in an anthro class that the royal family of Hawaii also married siblings for this reason. I doubt very much that cause and effect between the custom and the genetic anomolies in offspring would necessarily have occurred. I've seen cultures miss even more obvious connections between things.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI tend to agree with tharriss. In an anthropology course I took I read that the Hawaiian royalty married siblings to conserve divinity. To marry a non-family member was to dilute the blood line, and assuming this was considered important for the well being of the kingdom as well, it also came with some powerful incentives to do so; like being put to death if you didn't.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI tend to agree with Spoonman on Hawass. My old hieroglyphics instructor Otto Schaaden was on TV not that long ago on a program about the discovery of a tomb containing some of the materials left over from Tut's funeral. Hawass showed up for the filming, but he didn't seem to hog the spot light at all. Mostly just making an appearence so that people would realize it was a recognized and important discovery.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't think anyone actually thought Tut was Nefertiti's son. He would have figured far more prominently in the family "photo album" if he had been. It's more likely that the mother was a collateral wife. Dynasty XIII had a lot of problems coming up with a male heir by the Great Royal Wife. It seems like they had difficulty having male heirs at all, since even Tuthmosis III was the son of Tuthomosis II and a royal concubine. Would a daughter of Amenhotep III have been a secondary wife to Nefertiti whose origin is also much in question? Or Great Royal Wife? There are still a lot of questions, but at least I think they have a far better idea of what felled Tut now than at any other time in history.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWith resect to the marriage habits of the pyramid workers, first cousin marriages were very common throughout the middle east, in fact they still are. Saudi Arabia practices it as a preference. Some cultures prefer a specific direction, ie father's mother's family, father's father's family, etc. but it does lead to genetic anomalies. I worked in KSA for a while in the 1980, primarily in pediatrics, and I saw a lot of that kind of problem among the kid of whom I took care. It arises for good reason, though; if you're going to place your daughter into the hands of others, better it be someone you know well and who has a history of reciprocity with you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with jtdwyer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI once read an article about psychology. It said that those who marry their close family members can get a sense of pleasure by simply doing it. So that means besides other rational reasons, they may simply enjoy this behavior. And this, perhaps, can make a connection between their behavior and their genetic mutations, since the abnormal brain activity can be linked to mutations in some part of the genes.
No, no other direct sources has confirmed our hypothesis. However, there are certain behaviors which result from genetic mutations. I discussed this with my classmates, and this is our final view point.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot that I know anything about it, but I get the distinct impression that you are right ! Odd really.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWith respect to the identity of King Tuts genealogy, it seems to me that there is a little circular reasoning going on here. The two unidentified mummies are said to be closely related to him, and therefore his grandmother queen Ti and his father Akhenaton, but in factat least so far as I am awareno one knows who his parents were, and therefore, while the unidentified mummies could be his grandmother and father, they could also be the royal milk man and the dairy maid for all we know. All we know is that they were probably more important than the milk man and the dairy maid, since few of the latter were given such elaborate post mortem care. As the article states, the two bodies were not identified and probably not in their original tombs. The problem is much the same for Queen Nefertiti, whose origins are also unknown and for whose parents any number of names have been proposed, most notably that she may have been a younger sister of Queen Ti and therefore the daughter of Thuya and Yuya, Nubian aristocrats. Since we do not have, or are unaware of having, the body of Queen Nefertiti from which to obtain DNA for analysis, questioning that relationship is not yet possible. They do have a body which has been proposed as that of the Queen and DNA could rule out a relationship with Thuya and Yuya, which would tell us if the body was or was not that of one of their children, but it would still not prove that the body was that of the famous Queen.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisbertwindon – I agree with abyssalmystery that this report does overemphasize the incest angle, judging from its prominence in the title. However, in comparison to the alternative source that abyssalmystery references, discussion of it is prominently absent from the rest of the article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI also disagree with your approach of accusing abyssalmystery of making a ‘fuss’ about it (if I understand what you’re trying to say): demeaning comments personally directed towards those commenting on articles is uncalled for, and diminish the value of these blogs as a discussion medium of the interesting subjects that are covered in SciAm articles. I suggest you read the article “The Wisdom of the Hive: Is the Web a Threat to Creativity and Cultural Values? One Cyber Pioneer Thinks So” at
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=jaron-lanier-gadget
or enroll in a class teaching personal etiquette, lest someone respond to you physically, in your own reality. People seem to adopt unfortunate behaviors on these blogs (too often myself included), under the cover of protected anonymity, that would result in personal injury if practiced in personal life, or ‘reality’, as you call it.
Readers have every right and justification for criticizing science as well as “Scientific American”: this has long been used as a constructive method of communicating shortcomings and suggesting enhancements. ‘True believers’, such as yourself, are too willing to accept inadequate practices in scientific journalism and attack its detractors.
It would be interesting to find out if the royalty and nobility of other early civilisations like the Sumerians and Indus Valley peoples practised incest to keep the dynastic line pure. Or was it purely an Egyptian/Pharaonic practice?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKaiser T - I agree, that's an extremely interesting question. That's why I asked a related question earlier: "I wonder whether the association between the practice and practitioners offsprings' genetic abnormalities was not made until it was specifically prohibited in Hebrew culture?" I hope someone knowledgeable in this area can respond... Thanks!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisjtdwyer: It is difficult to comprehend how 32 dynasties failed to associate genetic abnormalities with incest. Could it be that, as a norm, reproductive activities were the domain of concubines or secondary wives, while brother-sister or father-daughter relationships were only symbolic (with some exceptions, maybe)? It is also difficult to rationally understand that 'incest as a taboo' for the general populace existed side by side with 'incest as an ideal' for the royalty.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKaiser T - Wow, it is difficult for us to conceive of such timescales from the vantage point of our own ~200 yr old culture, isn't it? They'd have had to have been awfully slow... The functional role distinctions between royal wives is also completely alien.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, there is that pesky report of siblings being buried as husband and wife at the pyramid builder's city. If the reported nearly half of all burials were sibling couples then very few siblings were not married, since so many people would not have an unpaired sibling to marry. I'm unaware of any evidence that those husbands had concubines or secondary wives. As skilled, specialized professionals, perhaps they could have been another special social group.