Monday, October 8, 2007

Secrets of Egypt's lost Queen

Discovery channel's two-hour program on finding the mummy of the female king was interesting with amazing access to the royal mummies. However, for people like myself who read and watch everything I can on Egypt's mummy collection, I could not help but notice a huge error.

The mummy being marketed in the show as unknown women "B" from the Deir el Bahari cache was, in fact, unknown women "D" from the tomb of Amenhotep II in the Valley of the Kings complete with her raised toe on her left foot.

The fact that Dr. Zahi Hawass was able to accept that the mummy identified as Thutmosis I was not that king, is good, most people interested in this subject realized this many decades ago. However, it is worrying that unknown women "D" now has CT scan records identified as belonging to unknown women "B".

With such an obvious mistake occurring it leaves me to wonder about the final sensational results of the finding of Hatshepsut, though all appears to be well. How such a mistake could occur among all these experts from the Supreme Council of Antiquities, its director, as well as the staff of the Cairo Egyptian museum amazes me that not one of them realized the error.

Dr. Hawass should correct this mistake before the CT scan on unknown women "D" gets filed away under the title of unknown women "B" and forgotten. The mistake, unfortunately, is almost as big as the discovery.

Small and misleading graphic showing unknown woman "A" lying next to unknown woman "B" with the Hatshepsut box described as being between them in the last chamber of DB320. To my knowledge, the excavator of DB320 never made any notes in regard to the position that either of these mummies or the box were found in the tomb.

All, in all I was entertained partly because of the mistakes.

http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/hatshepsut/

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