CAIRO Japanese and Egyptian researchers will next month start probing the mummy of King Tutankhamun for DNA samples in a bid to determine his lineage, they said Tuesday.
It will be the first time the remains of the ancient Egyptian boy king, whose golden death mask has been exhibited worldwide, will be examined since researchers took X-rays of them in 1969.
According to an AFP report, Nasri Iskander, a project coordinator in Egypt, said researchers hope to determine if Tutankhamun was the son of Amenhotep III, whose remains will also be studied.
But Iskander told AFP that painstaking work is required to extract uncontaminated DNA material without damaging a body which is already in bad condition. "Taking a sample is not easy. It's a big job," he said, adding there were no guarantees one would be taken. British archaeologist Howard Carter probably contaminated the body's surface after discovering the tomb in 1922, and the researchers may use an endoscope to search for loose tissue inside the abdominal cavity, Iskander said. "Then carter took it out of the coffin, we think he (and his assistants) touched most of the body," said Iskander, the head of the Center for Research and Conservation of Antiquities here.
Tutankhamun's remains were damaged when carter used intense heat to unstick resins gluing the body to the sarcophagus, Iskander said. "When you see the body (in photos), it looks like a burned chicken." Tutankhamun lies in the tomb where he was discovered near Luxor, although its golden treasures are exhibited in the National Museum of Cairo, where Amenhotep's body also rests, officials said. Iskander's team, along with Egyptian geneticists, will work with archaeologists and medical doctors from Tokyo's Waseda University and Nagoya University in Central Japan. "Our final goal is to map out the lineage of the kingdom," the two Japanese universities announced in a statement from Tokyo earlier on Tuesday. Researchers want to settle a dispute over whether Tutankhamun was the son of Amenhotep III or Akhenaten, who was known to worship one God, according to Mohammed al-Saghir, a specialist at the Ministry of Culture. Samples also may be taken from two mummies found in a nearby grave to determine their ties to Tutankhamun, Iskander said.
One unidentified body may turn out to be Tutankhamun's mother, Queen Tye. The Japanese universities said they won the right last year from the Egyptian government to probe the mummy, beating researchers from the United States, Britain, France and Germany.
Iskander said the Japanese, which had first applied to test the DNA abroad, won out after making a new application to the antiquities authorities here, offering to do the work in Egypt in cooperation with the Egyptians. Tutankhamun was born in 1354 B.C. He ascended the throne at the age of nine and ruled until he died at 18.
His coffin, one of the few to escape the predations of grave robbers, was discovered by carter in the Valley of the Kings, in arid mountainous terrain on the west bank of the Nile near Luxor. Egyptian officials said the tomb will be closed to tourists on December 12 so researchers can begin work.