DNA test hopes to discover King Tut's children

Two mummified foetuses found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun are to be DNA tested to determine their link to the young pharaoh, Egypt announced today.

The two tiny female foetuses, found in the tomb in Luxor as part of the 1922 King Tut discovery, may be his stillborn children, the country’s Supreme Council of Antiquities said.

Its head Zahi Hawass said the tests will also try to determine Tutankhamun’s family lineage, a source of ambiguity among many Egyptologists.

“All of these results will be compared to each other, along with those of the mummy of King Tutankhamun,” he said.

There has been no archaeological indication that the young pharaoh, who died around the age of 19 under mysterious circumstances over 3,000 years ago, left any offspring.

Scholars believe that at the age of 12, Tutankhamun married his half-sister, Ankhesenamun but the couple had no surviving children.

Tutankhamun was one of the last kings of Egypt’s 18th Dynasty and ruled during a crucial, turmoil-filled period.

Ashraf Selim, a radiologist and member of the Egyptian team, said the tests could take several months. So far, the team has carried out CT scans on the two foetuses and taken samples for DNA tests.

Mr Hawass has announced ambitious plans for DNA tests on Egyptian mummies, including tests on all royal mummies and the nearly two dozen unidentified ones stored in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. He has said the tests may show that some royal mummies on display are not who archaeologists thought them to be.

Last year, Egypt announced that archaeologists had identified the mummy of Hatshepsut, Egypt’s most powerful queen and the only female pharaoh. But scientists later said they were still analysing DNA from the bald, 3,500-year-old mummy to try to back up the claim.

There is some secrecy surrounding Egypt’s DNA testing of mummies.

Mr Hawass has long rejected DNA testing on Egyptian mummies by foreign experts, and only recently allowed such projects on condition they be done exclusively by Egyptians.

He has never disclosed the full outcome of the examinations of Hatshepsut’s mummy or submitted results for a test by second lab, as it is a common practice in a DNA testing.

This has raised concerns about the validity of the Egyptian results.