Younger Lady

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Right profile of the mummy from KV35 .

With Younger Lady (English for "younger lady") an ancient Egyptian mummy discovered in the Valley of the Kings is referred to. It was found in 1898 by the archaeologist Victor Loret together with many other royal mummies in grave KV35 , the grave of Amenophis II . The mummy was identified in 2010 as the mother of Tutankhamun and the daughter of the royal couple Amenhotep III by means of DNA analysis . and Teje to be identified. It is alternatively known as KV35YL (“YL” for “Younger Lady”) and is currently in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo (inventory number CG 61072 ).

Discovery and Identification

The mummy was found in grave KV35 between two other mummies: a boy who died at the age of about ten years, who is either Prince Webensenu or Thutmose , and an elderly woman ( KV35EL - Elder Lady ), who is known as Queen Teje could be identified. All three mummies were found lying naked next to each other and unidentified in a small antechamber of the tomb. They were in very poor condition as they had been largely destroyed by ancient grave robbers.

Drawing by Grafton Elliot Smith showing the extensive destruction of the mummy.

Much has been speculated about the identity of the Younger Lady. When Victor Loret found the mummy, he initially thought it was a young man because of the bald skull. Later, Grafton Elliot Smith (1871–1937) conducted a closer investigation and found that the mummy was female, but Loret's original misinterpretation persisted for a long time. In 2007, Zahi Hawass announced to the public that a recent investigation had confirmed the mummy's male sex. A little later, Hawass announced that he had now succeeded in identifying the body as that of the Kija . It was not until 2010 that autosomal and mitochondrial DNA tests could finally prove that the mummy is female, and that it was the mother of Tutankhamun and the daughter of Amenhotep III. and Queen Teje was.

The mummy from grave KV55 could be identified as the father of Tutankhamun, who also turned out to be the brother of the Younger Lady. Some Egyptologists , including Zahi Hawass , consider it the mummy of Akhenaten , while others, such as the anthropologist Joyce Filer, see it as the mummy of Semenchkare .

According to the results of the investigation, it is unlikely that the Younger Lady (or Tutankhamun's mother) could be Nefertiti or Akhenaten's second wife Kija , since neither of them has the title “King's Daughter” or “King's Sister”. Equally doubtful is the equation of the Younger Lady with one of Amenhotep III. - Daughters Sitamun , Iset or Henuttaunebu , all of whom were Great Royal Wives of their father. If they had married Akhenaten, one of them should have taken the place of Nefertiti as Queen of Egypt. The possibility of attributing the mummy to Nebet-tah or Baketaton , both of whom are also daughters of Amenhotep III, seems more realistic . were, however, not married to this one.

description

Grafton Elliot Smith provided an extensive description of the Younger Lady in his Review of the Royal Mummies in the early twentieth century. According to this, the mummy was 1.58 meters tall and no older than 25 years at the time of death. Smith also mentioned the damage caused by ancient grave robbers. The grave robbers smashed the mummy's chest and tore off the right arm below the shoulder. The right ear was also broken off and a 38 × 30 mm hole was made in the frontal bone. Smith found that the method of embalming was consistent with the mummy of Amenhotep II and other contemporary mummies, and suggested that the Younger Lady was closely related to this.

Injuries to the mummy's mouth and left cheek, which also destroyed parts of the jaw, were originally believed to be the work of grave robbers, but a new examination, which took place at the same time as the genetic tests, showed that the injuries were inflicted before death and the wounds ultimately led to the death of the woman.

literature

  • Grafton Elliot Smith: The Royal Mummies. Imprimerie de L'institut Francais D'archeologie Orientale, Cairo 1912, p. 40ff, ( (DT57.C2 Vol. 59) online )
  • Nicholas Reeves , Richard H. Wilkinson : The Valley of the Kings. Mysterious realm of the dead of the pharaohs . Weltbild Verlag, Augsburg 2000, ISBN 3-8289-0739-3 , p. 198-207 .
  • Zahi Hawass , YZ Gad, S. Ismail et al. a .: Ancestry and Pathology in King Tutankhamun's Family . In: JAMA: the Journal of the American Medical Association . 303, No. 7, February 2010, pp. 638-47. doi : 10.1001 / jama.2010.121 . PMID 20159872 .
  • Orell Witthuhn: The body of a woman . In: Gabriele Höber-Kamel (ed.): Nefertiti, Kemet issue 3/2010 . 2010, ISSN  0943-5972 , p. 19-22 .

Web links

Commons : Younger Lady  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ N. Reeves, RH Wilkinson: The Valley of the Kings. Mysterious realm of the dead of the pharaohs. Augsburg 2000, p. 198.
  2. ^ G. Elliot Smith: The Royal Mummies. Cairo 1912; Reprint 1912: Duckworth Publishers, London 2000, ISBN 0-7156-2959-X , p. 117.
  3. ↑ a b c Zahi Hawass, YZ Gad, S. Ismail u. a .: Ancestry and Pathology in King Tutankhamun's Family . In: JAMA: the Journal of the American Medical Association . 303, No. 7, February 2010, pp. 638-47. doi : 10.1001 / jama.2010.121 . PMID 20159872 .
  4. ↑ a b c Zahi Hawass u. a .: Ancestry and pathology in King Tutankhamun's family. In: JAMA. 2010, Volume 303, No. 7, eAppendix p. 3.
  5. ^ G. Elliot Smith: The Royal Mummies. Cairo 1912; Reprint 1912: London 2000, p. 40.
  6. ↑ a b c d G. Elliot Smith: The Royal Mummies. Cairo 1912; Reprint 1912: London 2000, p. 41.
personal data
SURNAME Younger Lady
ALTERNATIVE NAMES KV35YL
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Mother of Tutankhamun , daughter of Amenhotep III. and Teje
DATE OF BIRTH 14th century BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH 14th century BC Chr.