FBI pins down Egyptian mummy’s identity from severed head
CAIRO/BOSTON: Using cuttingedge technology, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has solved a century-old archaeological mystery of the identity of a 4,000-year-old Egyptian mummy, after extracting DNA from its tooth.
Since 1915, when the severed head of a mummy was discovered in the corner of a looted tomb in the ancient Egyptian necropolis of Deir el-bersha, archaeologists have been puzzled by its identity.
Despite deciphering that the tomb belonged to a governor named Djehutynakht and his wife, they have long deliberated over whose head it was.
“We never knew whether it was Mr Djehutynakht or Mrs Djehutynakht,” CNN quoted Rita Freed, a curator at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), as saying.
The Boston MFA has stored the tomb’s contents since 1920.
Now, almost 100 years later, thanks to research by the FBI published in the journal Genes, they definitively say the head was of a male and belonged to the governor himself.
For Freed, this not only marks the culmination of a century-old archaeological enigma, but is also a testament to the technological advances in DNA testing.
“We now know the FBI has developed a technique to reconstruct the most degraded DNA. If they can reconstruct DNA from a 4,000-year-old tooth, they can reconstruct it from just about anything,” she said.
The sheer age of the head, as well as the desert environment it was found in, had made it difficult to extract DNA.