THE SEARCH FOR HATSHEPSUTS MUMMY

After being lost to the desert for three millennia, a tiny piece of evidence revealed the truth to her whereabouts

Upon her death, the she-king was buried in tomb KV20 in the Valley of the Kings, alongside her father Thutmose I. However, when renowned Egyptologist Howard Carter excavated the tomb in 1903, he found nothing but a sarcophagus bearing her name; Hatshepsut’s mummy was nowhere to be seen.

In 2007, a fresh search was launched by the former Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs Zahi Hawass to find the missing pharaoh. A number of unidentified female mummies from the 18th Dynasty were lined up and examined using the latest technology. One of the prime suspects was a mummy from tomb KV60, just in front of tomb KV20, where two women had been found. One could be identified as Hatshepsut’s wet nurse thanks to the inscription on her coffin, the other an obese lady who had been found on the floor next to her.

Egyptologists had previously suggested that the mummy could be a royal one due to the positioning of the left arm across its chest, but only now did they have the technology to find out once and for all whether it belonged to Hatshepsut. The team performed CT scans of mummies known to be closely related to her, including the three Thutmoses, to try to create a composite image of the 18th Dynasty facial structure and compare it with the mummies in contention. While doing so, they also decided to scan other objects from the tombs, including a sealed wooden box bearing her cartouche. What this scan revealed proved to be the key to the mystery. In it, along with Hatshepsut’s mummified liver, was a single tooth. Not only was the obese mummy from KV60 missing a tooth, it was also an exact match for the loose one found in the box. Hatshepsut had finally been found.