Biological age of skeletonized mummy from Tomb KV 55 at Thebes - Strouhal - 2010

The on-going discussion by Egyptologists and anthropologists concerning the fate of Akhenaten's body, has allegedly been solved recently by his identification with the skeletonized mummy originally found in 1907, in the rock of Tomb 55 in the Valley of the Kings at Thebes (Hawass et al. 2010). By a meticulous re-examination of the male skeletal remains from tomb KV 55 by the author of this paper, a number of features demonstrate that his biological age at death was in the range of 19-22 years, strengthened by the complete absence of even incipient dental or osseous agedependent pathological changes. Since Akhenaten's reign was at least 17 years according to Egyptological sources, he could not have started to reign as a 2-5 year old child. On the other hand, his elder brother Smenkhkare, if he died as a 19-22 year old, could easily have reigned for 3 or more years. The striking resemblance of Tutankhamun and the man from KV 55 confirms highly probability of their brotherhood and the identification of the latter as Smenkhkare.

Keywords

Tomb 55 - Thebes - Egypt - Skeletal anthropology - Age features - Identification

Full text (PDF)

Export citation

Related articles