Was King Tut murdered? Did Akhenaten have both a male and female physiology? Did incest and inbreeding lead the Eighteenth Dynasty down a genetic dead end? Last month the Family of Tutankhamun Project attempted to answer these questions—and more—with the publication of a two-year forensic study of sixteen mummies of the Eighteenth Dynasty.
This article is the first of several in which we will attempt to put the research into layperson’s terms. First we will take a look at the what, who, where, why and how of the study itself.
Read the rest of this article »
Tags: Akhenaten, Albert Zink, Carsten Pusch, Eighteenth Dynasty, Family of Tutankhamun Project, Forensic Mummy Studies, Frank Ruhli, Freiberg-Kohlers Disease, Genetic Mapping, Gino Fornaciari, Journal of the American Medical Association, Paul Gostner, Robert Connolly, Stephen Buckley, Tutankhamun, Yehia Zakaria Gad, Zahi Hawass
The Nefertiti Summit has passed by, leaving little more in its wake than a flurry of media reports which all say basically the same thing, summarized here for your convenience. 
The Nefertiti Summit has been moved back from December 8 to December 20, according to a recent article appearing on Qatar’s The Peninsula: “
King Tut is known as the Boy King for two reasons. The first is the young age at which he assumed the throne—around eight or nine. The second is that he died at around nineteen, so he never really reached adulthood. Why he died so young is a question that has been with us since his tomb was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922.
Zahi Hawass has never been terribly shy about sharing his opinion, and by now everyone with even a peripheral interest in either Egyptology or R&B music has heard about the Beyonce incident. But while most coverage has ranged from treating Dr. Hawass like an irascible uncle to bemoaning his lack of diplomacy, there is a larger story broiling beneath what otherwise appears to be a clash between a frustrated host and a spoiled Western Diva.
The Great Pyramid of Khufu has baffled professional Egyptologists and everyday people for millennia, but architect Jean-Pierre Houdin has proposed what many feel is the most likely, and certainly the most sensible, theory about the construction of Khufu’s Pyramid to date. This week France-5 of France Télévision aired a new documentary on Jean-Pierre Houdin’s work called Khéops Révélé.
Tutankhamun’s tomb lasted undisturbed for thousands of years, but after mere decades of constant visitors the most famous burial site in the world is on the endangered list. 
As the director of the Egyptian section of the Neues Museum in Berlin prepares to meet next month with Egyptian officials regarding the future of the bust of Nefertiti, both sides are beginning to hint at what evidence they may offer to support their respective positions. 
October has come and gone and it’s time to review our checklist of things Dr. Zahi Hawass had “promised, hinted, and suggested” would occur during—if not before—last month. So how did he do?
Almost everybody knows what the Great Sphinx of Giza is, but how much do we really know about it? In this article we will be looking at the role of sphinxes in Egyptian mythology—what they are, what they mean, and what they did. We will also be taking an in depth look at the history of the Great Sphinx. Who may have built it and why? When was it built? Do we really know?
