Tooth clinches identification of Egyptian queen

By Jonathan Wright

CAIRO (Reuters) - A single tooth has clinched the identification of an ancient mummy as that of Queen Hatshepsut, who ruled Egypt about 3,500 years ago, the country's chief archaeologist said on Wednesday.

The right mummy turned out to be that of a fat woman in her 50s who had rotten teeth and died of bone cancer, Zahi Hawass told a news conference to announce the identification.

It was found in 1903 in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings, where the young Pharaoh Tutankhamun was buried, and Hawass himself thought until recently that it belonged to the owner of the tomb, Hatshepsut's wet-nurse by the name of Sitre In.

But the decisive evidence was a molar in a wooden box inscribed with the queen's name, found in 1881 in a cache of royal mummies collected and hidden away for safekeeping at the Deir al-Bahari temple about 1,000 metres (yards) away.

During the embalming process, it was common to set aside spare body parts and preserve them in such a box.

Orthodontics professor Yehya Zakariya checked all the mummies which might be Hatshepsut's and found that the tooth was a perfect fit in a gap in the upper jaw of the fat woman.

"The identification of the tooth with the jaw can show this is Hatshepsut," Hawass said. "A tooth is like a fingerprint."

"It is 100 percent definitive. It is 1.80 cm (wide) and the dentist took the measurement and studied that part. He found it fit exactly 100 percent with this part," he told Reuters.