If the F.B.I.'s scientists could extract DNA from the 4,000-year-old mummy, they would add a powerful tool to their forensics arsenal and also unlock a new way of deciphering Egypt’s ancient past https://t.co/a1em2dIpBG — NYT Science (@NYTScience) April 2, 2018 
 
 A team of forensic scientists has managed to extract DNA from a 4,000-year-old mummy, and their finding has solved a century-old mystery of its ransacked tomb. 
 
 The Egyptian mummy wasn't a fully preserved corpse, but rather a decapitated, mutilated, bandage-wrapped head that archaeologists found on top of a coffin when they excavated a tomb back in 1915. And that was the source of the mystery. 
 
 As the researchers explained in a paper published March 1 in the journal Genes, the tomb belonged to an Egyptian Middle Kingdom governor named Djehutynakht. But by the time modern scientists found the tomb, it had been ransacked; it was robbed in ancient times. In an article describing the discovery, The New York Times reported that the robbers had set the place on fire "to cover their tracks." [Gallery: Amazing Egyptian Discoveries] 
 
 All that remained of the tomb's occupants was a dismembered torso in one corner of the tomb and a head placed on top of Djehutynakht's coffin. For more than a hundred years, researchers have wondered and disagreed about whether these mummified remains belonged to Djehutynakht himself or to his wife. 
 
 Deepening the mystery, the head had been altered during the mummification process, with several bones removed from the jaw and cheek in an effort to enable the deceased to eat and drink in the afterlife, the Times reported. Those bones might have offered clues as to whether the body was male or female. 
 
 That left DNA analysis. But extracting DNA from ancient Egyptian mummies, after centuries in hot, DNA-degrading environments, had never been achieved before. The Times reported that earlier attempts failed or produced contaminated results. 
 
 This is a good article by @SciFleur . You should read it. 
 
 
 
 But I can't be the only person who looks at this picture of the mummy's head and kind of sees a roast chicken. 
 
 
 
 Sorry (not sorry).https://t.co/28hbBGLeCe pic.twitter.com/AJjznpfodi — Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis (@KendraWrites) April 2, 2018 
 
 Still, FBI forensic researchers gave it a shot. They had access because the head, along with many artifacts from the tomb, had long since made its way to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. (Shipping artifacts out of Egypt would be illegal today under Egyptian law.) They drilled into a molar extracted from the head "in pristine condition" back in 2009, producing 105 milligrams (0.004 ounces) of tooth dust. After exposing the dust to a liquid mixture designed to copy and amplify existing DNA, they found that it came from a biological male. The head, in other words, most likely belonged to Djehutynakht and not his wife. A team at the Department of Homeland Security, working with a smaller tooth-dust sample, later confirmed the results. In both cases, the DNA was damaged, demonstrating that it came from the ancient mummy and not modern contamination. 
 
 Interestingly, it remains unclear which Djehutynakht the head (and tomb) belonged to. Two governors with that name ruled an area call Hare Nome, and, the researchers wrote, "while they shared the same name (which means Thoth [the main local deity] is Strong), there is no evidence they were related." 
 
 Originally published on Live Science. ||||| 1. Introduction 
 
 On 18 October 2009, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) opened an exhibition called The Secrets of Tomb 10A: Egypt 2000 BC . One of the most intriguing items in the collection was a mummified human head discovered over a century ago in the necropolis of Deir el-Bersha (also known as Dayr al-Barshā). The site is located on the east bank of the Nile River in close proximity to the city of Mallawi, approximately 250 km south of Cairo. Deir el-Bersha is known for tombs cut into cliffs of limestone that date back to the Old Kingdom (2686–2181 BC), the First Intermediate Period (about 2100–2040 BC) and the Middle Kingdom (MK; 2040–approx. 1640 BC). During the MK 11th and 12th Dynasties (2040–1783 BC), it served as the chief cemetery for the governors or regional lords (a.k.a. nomarchs) of the 15th Upper Egyptian Nome (a.k.a. the Hare Nome). 
 
 2, In 1915, Deir el-Bersha was excavated by a joint MFA-Harvard University team directed by George A. Reisner with the assistance of Hanford L. Story and Said Ahmed Said [ 1 ]. On 23 April, Reisner’s men began clearing the burial shaft from tomb number 10A. Six days later, at the bottom of a 30-foot pit, they discovered the burial chamber of an early MK governor named Djehutynakht. It is not yet clear whether he is Djehutynakht IV, son of Ahanakht I, or Djehutynakht V, son of Nehri I [ 1 3 ]. Both were nomarchs of the Hare Nome, and while they shared the same name (which means Thoth [the main local deity] is Strong), there is no evidence they were related. Tomb 10A contained a second occupant: the governor’s wife, who was also called Djehutynakht. Although the tomb had been plundered in antiquity and most of the valuable jewels stolen, many objects were left behind. In fact, the recovered contents of Tomb 10A are considered one of the largest burial assemblages of the MK ever discovered. The funerary equipment includes pottery, canopic jars, models showing men and women in different daily life activities, nearly 60 model boats, and a famous, exquisitely carved and painted processional group composed of a priest and four offering bearers, known as the “Bersha procession” [ 4 ]. Befitting their high status, the governor and his wife were both buried in finely decorated rectangular wooden coffins placed within larger coffins, all made of thick cedar of Lebanon boards. Upon discovery, the coffins of the governor were nearly intact with the exception of the head end that had been removed by tomb robbers. The intricate carvings and paintings on the governor’s outer coffin make it an unparalleled masterpiece of MK art (see pictures in [ 5 ]). 
 
 When the tomb was looted, the mummies of the governor and his wife were damaged by thieves in search of fine jewelry. A torso, originally attributed to Lady Djehutynakht, was found in the far corner of the burial chamber, but was recently argued to belong to the governor after re-excavation of Tomb 10A [ 6 ]. A mummified head, which could neither be attributed to the governor nor to his wife, was found atop the governor’s coffin ( Figure 1 ). 
 
 In an effort to learn more, the head was analyzed with computerized tomography (CT) in 2005. The CT scanning of the head revealed extensive bilateral post-mortem alterations of the facial bones [ 7 ]. The absence of these bones, together with the lack of comparative data on ancient Egyptian skulls, preclude definitive morphological sex determination; however, the presence of large mastoid processes, robust occipital and temporal regions, and pronounced gonial flaring of the mandible, suggest that the skull more likely belonged to a man [ 8 ], ( Figure S1 ). In order to unequivocally determine the biological sex of the individual, the MFA collaborated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Laboratory to perform DNA analysis. 
 
 At the time the FBI was contacted, the ancient DNA community had largely given up on the testing of ancient Egyptian human remains. Though DNA extraction and amplification from ancient Egyptian samples had been attempted in the early days of paleogenetics, these initial attempts either resulted in failure (4500-year-old human femurs [ 9 ]) or yielded data that turned out to be the product of modern DNA contamination (2400-year-old mummy [ 10 ] and 1600-year-old sacred monkey bones from the Saqqara Baboon Galleries [ 11 ]), both contaminated with modern human DNA). These early failures prompted studies on DNA survival [ 9 12 ]. Together with older research showing that DNA degradation (depurination in particular) is primarily influenced by temperature, pH, oxygen, and water [ 13 ], these analyses suggested that Egyptian environmental conditions likely cause DNA to degrade to fragments smaller than 100 base pairs (bp) in just a few hundred years [ 14 15 ]. 
 
 Currently, forensic DNA testing at the FBI, as well as in nearly all global operational laboratories, is based on targeted PCR amplification of fragments ranging from 90–1200 bp in size, followed by size-based capillary electrophoresis for short tandem repeats (STRs) or Sanger sequencing for mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). These approaches have served the forensic community well over the past twenty years. They present limitations, however, to both the quality and quantity of genetic data that can be recovered from the most challenging specimens. Recently, a number of commercial high throughput sequencing (HTS) assays, designed specifically for forensic applications, have become available [ 16 17 ]. While these assays overcome many of the limitations of traditional capillary electrophoresis-based forensic DNA analyses, they are still based on targeted amplification of defined genomic regions. As a result, their utility is limited to samples harboring DNA fragments large enough for PCR amplification. 
 
 One of the primary advantages of HTS is that DNA fragments of very short size can be recovered and sequenced, thus obviating the need for targeted PCR. Here, we exploit this feature and describe the use of shotgun sequencing to determine the biological sex of a 4000-year-old Egyptian mummy. ||||| Egyptian scientists are carrying out DNA tests on two mummified fetuses found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun to determine whether they are the young pharaoh's offspring, the antiquities authority said Wednesday. 
 
 The two tiny female fetuses, between five to seven months in gestational age, were found in King Tut's tomb in Luxor when it was discovered in 1922. 
 
 DNA samples from the fetuses "will be compared to each other, along with those of the mummy of King Tutankhamun," the head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, said in a statement. 
 
 The testing is part of a wider program to check the DNA of hundreds of mummies to determine their identities and family relations. 
 
 Hawass said the program could help determine Tutankhamun's family lineage, which has long been a source of mystery among Egyptologists. 
 
 • Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Archaeology Center. 
 
 The identity of Tut's parents is not firmly known. Many experts believe he is the son of Akhenaten, the 18th Dynasty pharaoh who tried to introduce monotheism to ancient Egypt, and one of Akhenaten's queens, Kiya. 
 
 But others have suggested he was the son of a lesser known pharaoh who followed Akhenaten. 
 
 Scholars believe that at age 12, Tutankhamun married Ankhesenamun — a daughter of Akhenaten by his better known wife Nefertiti — but the couple had no surviving children. 
 
 There has been no archaeological evidence that Tut, who died around the age of 19 under mysterious circumstances over 3,000 years ago, left any offspring. 
 
 Tutankhamun was one of the last kings of Egypt's 18th Dynasty and ruled during a crucial, turmoil-filled period when Akhenaten's monotheism was ended and powers were returned to the priests of ancient Egypt's multiple deities. 
 
 The council said that if the tiny mummies are unrelated to Tut, they may have been placed in his tomb to allow him to "live as a newborn in the afterlife." 
 
 Ashraf Selim, a radiologist and member of the Egyptian team, said the tests could take several months. So far, the team has carried out CT scans on the two fetuses and taken samples for DNA tests. 
 
 "We want to find out the truth and facts relevant to the history of these kings," Selim told The Associated Press. 
 
 Since they were found in King Tut's tomb, the mummified fetuses were kept in storage at the Cairo School of Medicine and were never publicly displayed or studied, Selim said. 
 
 Hawass has announced ambitious plans for DNA tests on Egyptian mummies, including tests on all royal mummies and the nearly two dozen unidentified ones stored in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. 
 
 He has said the tests may show that some royal mummies on display are not who archaeologists thought them to be. 
 
 One of his top goals is to find the mummy of Nefertiti, the queen legendary for her beauty. 
 
 Last year, Egypt announced that archaeologists had identified the mummy of Hatshepsut, Egypt's most powerful queen and the only female pharaoh. But scientists later said they were still analyzing DNA from the bald, 3,500-year-old mummy to try to back up the claim. 
 
 There is some secrecy surrounding Egypt's DNA testing of mummies. 
 
 Hawass has long rejected such testing by foreign experts, and only recently allowed it on condition the tests be done exclusively by Egyptians. 
 
 A $5 million DNA lab was created at the Egyptian Museum, with funding from the Discovery Channel. 
 
 Some experts have warned that Hawass is making claims like that of Hatshepsut too quickly, without submitting samples to a second lab to corroborate DNA tests or publishing the results in peer-reviewed journals, both common practice. 
 
 The council announced in its statement Wednesday that the government had agreed with Cairo University's Faculty of Medicine to open a second DNA testing lab, though it did not give details on funding for the lab or when it could begin work. 
 
 Abdel-Halim Nour el-Deen, a former head of the council and a leading Egyptologist said DNA testing on mummies thousands of years old is very difficult. 
 
 "It is doubtful that it could produce a scientific result to determine such important issues such as the lineage of pharaohs," Nour el-Deen told the AP. 
 
 Nour el-Deen also criticized the antiquities authority for not making public the results of the tests already carried out.
– It has to rank among the less usual undertakings doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital had attempted: In 2009 they removed a molar from a severed Egyptian mummy's head via an endoscope with grasping forceps they inserted through the neck. The tooth was a hopeful clue in a nearly century-old mystery—one that still wouldn't be solved for years to come. The head (see it here) was discovered in 1915 in Deir el-Bersha, south of Cairo, in a room built for a governor named Djehutynakht and his wife 4,000 years ago. It had been looted by grave robbers, and the identity of the head—was it Djehutynakht's or his wife's?—remained unclear. A DNA test could provide the answer, but no mummy of that age had given up usable, reliable DNA, and "the ancient DNA community had largely given up on the testing" of such remains, per a report in the journal Genes. The molar was their best bet, and scientists tried and failed to get it to give up its DNA. Then, in 2016, the tooth made its way to the FBI's Dr. Odile Loreille, a forensic scientist with a long history of working with old and ancient DNA; the New York Times reports she has identified Korean War victims, a 2-year-old who died on the Titanic, and the remains of two children of Russian Tsar Nicholas II. She managed to retrieve a tiny bit of powder—just 0.004 ounces, per LiveScience—from the tooth's core, and the ratio of chromosomes it contained proved it was male DNA: Governor Djehutynakht. The Times sums up the significance: "In doing so she had help[ed] establish that ancient Egyptian DNA could be extracted from mummies." (This Egyptian coffin is "dowdy," but the inside is astonishing.)