Egypt’s chief antiquarian is dismissing a new theory that Queen Nefertiti could have been buried in the Valley of the Kings, doubting that a political outcast like her could have enjoyed such an honour.
British Egyptologist Joann Fletcher, who led an expedition financed by Discovery Channel, believes Nefertiti’s mummy was one of three discovered in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings in 1898, Discovery announced Monday.
But her theory was disputed by Zahi Hawas, secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, as well as by leading archeologists from France and other countries, including those also interviewed by Discovery.
Hawas refuted point by point the arguments presented by Fletcher to support her theory.
”This is not Nefertiti at all,” said Hawas.
”The Supreme Council will not allow any foreign archeological mission to make such announcements which are unsubstatiated with solid evidence,” Hawas said, accusing Fletcher of ”lack of experience.”
The physical resemblance between the mummy’s head and existing sculptures of Nefertiti are not significant because all the statues of the 14th century BC in Egypt had the same characteristics.
Nefertiti was the wife of King Akhenaton (Amenhotep IV), who rejected the ancient cult of Amon and transferred his capital to Tell al-Amarna to worship the one God — Aton.
She was a beauty honoured by a limestone bust exhibited in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, an artefact that Egypt wants to recover following a dispute this week over the temporary fusion of the bust with a modern statue.
Hawas also said Nefertiti had been implicated in the assassination of her husband’s successor, Smenkhkare, and was later in conflict with King Horemheb, who overthrew the monotheistic cult and erased all traces of it.
”Horemheb would therefore never have allowed her to be buried in the Valley of the Kings,” Hawas said.
Marc Gabolde, a senior Egyptologist at Montpellier III’s Paul Valery Univerity in France, also cast doubt on the theory.
”The theory that it’s Nefertiti’s (mummy) is based on the fact that the mummy wore a Nubian-style neckless and wig, but these are weak arguments, since they are not characteristics specific to Nefertiti,” he said.
”At the Cairo Museum, there are five or six other mummies which have the same characteristics,” he said. ”It’s the second time that one claims to have discovered Nefertiti in the same group of mummies.”
Fletcher said she was drawn to the tomb by her identification of a forgotten Nubian-style wig favored by royal women in the 18th dynasty — during the reign of Akhenaten — which had been found near three unidentified mummies.
An examination of the three mummies dated them to the same time period, she said, according to the Discovery Channel, which funded the study for a special to air on August 17.
Other clues included a doubled-pierced ear lobe, shaved head, and the clear impression of the tight-fitting brow-band worn by royalty, she said.
The mummy’s face had been slashed with a sharp instrument, and an X-ray revealed jewelry within the smashed-in chest cavity, researchers said.
”The identification is an interesting one, and will doubtless cause endless speculation,” said Salima Ikram, a leading expert on mummies at the American University in Cairo.
But Susan James, an Egyptologist who has long studied the three mummies, told Discovery Channel she was skeptical because of ”physical evidence known and published prior to this expedition.” – Sapa-AFP