The Doctor Weighs In

By Dov Michaeli MD, Ph.D

A few days ago the media were abuzz with the news that a tooth may have solved a mummy mystery (The New York Times, June 27, 2007 ). As a great fan of anything ancient and mysterious I ignored the really important news of Paris Hilton getting out of the slammer and delved into the article with great anticipation.

Who was Hatshepsut?

The 18^th dynasty of pharaohs started at the beginning of the 15^th century B.C. (that’s about 3500 years ago!), after about 200 years in which Egypt was in cultural, economic and military decline and was ruled by nomadic tribes, the Hyksos, that had come down from what is today Turkey. Ahmose I liberated Egypt , and established the arguably most powerful dynasty in ancient Egypt ’s history. Hatshepsut was his granddaughter.  She married her half brother Tuthmose II. He promptly died, and she became regent to his son from another marriage, Tuthmose III, who was too young to rule.

Now it’s getting more interesting. After seven years as a regent, Hatshepsut takes the extraordinary step of proclaiming herself a pharaoh (or a king, as in male king). Mind you, there had never been a female pharaoh before her; in a feat of diplomacy and cunning she managed to overturn over 2500 years of Egyptian tradition. And she proceeded to initiate a 15 year reign of extraordinary flowering of Egyptian art, architecture, and economic progress. Remarkably, this was accomplished without resorting to war and plunder, as was the rule in those days. And her reign came to a mysteriously abrupt end. I think we now know what happened.

You wouldn’t have guessed…

Using modern techniques, Egyptian archeologists examined a female mummy that had been discovered early last century. She was dubbed “the obese lady”, and was considered unimportant. They subjected a box that had the name Hatshepsut inscribed on it to a CT scan, and lo and behold they found there a tooth that seemed to belong to the obese mummy, as well as her embalmed liver. CT of the body confirmed that she was obese, diabetic, and had bad teeth. She died at age 50, probably of cancer; the reports vary between liver cancer and bone cancer.

Queen HatshepsutWhy would nobody guess such an ignominious demise? Because her statues depict a woman exuding beauty and power, with a gaze that will transfix you and a body that beats that Paris Hilton. Go see it in the Metropolitan museum when you are in New York .

There is still hope

I was crestfallen. To me she was more beautiful than Nefertiti (king Tut’s wife), and wiser than the ever-scheming Cleopatra. How could she fool me so and be fat, diabetic and worst, with poor teeth?

But all is not lost. With all due respect to the Egyptian dentist who determined that ‘if the tooth fits’, it must be hers. I would like to see independent confirmation based on forensic dentistry, including DNA analysis. And how did they make the diagnosis of diabetes? Show me the data! The claim that the fat lady belonged to the 18^th dynasty sounds convincing: mitochondrial DNA analysis showed connection to the matriarch of the dynasty. Still, can we please have some samples sent to bona fide molecular biology lab?

Diabetes: an ancient disease

We ‘pride’ ourselves for inventing Diabetes type II, because we massively overeat and are disgustingly inactive. but did we? I am reminded of my childhood neighborhood rabbi, who expressed his pride in the Jewish ancient culture by saying that “when they (meaning the Goyim) were still climbing trees, we Jews already had diabetes”. Point well taken.

But rabbi, wherever you are today, I just got the bad news: before there were any Jews at all, the Egyptians already suffered from diabetes, high blood pressure, and cancer. I hope this new Egyptian claim to fame does not inflame nationalistic passions and trigger a new war in the Middle East .