egyptbc.com

Following the recent discovery of Queen Hatshepsut’s mummy, the Discovery Channel is, tonight, showing a programme that shares the detail of that find.

‘Secrets of Egypt’s Lost Queen’ promises an exciting look into how the discovery was made, via a range of scientific methods, including archaeology and forensics.

Hatshepsut may not have been discovered with a hoarde of treasure but the importance of discovering, and now identifying, her mummy may eclipse the the relevance of Tutankhamon’s unearthing in terms of historical interest.

Howard Carter’s unearthing of the tomb of Tutankhamon may have represented the first and only time that a full cache of treasure has been discovered but the boy king was otherwise unremarkable in the history of ancient Egypt.

Conversely, Hatshepsut was an important historical figure - the queen who stole the throne, dressed as a man and called herself a pharaoh. Despite leading Egypt through an extremely prosperous part of her history, Hatshepsut was all but obliterated from history, with almost all references to her removed after her death.

The programme tonight is a 2 hour special which follows Dr Zawi Hawass and a team of top forensic scientists as they use knowledge of royal mummification to firstly narrow the search for Hatshepsut down to four mummies.

Computer tomographic scanning further reduces the choice to two mummies but it is a box containing a tooth that perfectly fits one of those mummies that eventually leads to the positive identification of Hatshepsut.