Eh Up - Trouble at Pyramid for Tuts

WERE SOME OF THE PHARAOHS WESTERN EUROPEANS?

A friend (Tom Roberson) has recently reminded me of the speculation that has resulted from collaboration between Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) and the University of Tübingen on exploring the family links between mummified members of the Thutmosid dynasty using YDNA testing – and the apparent finding that the males in the family fell into the R1B class (and possibly even the narrower R1b1b2 sub-class).

As the latter is now common in Western Europe, this has spurred all kinds of theories and fantasies about the racial and cultural antecedents of Egypt’s pharaohs, by commnetators who include racial supremacists, conspiracy theorists and a lady who calls herself Miriam ha Kedosha, Queen of Zion.

By freezing the frames on a video about the scientific research, Robert Tarin and others have deduced the following values for Tutankhamun’s YDNA:

456 (13-18) = 15
389i (9-16) = 13
390 (17-28) = 24
389ii (24-34) = 30
458 (14-20) = 16
19 (10-19) = 8/14 (dual peak)
385a (7-25) = 11
385b (7-25) = 14 (? not clear in video)
393 (8-17) = 13
391 (6-14) = 11
439 (8-15) = 10
635 (19-26) = 23
392 (6-18) = 13
YGATAH4 (8-13) = 11 (10 FtDNA nomenclature)
437 (13-18) = 9/14 (dual peak)
438 (8-13) = 12
448 (16-24) = 19.

Attempted matching of the 3,300-year DNA from the mummies with modern YDNA from males in Tunisia, and the Druze communities of the Levant has not been entirely convincing (if the deduced sequence is to be believed). And there are good historic reasons that could otherwise explain the occurrence of Western European YDNA in North Africa (the Vandal invasion) and the Eastern Mediterranean (Crusader incursions).

As ‘Maciamo’ Satyavrata commented on the Eupedia YDNA Forum, on 19 February, 2010:

‘The results appear to be R1b and indeed the European R1b1b2 rather than the Levantine/Egyptian R1b1a. R1b1b2 is quite rare in modern Egypt (2% of the population) and was assumed to have come mostly through the Greek and Roman occupation. R1b1a makes up 4% of the Egyptian male lineages and dates from the Paleolithic.

The 18th dynasty (starting in 1570 BCE) follows the period of Indo-European expansion to Europe (4300-2000 BCE), India, Persia and the Middle-East (1700-1500 BCE). The Hittites took over central Anatolia from 1750 BCE, and the Mitanni (of Indo-Iranian origin) ruled Syria from circa 1500 BCE.

Egypt's 18th dynasty inaugurated the New Kingdom after the Second Intermediate Period, when the Hyksos ("foreign rulers") took over power between 1650 and 1570 BCE. It is very possible that the 18th Dynasty was of Hyksos origin, which could be Hittite or of other Indo-European origin. The Hyksos were described as bowmen and cavalrymen wearing the cloaks of many colors associated with the mercenary Mitanni.

This strongly suggests an Indo-European origin indeed, as the steppe people were mounted archers, and the Mitanni are of proven Indo-European origin’.

Others have gone so far as to suggest a Scottish YDNA link – one that is closely related to my own ancestors, the descendants of the Brythonic-speaking ‘Owd Lads’ of Yr Hen Ogledd (The ‘Old North’ of England).

As can be seen from the chart below, the Pharaohs had more than a passing genetic resemblance to the McLeods - and similar if slightly lower levels of correspondence to the Shorrocks of Lancashire and the Davenports of Cheshire.


PHARAONIC LINK EXPLAINS LANCASHIRE MUMMY-IN-LAW FETISH

Well, in the light of my previous post which gave some prominence to one of my great heroes, the Lancashire-born comedian Les Dawson, the ‘Blood of the Pharaohs’ mystery has endless potential as a platform for reframing savage and exotic history within the severely ordinary back streets of Lancashire’s mill towns.

And as Les variously claimed at different times that Hitler was his mother-in-law and that he was the orphaned and abandoned heir to the Datsun fortune, it would be surprising if, had he been apprised of the recent scientific findings, he had refrained from claiming a familial link to the rulers of ancient Egypt.

And he would have played on the mutual distrust of mothers-in-law among the Lancastrians and their ancestors, the Egyptians.

Looking back three thousand years or more, Les would have surely sympathized in particular with the Pharaoh Thutmose III who ‘succeeded his mother in law Hatshepsut with her death, and revenged himself by defacing her monuments’.

As he recalled in a famous conversation with the singer Shirley Bassey:

‘I slept badly last night. I suffered from my hideous recurrent nightmare that my mother-in-law is chasing me down the Nile with a crocodile on a lead. I was wearing nothing but a pith helmet and a pair of gannet spats.

I could smell the hot rancid breath on the back of my neck, hear those great jaws snapping in anger, and see those great yellow eyes full of primeval hatred devouring me’.

‘Oh how terrible’, says Shirley.

‘That’s nothing’ says Les. ‘Let me tell you about the crocodile’.



THE SERIOUS STORY - DNA TESTS REVEAL MYSTERIES OF BOY-KING TUT

[by Ker Than, Fox News, February 17, 2010]

The face of the linen-wrapped mummy of King Tutankhamun is shown above. It seems that Egypt's famed King Tutankhamun suffered from a cleft palate and club foot, likely forcing him to walk with a cane, and died from complications from a broken leg exacerbated by malaria, according to the most extensive study ever of his mummy.

King Tut may be seen as the golden boy of ancient Egypt today, but during his reign, Tutankhamun wasn't exactly a strapping sun god. Instead, a new DNA study says, King Tut was a frail pharaoh, beset by malaria and a bone disorder—and possibly compromised by his newly discovered incestuous origins.

The report is the first DNA study ever conducted with ancient Egyptian royal mummies. It apparently solves several mysteries surrounding King Tut, including how he died and who his parents were. In conjunction with a press conference in Egypt, many new photographs of the family of mummies have been made available.

"He was not a very strong pharaoh. He was not riding the chariots," said study team member Carsten Pusch, a geneticist at Germany's University of Tübingen. "Picture instead a frail, weak boy who had a bit of a club foot and who needed a cane to walk."

Regarding the revelation that King Tut's mother and father were brother and sister, Pusch said. "Inbreeding is not an advantage for biological or genetic fitness.

Normally the health and immune system are reduced and malformations increase," he said.

DNA testing of the world famous mummy of King Tutankhamun have unlocked the boy-king's secrets.

From tombs more than 4,000 years old to the Great Pyramids of Giza to mummies, the latest archaeology finds from ancient Egypt's vibrant history.

Tutankhamun was a pharaoh during ancient Egypt's New Kingdom era, about 3,300 years ago. He ascended to the throne at the age of 9 but ruled for only ten years before dying at 19. Despite his brief reign, King Tut is perhaps Egypt's best known pharaoh because of the wealth of treasures—including a solid gold death mask—found during the surprise discovery of his intact tomb in 1922.

The new study, published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, marks the first time the Egyptian government has allowed genetic studies to be performed using royal mummies.

"This will open to us a new era," said project leader Zahi Hawass, the Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) and a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence. (National Geographic News is part of the National Geographic Society.)

"I'm very happy this is an Egyptian project and I'm very proud of the work that we did."

THE TUT FAMILY

In the new study, the mummies of King Tut and ten other royals that researchers have long suspected were his close relatives were examined. Of these ten, the identities of only three had been known for certain.

Using DNA samples taken from the mummies' bones, the scientists were able to create a five-generation family tree for the boy pharaoh.

The team looked for shared genetic sequences in the Y chromosome—a bundle of DNA passed only from father to son—to identify King Tut's male ancestors. The researchers then determined parentage for the mummies by looking for signs that a mummy's genes are a blend of a specific couple's DNA.

In this way, the team was able to determine that a mummy known until now as KV55 is the "heretic king" Akenhaten—and that he was King Tut's father. Akenhaten was best known for abolishing ancient Egypt's pantheon in favor of worshipping only one god.

Furthermore, the mummy known as KV35 was King Tut's grandfather, the pharaoh Amenhotep III, whose reign was marked by unprecedented prosperity.

Preliminary DNA evidence also indicates that two stillborn fetuses entombed with King Tut when he died were daughters whom he likely fathered with his chief queen Ankhensenamun, whose mummy may also have finally been identified.

Also, a mummy previously known as the Elder Lady is Queen Tiye, King Tut's grandmother and wife of Amenhotep III.

King Tut's mother is a mummy researchers had been calling the Younger Lady.

While the body of King Tut's mother has finally been revealed, her identity remains a mystery. DNA studies show that she was the daughter of Amenhotep III and Tiye and thus was the full sister of her husband, Akhenaten.

Some Egyptologists have speculated that King Tut's mother was Akenhaten's chief wife, Queen Nefertiti—made famous by an iconic bust. But the new findings seem to challenge this idea, because historical records do not indicate that Nefertiti and Akenhaten were related.

Instead, the sister with whom Akenhaten fathered King Tut may have been a minor wife or concubine, which would not have been unusual. Doing so would not have been unusual, said Willeke Wendrich, a UCLA Egyptologist who was not involved in the study.

"Egyptian pharaohs had multiple wives, and often multiple sons who would potentially compete for the throne after the death of their father," Wendrich said. Inbreeding would also not have been considered unusual among Egyptian royalty of the time.

INFIRMITY UNWRAPPED

The team's examination of King Tut's body also revealed previously unknown deformations in the king's left foot caused by the necrosis, or death, of bone tissue.

"Necrosis is always bad because it means you have dying organic matter inside your body," study team member Pusch told National Geographic News.

The affliction would have been painful and forced King Tut to walk with a cane—many of which were found in his tomb—but it would not have been life threatening.
Malaria, however, would have been a serious danger.

The scientists found DNA from the mosquito-borne parasite that causes malaria in the young pharaoh's body—the oldest known genetic proof of the disease.

The team found more than one strain of malaria parasite, indicating that King Tut caught multiple malarial infections during his life. The strains belong to the parasite responsible for malaria tropica, the most virulent and deadly form of the disease.

The malaria would have weakened King Tut's immune system and interfered with the healing of his foot. These factors, combined with the fracture in his left thighbone, which scientists had discovered in 2005, may have ultimately been what killed the young king, the authors write.

Until now the best guesses as to how King Tut died have included a hunting accident, a blood infection, a blow to the head, and poisoning.

UCLA's Wendrich said the new finding "lays to rest the completely baseless theories about the murder of Tutankhamun."

JUST A REGULAR GUY

Another speculation apparently laid to rest by the new study is that Akhenaten had a genetic disorder that caused him to develop the feminine features seen in his statutes, including wide hips, a potbelly, and the female-like breasts associated with the condition gynecomastia.

When the team analyzed Akenhaten's body using medical scanners, no evidence of such abnormalities were found. Hawass and his team concluded that the feminized features found in the statues of Akenhaten created during his reign were done for religious and political reasons.

In ancient Egypt, Akhenaten was a god, Hawass explained. "The poems said of him, 'you are the man, and you are the woman,' so artists put the picture of a man and a woman in his body."

Egyptologist John Darnell of Yale University called the revelation that Akhenaten's appearance was not due to genetic disorders "the most important result" of the new study.

In his book Tutankhamun's Armies, Darnell proposes that Akhenaten's androgynous appearance in art was an attempt to associate himself with Aten, the original creator god in Egyptian theology, who was neither male nor female.

"Akenhaten is odd in his appearance because he belongs to the time of creation, not because he was physically different," said Darnell, who also did not participate in the DNA research.

"People will now need to consider Akenhaten as a thinker, and not just as an Egyptian Quasimodo."

BEAUTIFUL DNA

The generally good condition of the DNA from the royal mummies of King Tut's family surprised many members of the team. Indeed, its quality was better than DNA gathered from nonroyal Egyptian mummies several centuries younger, study co-author Pusch said.

The DNA of the Elder Lady, for example, "was the most beautiful DNA that I've ever seen from an ancient specimen," Pusch said. The team suspects that the embalming method the ancient Egyptians used to preserve the royal mummies inadvertently protected DNA as well as flesh.

"The ingredients used to embalm the royals was completely different in both quantity and quality compared to the normal population in ancient times," Pusch explained. Preserving DNA "was not the aim of the Egyptian priest of course, but the embalming method they used was lucky for us."

More Muxt-Up but Disadvantage Persists

MASON-DIXON LINE BLURRED-NIXED

Susan Saulny is running an interesting series of articles in the New York Times on the increasing homogenization of the American population through accelerating ethnic mixing (see video above).

The articles so far are:

• ‘Black? White? Asian? More Young Americans Choose All of the Above’ (30 January)
• ‘Counting by Race Can Throw Off Some Numbers’ (10 February)
• ‘Black and White and Married in the Deep South: A Shifting Image’ (20 March).

And the New York Times is also giving its readers the opportunity to illustrate their multi-ethnic ancestry by providing an interactive plotter – see: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/us/family-trees.html?ref=us#index. You can try this out yourself.

Taken overall though, the process of mixing in the USA (see illustrations) is simply part of a worldwide trend that is quickening exponentially.




With respect to my own family, my step-father once commented around 1960, that even though he had only moved during his lifetime a mere 5 miles from a farm in Church Minshull, Cheshire to a farm in Wettenhall, Cheshire, he was still regarded as a ‘strug’ (i.e. stranger) by the locals after a ten year residency.

He, his mother and father, and their parents (7 in all) were all born and lived within a small group of villages in South Cheshire.

As for me, I was radically unusual in having a father who originated in London (though his father had migrated to London from Lancashire). My mother used to tell the story of my father’s terrible faux pas as an in-comer from the South of England in referring to Shav(v)-ington as Shav(e)-ington.

In fact, my family mix was extremely exotic in comparison to that of my primary school contemporaries, with representatives in my own 14 immediate ancestors from London, Norfolk, Hampshire, Northamptonshire, Lancashire and Cheshire.

And these ancestors were spread across the North-South Divide (see map).



Which again sparks a whimsical comparison with the USA, where the New York Times is running an ever excellent series of articles on ‘Disunion’, noting that, in the country’s most perilous period ‘One hundred and fifty years ago, Americans went to war with themselves’.

In England, a war between the North and the South has never actually broken out, though tensions still simmer.

However, the possibility and evolution of such a conflict has been enshrined in literature – notably Les Dawson’s ‘Come Back with the Wind’ which draws its inspiration from ‘Gone with the Wind’.

The Civil War / War Between the Counties is seen as having resulted from ‘generations of class oppression and impoverishment’, which even bring together arch rivals Yorkshire and Lancashire to take on ‘the warm, unmanly South’.

And as Secession takes hold, Northerners increasingly opt for the new Confederacy, 'from the depressed ghettos of Tyneside and Glasgow to the silent docks of Liverpool and Hull', under a battle standard displaying Yorkshire Pudding and Lancashire Black Pudding on a background of chips (i.e. French Fries).

As in the USA, the North eventually triumphs, with the melodrama focusing on Henley-on-Thames, where as the war draws to a close, the noble Ashley Whelks fights with dubious Albert 'Red' Butler for the hand and more of Carla O'Mara. While a semblance of their old life continues as a backdrop for passion, and mint juleps are sipped on the verandahs of portico-fringed mansions by the Thames, the Northern armies grow ever nearer, bombarding Henley with puddings (of both the Yorkshire and small goods varieties).

As Les says (echoing Abraham Lincoln):

'For years in the South you have allowed the economic conditions of the industrial north to go unchecked. Promises were made and broken. In a country as small as ours it is inconceivable that so little is known about the northern way of life to anyone living south of Watford Gap.'

Judging from the recent article below, not much has changed.

NORTH-SOUTH HEALTH DIVIDE ‘KILLS THOUSANDS EVERY YEAR’

[by Jeremy Laurance, UK Independent, 16 February 2011]

The risk of dying in the North is 22% higher than in the South East of England. The health divide between the North and South of the country is at its widest for 40 years and is claiming the lives of tens of thousands of people before their time, a study has found.

Every year 37,000 people – enough to fill a football stadium – die in the North earlier than their counterparts in the South. But all efforts to narrow the gap have failed. Premature deaths before the age of 75 are a fifth higher in the North, and the gap has changed little since the 1960s. It even widened between 2000 and 2008 despite government expenditure of £20bn on initiatives supposed to close it.

The divide has persisted despite large improvements in health in all regions of the country over the past 40 years. Death rates have fallen by 50 per cent in men and 40 per cent in women since 1965, with both the North and South seeing similar reductions. But the North has never caught up with the South and, in the last decade, seems to be slipping further behind.

Researchers warned yesterday that the excess toll of ill health and disability in the North was "decimating [the region] at the rate of one major city every decade". It is certain to get worse as the effects of the recession are felt disproportionately in the North.

Iain Buchan, professor of public health informatics at the University of Manchester, who led the study, which was published online in the British Medical Journal, said that genetic, climatic and environmental differences could "in no way" account for the gap.

Rather than pinning the blame on differences in lifestyle such as smoking and drinking, the key factor behind the gap was money, he said.

"The counter-intuitive fact is that the behavioural differences we can measure account for just one fifth of the gap. The difference in smoking, for example, accounts for only 14 per cent [of the northern excess deaths]. But there is a large body of evidence that shows that the amount of disposable income has a much greater effect.

"Social and economic factors are extremely reliable predictors of health. If you put more resources into an area, or take them out, its health will improve or decline. It would be unheard of for economic growth not to translate into better health."

The health divide mirrors the income disparity between North and South, the researchers say. The "gross value added per head" – a measure of the state of the local economy – was 40 per cent higher in the South than the North in 2008, having risen from 25 per cent in 1989.

The cash people had to spend – their "disposable income" – was more than 26 per cent higher in the South, up from 21 per cent in 1995, even after allowing for the higher cost of living.

Professor Buchan said the North-South divide had persisted since 1066 and reflected a London-centric nation with power and money concentrated in the South for the last 1,000 years.

Benjamin Disraeli wrote that England was a tale of two countries and William Farr, the 19th-century epidemiologist and founder of medical statistics, blamed the divide on the habit of healthier people in the North migrating to better-off areas in the South, leaving their sickly peers behind.

Migration may still be a factor maintaining the divide but is unlikely to be a major one, the researchers say. Spending on the NHS is inadequate in the North, relative to the high health needs.

The Commons Public Accounts Committee accused the Government of failing to address the shortage of GPs in the North in its report on health inequalities last October. Two-thirds of the areas with the highest deprivation were failing to get the money they were due for dealing with excess ill health, it said.

Professor Buchan said the failure of the huge injection of funds by the previous Labour government to close the health gap demonstrated the difficulty of overcoming the social and economic forces driving North and South apart.

"We have to target business development in the North – the South is overworked. The challenge is to have an investment strategy to make the country less London-centric. If we want better health in the North it has to go hand in hand with social and economic change."

THE NORTH-SOUTH DIVIDE IN NUMBERS

House prices

The value of homes in the South rose last year, led by a 6.3 per cent increase in London. Average prices dipped in the North, with the North-east experiencing a 3.3 per cent fall, according to the Land Registry.
Income

In 2008, average disposable household income was £19,038 in London and £16,792 in the South-east, according to the Office for National Statistics. This was against £12,543 in the North-east. London households earned more than 28 per cent over the national average in 2008.

Unemployment

In the 12 months ending June 2010, the highest unemployment rate in Britain was in Kingston-upon-Hull, East Yorkshire, at 14 .1 per cent, followed by Blaenau Gwent in Wales at 13.8 per cent. The region with the narrowest spread of unemployment rates was the South-west, where the highest rate of unemployment was found in Torbay, at 8.8 per cent.

Shops lying vacant

The Local Data Company described a "large and growing" divide. In 2010, 90 per cent of the top 25 large towns with the highest vacancies were in the Midlands or North, with 28 per cent of stores in Rotherham vacant. Big shopping centres in London and the South-east were said to be "holding up well".