What Tutankhamun's DNA Revealed About His Family — and His Death

Tutankhamun was a minor king who died young and would be a footnote if his tomb had been robbed like all the others. Because it was not, he is the most examined human being from the ancient world — and in 2010 a team led by Zahi Hawass published the results of testing his mummy and ten others for DNA and disease. It is still the most consequential thing anyone has done with an Egyptian mummy.

What the Study Found

• The mummy from tomb KV55 was identified as Tutankhamun's father — most likely Akhenaten, the king who moved Egypt's religion to a single sun god
• A mummy known as the Younger Lady, from a cache in KV35, was identified as his mother — and as a full sister of his father
• Tutankhamun had a badly deformed left foot, along with bone tissue that had died from lack of blood supply, which explains the walking sticks buried with him
• DNA from Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes the most dangerous form of malaria, was present in his body
• The two mummified foetuses found in his tomb were confirmed as his daughters

The picture that emerges is not the golden boy king of the exhibition posters. It is a teenager who could not walk unaided, from a family that had been marrying within itself for generations, carrying a serious infection when he died at around nineteen.

What Is Still Argued About

Ancient DNA is difficult, and Egyptian mummies are among the hardest material to work with — heat, natron and three thousand years degrade genetic material badly, and modern contamination is a constant risk. Several specialists have questioned whether the sequences were robust enough to support the family identifications, and whether the KV55 mummy is Akhenaten at all rather than another royal male of the period.

The malaria finding has been challenged on similar grounds, and the cause of death remains open: a leg fracture shortly before death, an inherited disorder, the infection, or some combination. What is not seriously disputed any more is the older theory that he was murdered by a blow to the head — the damage behind the skull is now generally attributed to the embalming process and to Howard Carter's team removing the mummy from its resin-fused coffin.

Where to See the Evidence

• Tutankhamun's own mummy remains in his tomb, KV62, in the Valley of the Kings — the only king still lying where he was buried
• The tomb goods, including the walking sticks and the golden mask, are the centrepiece of the Grand Egyptian Museum collection
• The royal mummies from the KV35 cache, including the Younger Lady, are displayed in Cairo

Nothing else in Egyptology gives you a person this precisely: parentage, illnesses, the shape of a foot, the parasite in the blood. It is also a reminder of how little we know about everyone else.