Scientists at iGENEA took a look at the DNA of King Tut, and made a fascinating discovery. Half of all European men are genetically related to the famous Pharaoh. If your family tree includes ancestors who were British, or who were from Western Europe, then perhaps you can count King Tut as your relative.
Genealogy is the study of family. More and more often, this study is including scientific information that is gathered from DNA in order to identify family relationships. It is rather amazing what can be learned by investigating details about a particular person’s genetic makeup.
Scientists at iGENEA, a genealogy centre that is located in Zurich, Switzerland, have made an exciting discovery. They have reconstructed the DNA of Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamen. It turns out that King Tut belonged to a haplogroup, (or a specific genetic profile group), that is called R1b1a2.
This is significant in many ways. First of all, this particular haplogroup is found in less than 1% of modern-day Egyptians. However, more than 50% of all men in Western Europe belong to this haplogroup. The implication is that everyone who is in the same haplogroup shares a common ancestor, somewhere in the far reaching branches of their family tree.
Further research shows that about 70% of Spanish men, and 60% of French men also belong to the R1b1a2 haplogroup that King Tut is in. The researchers believe that the common ancestor who links everyone together was someone who lived in the Caucasus around 9,500 years ago. There are still questions to be answered about exactly how King Tut’s paternal lineage got to Egypt from its region of origin. Further research will need to be done in order to make that discovery.
King Tutankhamen, of course, was an Egyptian Pharaoh in the 18th Dynasty. His father was Akhenaten (also called Amenhotep IV), and his mother was most likely one of Akhenaten’s sisters. Tutankhamen ascended to the throne in 1333 BC, when he was around nine or ten years old. This is likely why people tend to refer to King Tut as “the boy king”.
During his reign, King Tut made several changes to how his father was running things while he was Pharaoh. One very notable change had to do with religion.
Akhenaten established a worship of Aten. Aten, or Aton, was an aspect of a Ra, and was represented by the disk of the sun. In short, this was a sun god, in a monotheistic religion. King Tut restored the worship of Amun, who was also called Amun-Ra. Amun was a transcendental deity who represented both Amun and Ra, at different times. Amun-Ra was considered to be the King of Gods. This was a monotheistic religion, with a deity that had different aspects.
The exact cause of death of King Tut remains a mystery. His name had been removed from the lists of rulers of ancient Egypt that were compiled by the ancient Egyptians. King Tut became “famous” to modern people when his tomb was uncovered in 1922, in nearly pristine condition.
Image by Jon Parise on Flickr