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What's That On The Face Of King Tut's Grandma?

Queen Tiye, the grandmother of King Tut, the powerful and beautiful lady, might have had an unattractive flat wart on her forehead, according to a mummy expert.
The small protuberance was located between the eyes of the so-called Elder Lady (KV35EL). The mummy’s identity, boasting long reddish hair falling across her shoulders, was recognized in 2010 with the help of DNA analysis. She was Queen Tiye, daughter of Yuya and Thuya, wife of Pharaoh Amenhotep III, and mother of Pharaoh Akhenaten.
Mercedes González, Director of the Institute for Mummies in Madrid, noticed the skin growth during a visit to the Cairo Museum. She said, “I got a high resolution image of the mummy’s face from the Egyptian museum. From the enlargement, the small growth appears compatible with a flat wart or verruca plana.”

Source: Corbis

Slightly raised, flat and smooth, these innocuous bumps of diverse colors are hyperplastic epidermal lesions caused by papilloma viruses (HPV). They often took place on the face, neck and back of the hands. However, flat warts are not frequently observed on the face of prehistoric Egyptian mummies. "Until now I haven't seen anything similar," González claimed.
Tiye, who lived between 1415 and 1340 BC, was the wife of the 18th dynasty King Amenhotep III, the mother of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten and grandmother of King Tut. She is one of the most intriguing women in Egyptian history.
Depicted by her husband as "the lady of grace, sweet in her love, who fills the palace with her beauty, the Regent of the North and South, the Great Wife of the King who loves her," she was the most influential woman of Amenhotep III's 38-year reign.
Tiye sat by the king as an equal when portrayed in statues — an achievement unprecedented in that time — and seemed to be much loved by Amenhotep III. The rich king built several shrines for his beloved queen, including a palace, a white sandstone temple in Nubia, land of her ancestors, and even a monumental artificial lake named after her, for her excursions in the royal bargee.
"It has been quite a surprise to find a flat wart between the eyes of such an Egyptian queen," González said. According to Frank Rühli, head of the Swiss Mummy Project and Center for Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, the protuberance is intriguing.
"It could be a flat wart, but we can't tell for sure. Pure fibroma (a fibroid tumor) would be also possible. It would be very interesting to take a sample for histology and DNA," Rühli told Discovery News.
Although the mummy undoubtedly has a small growth on the forehead, Salima Ikram, professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, is more cautious about labeling the growth — or even the mummy.
"I call her the possible Queen Tiye, as there is some debate as to the attribution. And I think that without further study one should not dismiss the idea that it was a mole that got flattened during mummification," Ikram said.
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