Joann Fletcher - Queen Nefertiti

Queen Nefertiti

In 2003, Dr. Fletcher and a multidisciplinary scientific team from the University of York, including the forensic anthropologist Don Brothwell, took part in a controversial expedition to the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, where they claimed to have found the mummy of Queen Nefertiti, among the cache in tomb KV35. The expedition,the result of 12 years of research, was funded by the Discovery Channel, which also produced a documentary on the findings. Dr. Fletcher's conclusions have been dismissed by some Egyptologists, who claim that the mummy in question was a male as young as 15 years old (a theory now disproved), and that evidence used to support Dr. Fletcher's theories is insufficient, circumstantial and inconclusive. Though according to The Times newspaper British archaeologists leapt to her defence, and the research team stand by their findings. It is debatable that DNA sexing, one of the lines of evidence used, is either (i) reliable in the case of material which has been extensively handled or (ii) that DNA sexing is reliable in material of this age/temperature history. Also, the theory has been previously published by Marianne Luban in 1999 in an article posted on the Internet, entitled "Do We Have the Mummy of Nefertiti?"

It is perhaps also worthy of note that a professor of anatomy, Sir Grafton Elliot Smith, in describing the mummification of the Younger Woman stated “… it takes no great knowledge of anatomy to decide that the excellently preserved naked body (Loret’s pl. XI and XIV) is a young woman’s”.

This study, published in 1912, when the identity of this individual was of no great interest, is also in agreement with later scientific studies by radiologists and physical anthropologists. Given this clear anatomical evidence it could, perhaps, be argued that the use of DNA to determine sex, with all its inherent problems of contamination, is somewhat redundant.

Dr. Zahi Hawass, after initially claiming the mummy to be a young man then identified the Younger Woman as a middle-aged woman, Merytre-Hatshepsut (also referred to as Hatshepsut-Merytre), the main wife of king Tuthmosis III. However, the DNA tests published in early 2010 (in an article co-authored by Hawass) have proven that the mummy was that of a sister of Akhenaten, and she was the mother of Tutankhamun. Several Egyptologists name Nefertiti as the likely candidate for being Tutankhamun's mother.

Fletcher made a documentary on the subject for Discovery Channel, and she included Egyptologists like Hawass, and Kent Weeks. Fletcher stated in this documentary that the Younger Lady was Queen Nefertiti, but she did not inform the experts she interviewed of her argument until they saw the documentary.