When you think of an Egyptian pharaoh, you probably think of some golden man astride a mighty chariot, wearing a big gold headdress and carrying some curly scepter while he supervises a field of slaves building one of his many great monuments. Well, according to the first-ever series of genetic tests allowed on a royal mummy, the reality was not so pretty. For example, King Tut, the boy-king of Egypt, was sickly, inbred, frail, and had a club foot. Oh yeah, he also had malaria.
Not exactly Oded Fehr from The Mummy, is it? Heck, that’s not even Victor Buono, who played the villain King Tut in the 1960’s version of Batman! Apparently, the old legends about the royal lines of pharaohs breeding with one another to keep the bloodline pure is truth, because Tutankhamun’s family tree does not fork. His parents were brother and sister!
Tags: National Geographic, King Tut, ancient Egypt, Egyptology, DNA, weird science, genetic studies on mummies, royal mummy studied, pharaohs, Tutankhamun