Posted for Natasha Gilbert

Tests carried out on the two mummified foetuses found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun are beginning to yield results.

Research presented at the pharmacy and medicine in ancient Egypt conference at Manchester University, UK, earlier this week show the children could have been twins despite one being much larger than the other.

The results add weight to suggestions that the stillborn foetuses were the teenage Pharaoh’s children, and is due to be published in the journal Antiquity in January 2009.

Last month, Egyptian scientists announced they were to conduct DNA paternity testing on the foetuses. The results are due December. The foetuses were found by Howard Carter when he discovered the King Tut’s tomb in 1922, but very little has been found out about them since.

Research carried out in parallel to the Egyptian scientists by Catherine Hellier at the University of Bergen in Norway and Robert Connolly of Liverpool University, UK, aimed to get a more accurate estimate of the foetuses’ age to test a suggestion the two could be twins. If they are, it makes it more likely they are also the Pharaoh’s children as his young wife would have only had time for one pregnancy before his death.

Hellier and Connolly estimated the gestation period for the larger of the two babies at 31 weeks by looking at its bone structure. Its age had previously been estimated at 32-36 weeks by simply measuring bone length. The results suggest the baby was larger than average for its age providing evidence for the idea that the two foetuses were twins suffering from twin-twin transfusion syndrome – where one twin diverts blood, nutrients and amniotic fluid away from the other twin, as a result growing extremely large while the other stays small.

All the scientists need to do now is carry out similar tests on the smaller foetus. But given Cairo’s protective stance over its antiquities, getting permission to do so could be the biggest hurdle.

Image: Jon Bodsworth