Sunday, December 5, 2010

Blonde and Red Haired Mummies of Egypt

Egyptian Female Pharaoh: Queen Hatshepsut, wife of Pharaoh Thutmosis II. The mummy which Egyptologists have identified as Queen Hatshepsut is displayed at the Egyptian museum in Cairo. She ruled Egypt after Thutmosis’ death in 1520 BC. Her long hair and facial structure has been well preserved by the embalming process of the time. American Egyptologist Donald P. Ryan excavated her tomb, in the Valley of the Kings, during the course of 1989. Ryan describes the mummy as follows:
“The mummy was mostly unwrapped and on its back. Strands of reddish-blond hair lay on the floor beneath the head.” [Ibid., p. 87.]
The myths and legends of Greece, India and South America describe the rule of Osiris and Isis.” The Mighty Osiris and Isis walked into the Egyptian Valley out of nowhere and assumed command.’ They were taller and more imposing than the men of the time, with long blond hair, marblelike white skin and remarkable powers that enabled miracles”.
Yuya-(Joseph II) Biblical Joseph Egyptian Prime Minister during 1400 BC. Father of Tiy. Yuya’s blonde hair and Caucasian facial struture have been well preserved by the embalming process. He was married to Tjuyu, an Egyptian noblewoman associated with the royal family, who held high offices in the governmental and religious hierarchies. Their daughter, Tiye, became the Great Royal Wife of Amenhotep III.
The tomb of Yuya and Tjuyu was, until the discovery of Tutankhamun’s, one of the most spectacular ever found in the Valley of the Kings despite Yuya not even being a pharaoh. Although the burial site was robbed in antiquity, many objects not considered valuable by the robbers still remained. Both the mummies were largely intact and were in an amazing state of preservation.
The mummy of the red haired Egyptian King, Ramses II, is on public display at the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. Forensics tests were done on Ramses, proving that his red hair was ‘natural’. Microscopic examinations showed that the hair roots contained natural red pigments, and that these red pigments did not result from the hair somehow fading, or otherwise being altered after death, but did represent Ramesses’ natural hair color.
Egypt’s last display of national vigor came with the red haired Pharaoh Ramses II (1292 – 1225 BC). Ramses II managed to re-establish the already decaying Egyptian Empire by re-capturing much land in Nubia. After this king, Egypt entered into a steady period of decay, caused directly by the elimination of the original Egyptians, and their replacement with a mixed population. This racially divergent nation was never again to reach the heights achieved by the First, Second or the first part of the Third Kingdoms. In these later years there were competing claimants to the pharaohs throne, many of whom, racially speaking, bore no resemblance to the original pharaohs at all.
The ‘Elder Lady’ (discovered in KV35, lying next to the the badly damaged Younger Lady) is well-mumified, with curly hair and must have been about 50 years old when she died. She was discovered in KV35 and many scholars believe that she may be Queen Tiye, the mother of Akhenaten.
Supporting this theory are her age at death and the possibly ‘royal’ position of her hands (the left arm at the chest and the right down by her side). In addition, one study comparing a strand of the Elder Lady’s hair to a lock of hair found inside a tiny coffinette inscribed for Tiye from Tutankhamun’s tomb concluded that the samples matched.
The fact of red-headed Egyptians has not only anthropological interest however, but also great symbolic importance. In ancient Egypt, the god Seth was said to have been red-haired, and redheads were said to worship the god devoutly.
The Ramessides (the family of Ramesses II), believed themselves to be divine descendants of Seth, with their red hair as proof of their lineage. She speculated that Ramesses II may have been descended from a long line of redheads.
The mummy of Pharaoh Seti I is the most lifelike of the great pharaohs of Egypt, and a tribute to the embalmer’s art. His caucasian features remain crystal clear and because of the excellent preservation process, Seti’s mummy can easily be compared with a relief of his face made in his lifetime at the Temple at Abydos. Seti was the son of the great Ramses I, and became pharaoh in 1320 BC. He reoccupied lands in Syria lost to earlier Syrian invasions, conquered Palestine and conducted campaigns against the Semitic Libyans and the Indo-European Hittites.
Negroid hair doesn’t magically transform into typically Caucasian hair as a result of the mummification process, as is often claimed. ALL the anthropologists that examined the mummy hair have described the hair as Caucasian overall; you just might have to assume that a bunch of highly trained professionals might actually know what they are talking about, even if it does not fit the current politically correct afrocentric views endorsed by the UN.
A well preserved body from the pre-dynastic period in Egypt, circa 3,300 BC. Buried in a sand grave, the natural dryness of the surroundings kept the body preserved. His red hair have been so well preserved that he has been given the nickname “Ginger” at the British Museum where he is kept on display.
After the Human Tissue Act 2004, the British Museum has developed policies for ethical treatment of human remains and no longer uses the nickname famously known as “Ginger”.
Despite the refusal of the Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, to release any DNA results which might indicate the racial ancestry of Pharaoh Tutankhamen, the leaked results reveal that King Tut’s DNA is a 99.6 percent match with Western European Y chromosomes.
The DNA test results were inadvertently revealed on a Discovery Channel TV documentary filmed with Hawass’s permission — but it seems as if the Egyptian failed to spot the giveaway part of the documentary which revealed the test results.
Hawass previously announced that he would not release the racial DNA results of Egyptian mummies — obviously because he feared the consequences of such a revelation.
Haplogroups are assigned letters of the alphabet, and refinements consist of additional number and letter combinations, for example R1b or R1b1. Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA haplogroups have different haplogroup designations. In essence, haplogroups give an inisight into ancestral origins dating back thousands of years.
By entering all the STR data inadvertently shown on the Discovery video, a 99.6 percent fit with the R1b haplogroup is revealed.
The significance is, of course, that R1b is the most common Y-chromosome haplogroup in Europe reaching its highest concentrations in Ireland, Scotland, western England and the European Atlantic seaboard — in other words, European through and through… refugees from Atlantis, and NOT “out-of-Africa”.

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