CAIRO Archaeologists hailed one of the most important finds in Egyptian history after a tooth was claimed as belonging to a 3,500-year-old mummy, right, which would identify it as that of Queen Hatshepsut, the most powerful female pharaoh to rule Egypt. It was one of two mummies found by the British archaeologist Howard Carter in the Valley of the Kings in 1903.

The queen ruled for 21 years from 1479 to 1458BC after the death of her husband-brother, Tuthmosis II. She was known for sporting a false beard and dressing like a man.

In 1903 Carter, who later discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun, found two sarcophagi in the Theban necropolis in the Valley of the Kings, Luxor. One apparently contained the mummy of Hatshepsut’s wet nurse, Sitre-In, and the other an unknown female.

A recent CT scan of the unknown mummy showed it to be missing a molar identical to a tooth discovered in an ancient box inscribed with the queen’s name at her Deir el-Bahari temple in 1881. (AFP)

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