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The Younger Lady is the informal name given to a mummy discovered in the Egyptian Valley of the Kings, in tomb KV35 by archeologist Victor Loret in 1898.〔Reeves, Nicholas. Wilkinson, Richard H. The Complete Valley of the Kings. p100. Thames & Hudson. 1997. (Reprint) ISBN 0-500-05080-5〕 Through DNA tests this mummy has recently been identified as the mother of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun, and a daughter of Pharaoh Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye. The mummy also has been given the designation KV35YL ("YL" for "Younger Lady") and 61072,〔Smith, G. Eliot. The Royal Mummies p.117 Duckworth Publishers, 2000〕 and currently resides in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. She had previously been speculated to be the remains of Queen Nefertiti, but the DNA test found this identification invalid. ==Discovery and identity== The mummy was found adjacent to two other mummies in KV35: a young boy who died at around the age of ten, thought to be Webensenu or Prince Thutmose and another, older woman, identified as Queen Tiye by the recent DNA studies on Tutankhamun's lineage. All were found together, lying naked side-by-side and unidentified in a small antechamber of the tomb. All three mummies had been extensively damaged by ancient tomb robbers. There has been much speculation as to the identity of the Younger Lady mummy. Upon finding the mummy, Victor Loret had initially believed it be that of a young man as the mummy's head had been shaved. A closer inspection later made by Dr. Grafton Elliot Smith confirmed that the mummy was that of a female, though Loret's original interpretation lasted for many years. Recently, autosomal and mitochondrial DNA testing have shown conclusively that the mummy is that of a female, and the mother of Tutankhamun.〔 The results also show that she was also a full-sister to her husband, the mummy from KV55, and that they were both the children of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye.〔 There is speculation over the identity of the mummy from KV55 (sister marriage existed), with some Egyptologists, including Zahi Hawass, claiming the mummy is Akhenaten, and others, including anthropologist Joyce Filer, claiming the mummy as Smenkhare. This family relationship would lessen the possibility that the Younger Lady (and, by extension, Tutankhamun's mother) was either Nefertiti, or Akhenaten's secondary wife Kiya, because no known artifact accords either wife titles such as "King's sister" or "King's Daughter".〔Hawass Z, et al. "Ancestry and pathology in King Tutankhamun's family". JAMA. 2010;303(7):eAppendix p.3.〕 The possibility of the younger lady being Sitamun, Isis, or Henuttaneb is considered unlikely, as they were Great Royal Wives of their father Amenhotep III, and had Akhenaten married any of them, they would have taken the place of Nefertiti as the principal queen of Egypt. The report concludes that the mummy is likely to be Nebetah or Beketaten, daughters of Amenhotep III not known to have married their father, though he is known to have had eight daughters with Queen Tiye.〔 There is also a theory that the younger lady is Meritaten, daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, and wife of Smenkhare, based on a study of the alleles inherited by Tutankhamun. The theory goes that Meritaten married Smenkhare, believed to be her uncle, and thereby making Tutankhamun a maternal grandson of Akhenaten. The theory holds weight as inbreeding makes it harder to distinguish the generations, but there is one problem with this theory. Meritaten must be a mitochondrial descendant of Queen Tiye, or her mother Thuya, as the younger lady's mitochondrial DNA fits with her being Tiye's daughter. Nefertiti's lineage is nowhere specified, and if Meritaten is the younger lady, Nefertiti must be a mitochondrial relation of Thuya. It has been suggested that the Younger Lady is indeed Nefertiti as incest was not uncommon. This would mean that Akhenaten did marry his own sister and that he and Nefertiti are the parents of Tutankhamun. Furthermore, Nefertiti, who may have survived her husband, may be identical with Smenkhare and may have adopted this name if she took over the reign after Akhenaten's death. All this is not proven but should be mentioned as a further plausible scenario.〔Michael E. Habicht, Nofretete und Echnaton, 2012, Koehler & Amelang, ISBN 978-3733803810〕 One difficulty posed by this identification is the mummy's age at death (Nefertiti gave birth to Meritaten no later than year 1 of Akhenaten's reign, and there is evidence that she was still alive during year 16.) 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Younger Lady」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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