Many of us are born into a family with some idea of who our biological parents, grandparents, and maybe great-grandparents are, though even this knowledge is not a given. In the last few decades, scientists have developed techniques to tap into our ancestral lineage in a more exact way, analyzing simple bodily specimens like spit, hair, or blood to unlock information about our unique histories.

These tests are not limited to the living, however. If human remains are well preserved, they can also be run on the deceased. Such was the case with King Tutankhamun, the famous boy king of Egypt.  What resulted was a fascinating, if not controversial, discussion on his ancestral origin and a call to locate King Tut’s current descendants. Could you be one of them?

In 2020 researchers in Egypt published results of an analysis of the mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal haplogroups of several mummies of the 18th Dynasty, Including Tutankhamun.

The research team was lead by Zahi Hawass, and also included Yehia Z Gad, Somaia Ismail, Rabab Khairat, Dina Fathalla, Naglaa Hasan, Amal Ahmed, Hisham Elleithy, Markus Ball, Fawzi Gaballah, Sally Wasef, Mohamed Fateen, Hany Amer, Paul Gostner, Ashraf Selim, Albert Zink, and Carsten M Pusch.

We learned from this that King Tut is from the haplogroups: YDNA R1b / mtDNA K.

No two people have exactly the same DNA, so our cells’ instructions are a bit different from one person to another. Families often share a greater degree of DNA similarity, however.

But many people have the same haplogroup. A haplogroup is a genetic group of people who share a common ancestor on the patriline or the matriline. 

Any set of individuals who share a mother (that is, siblings or maternal half-siblings) has the same maternal haplogroup. Any set of males with a common male-line ancestor (brothers, paternal half-brothers, male paternal cousins) has the same paternal haplogroup.

Y DNA tests can be taken by genetic males to learn more about their paternal roots. Y-DNA testing works because YDNA is directly paternally inherited. Living men have the same (or very similar) YDNA as their father, grandfather, great grandfather, and so on. If you match with someone on a Y DNA test, then you likely share an ancestor with that person along your paternal line.

So what Dr. Hawass’s team is telling us is that according to the YDNA test King Tut is from the R1b haplogroup.

Mitochondrial DNA tests trace people’s matrilineal (mother-line) ancestry through their mitochondria, which are passed from mothers to their children. … Mitochondrial DNA testing uncovers one’s mtDNA haplogroup, the ancient group of people from whom one’s matrilineage descends. So in the case of King Tut, his mtDNA haplogroup is K.

All modern humans are descended from a male and females who likely lived in Africa. An “Adam” and an “Eve,” if you will.

Though there might not have been the only humans present at the time, they are the only people whose lineage survived. Since that time, many generations of humans have lived, expanding across the globe and generating more of these small mutations in their gametes, a process scientists refer to as single nucleotide polymorphisms, or “SNPs” (pronounced like “snips”).

It is through these unique SNPs that scientists can trace a person’s ancestral line. Each ancient SNP that occurred created a new branch on humanity’s family tree, and all subsequent progenies would bear this mutation in their DNA. The more of these old SNPs you stack up in your genetic instruction manual, the more specifically you can trace your own path on this tree.

Suppose you find yourself curious about your ancient ancestry. There are many DNA testing services worldwide to which you could send a saliva sample. Once received, a team of specially trained geneticists would extract and isolate the DNA from cells in your sample.

Depending on what kind of testing you’ve requested, there are different ways they may proceed, but we will focus on the analysis of the Y chromosome and mtDNA. While Y chromosomes are typically only found in biologically male samples, mtDNA will be available in any submission. The lab will proceed with screening the appropriate DNA material for particular SNP’s that have been cataloged and classified in humanity’s genetic tree.

A great deal of research has gone into this cataloging, and while results are subject to change as new data emerges, there are currently about 18 main branches reported for Y chromosomes and 26 for mtDNA.

Each branch is assigned a letter (A through R for the Y chromosome, A to Z for mtDNA) and represents what is called a haplogroup, which is ultimately the result your ancestry results would report. Haplogroups provide information about a very distant part of your family line. The SNPs these branches represent have been tied to specific time periods in history and regions of the world, illuminating were bands of your ancestors migrated and roughly when.

In some cases, further scanning of DNA can pinpoint additional subgroups in your haplotype associated with more SNPs stemming from the original branch. As more detail is discerned, these further classifications are assigned alternating letters and numbers.

As you might imagine, if it is intriguing to modern humans to learn more about their ancestry, the ability to better understand historical figures’ ancient past would be tempting. Very few human remains are as well preserved as mummified ancient Egyptians, and these individuals have been of great interest to researchers.

King Tutankhamun is easily the most famous of these ancient pharaohs. His tomb and body were discovered in 1922, nearly intact, which has provided a wealth of information about that period of Egyptian history. With the advent of DNA testing technology, King Tut and his presumed relatives were sequenced in 2009, however, much of the information garnered from this analysis was kept under wraps.

But now that we know the haplogroups for King Tutankhamun are, what does this mean?

Despite what some might claim, these assignments do not inherently make King Tut “European.” Instead, they only point to a common male ancestor between swaths of modern European men and himself.

Haplogroup R1b is the most frequently occurring paternal lineage in Western Europe, as well as some parts of Russia, specifically in the Bashkir minority and pockets of Central Africa, such as parts of Chad and among the Chadic-speaking minority ethnic groups of Cameroon.

So how can you find out if you are related to King Tut? Well, you need to find out what your haplogroups are.

Your maternal haplogroup is assigned based on the variants in your mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), while your paternal haplogroup is based on your Y-chromosome (Y-DNA). Only males can find their paternal haplogroup. Both males and females can find their maternal haplogroup.

Because a woman does not carry YDNA, if she wants to determine her paternal haplogroup, she needs to have a male relative tested instead, like her brother, father, or paternal uncle.

One advantage of identifying your haplogroup is that it can give you a good idea of where your ancestors came from. You may already know that for the past 200 or even 300 years, but some haplogroups go back 10,000 years or more!

And hey, who knows, you could very well be related to King Tut!

How incredible it is to think that so many people living now share some common ancestry with King Tutankhamun! As for whether there are people alive today that are true descendants of King Tut himself, well, that remains to be seen.

As DNA testing continues, there is every chance that relatives with the same haplotype, subgroups, and SNPs as King Tut will emerge … if this turns out to be you, congratulations! You are indeed royalty, but perhaps you’ve suspected that all along.

By the way, have you ever wondered what the back of his infamous gold death mask looks like? I found a picture!

Most people know that his father is Akhenaten, but who was King Tut’s mother? Akhenaten is most famously linked with Nefertiti, but that isn’t King Tutankhamun’s mother. So who is?

Akhenaten also known as Amenhotep IV, like all the other pharaoh’s had several wives. We know of Nefertiti, Kiya, and an unidentified sister-wife (most likely) Tadukhipa.  He had at least ten children, one of which was Tutankhamun.

Tomb KV35 was first discovered in March of 1898 and it belonged to Amenhotep II, but it was also used as a cache for other royal mummies, possibly during the 3rd intermediate period.

In side chambers of the tomb, they found,

• Thutmose IV
• Amenhotep III (Akhenaten’s father – King Tut’s grandfather)
• Merneptah
• Seti II
• Siptah
• Ramesses IV
• Ramesses V
• Ramesses VI

Queen Tiye (Akhenaten’s mother- King Tut’s grandmother), who was identified as the so-called Elder Lady in February 2010 via DNA testing.

A prince, identified by some as Webensenu, son of Amenhotep II, whose canopic jars were found in the tomb, or Thutmose, the elder son of Amenhotep III and Tiye

An “unknown woman D” in an upturned lid of a coffin inscribed for Setnakhte (she may be queen Tawosret).

Two skulls were found in the well and an anonymous arm was found. A body on a boat was stolen or destroyed at the start of the twentieth century.

But there was another person found in that tomb as well and her name is “The Younger Lady”, or so we’ve come to call her. But just who is she?

Many years ago, British Egyptologist Joann Fletcher incorrectly assumed it would be the remains of none other than Nefertiti herself. She however was wrong.

Zahi Hawass thought it might be Kiya, another wife of Akhenaten who is believed by some to be the birth mother of Tutankhamun.

However thanks to DNA testing, we now know the truth. The remains belong to the mother of Tutankhamun alright, but his mother wasn’t Nefertiti or Kiya. It was actually someone we don’t know her name, so she is simply called “The Younger Lady”.

She is the daughter of Amenhotep III and Tiye, making her both the sister and wife of Akhenaten. Her name, however, remains unknown, leaving open the possibility that she is possibly either Nebetiah or Beketaten.

In 2003, a scientific team from University of York, working under Joann Fletcher, examined the mummy. A member of the team realized that the face wound could have been a premortem wound, rather than a postmortem wound as previously presumed. Instead of the Younger Lady’s remains simply being mutilated after her death by tomb robbers motivated by malice, it seemed likely the woman had been injured while still alive.

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Tutankhamen’s tomb was filled with statues made of ivory, precious jewelry, and even a complete golden chariot. In one treasure chest, Carter discovered a large breastplate, decorated with gold, silver, various precious jewels, and a strange gemstone. The breastplate shows the god Ra as a winged scarab, made from the yellow, translucent gemstone, carrying the celestial bark with the Sun and the Moon into the sky.

Howard Carter identified the gemstone from the Tutankhamen breastplate as chalcedony, a common variety of the mineral quartz.

Ten years later the British geographer Patrick Clayton was exploring the Libyan Desert along the border of modern Egypt and Libya. Here he discovered some strange pieces of glass in the sand. The pale yellow in color and translucent material seemed to be identical to the gemstone found in Tutankhamen’s tomb.

Two years later he published a short note, suggesting that the pieces of Libyan Desert Glass (LDG) were the quartz-rich deposits of a dry lake.

In 1998, Italian mineralogist Vincenzo de Michele analyzed the optical properties of the gemstone in King Tut’s breastplate and confirmed that it was indeed a piece of LDG.

Libyan Desert Glass (LDG) is almost pure silicon dioxide, like quartz, but its crystal structure is different.  It also contains in traces an unusual combination of elements, like iron, nickel, chromium, cobalt, and iridium.  It is among the rarest minerals on Earth, as it is found only in the Great Sand Sea north of the Gilf Kebir Plateau, one of the most remote and desolate areas in the Libyan Desert.

The origin of desert glass remains uncertain. Glass forms in nature when quartz-rich rocks melt and rapidly cool. Tektites are natural glass formed from terrestrial debris ejected high into Earth’s atmosphere during meteorite impacts. Tektites have been found across Asia, Australia and as far away as Antarctica. If the LDG is a tektite, it formed 28 to 26 million years ago when an impact melted the quartz-rich sand of the desert. The unusual elements found in the LDG are explained as traces of the vaporized meteorite.

However, no impact crater was ever found in the Libyan Desert.

In an alternative scenario proposed in 2013 a comet, composed mostly of ice, may have exploded above the desert. The generated heat burst, an estimated 3,600°F, would be sufficient to melt the upper layers of the sand dunes, forming the desert glass, but without leaving a crater behind.

It’s also uncertain just how the desert glass became part of Tutankhamen’s treasures. Today, caravans rarely cross the Great Sand Sea. Archaeological evidence suggests that an ancient system of caravan routes existed around the Gilf Kebir Plateau, but it doesn’t seem that the routes were used to search or trade for desert glass.  It seems that the piece used for the scarab was discovered by chance or maybe an exotic gift. It remains the only known example where an Egyptian artist used this mysterious material.