On closer examination, maybe it isn't Nefertiti

CAIRO - A mummy displayed on the Discovery Channel as the probable remains of Queen Nefertiti is actually a male skeleton, according to Egyptian state archaeologists.

"Examinations show that it was that of a male, between the ages of 16 and 19," the spokesman of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Hassan Nasrallah, said last week.

The Discovery Channel broadcast pictures of the mummy in June, quoting archaeologist Joann Fletcher of Britain's York University as saying there was a "strong possibility" the mummy was that of Nefertiti.

Nefertiti was married to the Pharaoh Akhenaton, who ruled from 1379 to 1362 B.C. Two statues of Nefertiti depict her with high cheekbones, full lips, almond-shaped eyes and a long neck.

The mummy was found more than a century ago in a tomb containing other mummies known as KV35 in the Valley of the Kings, near Luxor, southern Egypt.

The debate over the skeleton's sex is longstanding.

The mummy was originally identified as male because of its shaven head by the archaeologist Victor Loret in 1898. But in 1912, the anatomist Sir Grafton Elliot Smith wrote in his book The Royal Mummies, "It took no great understanding of anatomy to see that this was clearly the mummy of a female."

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