June 27, 2007	Wednesday	Jamadi-us-Sani 11, 1428

CAIRO: The centuries-old search for the mummy of Queen Hatshepsut, the only woman to have reigned as a pharaoh in Egypt, may finally have ended.

According to US-based Discovery Channel, Egypt’s antiquities supremo Zahi Hawass will announce at a media conference in Cairo on Wednesday “the most important find in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings since the discovery of Tutankhamun” in 1922. Egyptology discussion boards have been abuzz with the news that the one of the most important discoveries in Egypt’s history could be announced soon.

A broken tooth was the latest clue which led archaeologists to explore the possibility they had indeed found Hatshepsut.

In 1903, archaeologist Howard Carter – who went on to become famous for his discovery of Tutankhamun— had discovered two sarcophogi in a tomb known as KV60 in the Theban necropolis, the Valley of the Kings in Luxor. One apparently contained the mummy of Hatshepsut’s wet nurse Sitre-In and the other of an unknown female.Later in 1920, he found the tomb of Queen Hatshepsut but the two sarcophogi it contained were empty.—AFP