Could These Mummified Legs Found in Italy Belong to a Dismembered Queen Nefertari?

A new multidisciplinary study examining a pair of mummified legs housed in the Egyptian Museum in Turin, Italy, suggests they might have belonged to ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertari, wife of Ramses II, believed to have ruled Egypt between 1290 and 1224 B.C., reports Seeker.

The Queen’s remains had already been damaged when Italian diplomat and archaeologist Ernesto Schiaparelli found fragments of sarcophagus and the pair of legs.     

According to the new study, the pair of legs must have belonged to a 1.65-metre-tall woman who suffered from arteriosclerosis and died somewhere between 40 and 60 years of age. A radiocarbon test performed on the legs, however, found that the death had occurred 200 years earlier than when the queen is believed to have lived.

“A discrepancy between radiocarbon dating and Egyptian chronology models has long been debated,” said Egyptologist Michael Habicht of the University of Zurich, one of the researchers who have worked on the study. “Indeed, some question[s] on the chronological model of the New Kingdom may now arise.”

The scholars behind the study, however, maintain that, in all likelihood, the pair of legs belong to Nefertari, unless someone else’s legs were accidentally washed into her tomb during a mudslide, which is highly improbable because it is located on high ground.  

You can read the research paper here.
(Photo: Museo Egizio Turin)