While it pretty much comes down to a tooth in a box, Discovery Channel's "Secrets of Egypt's Lost Queen" (airs Sunday, July 15, at 9:00pm EST [July 17, at 8:00pm BST]) tries to cover a lot of ground: who was Hatshepsut, the early 18th Dynasty queen and pharaoh, where's her mummy, and who obliterated many of her images and inscriptions? That's a lot, even for a two-hour program.

I've watched the film twice, consulted with a couple of Egyptologists who know the subject, interviewed Egypt's archaeo-honcho Zahi Hawass, and talked with the producer, Brando Quilici (who did last year's Tut special and, before that, a documentary on the Iceman). As an archaeologist, journalist, and some-time docu-consultant, I have mixed feelings about "Lost Queen." Overall, I do think it's better than many shows out there (but is that good enough?) and unlike some past offerings from Discovery it isn't larded with superfluous re-enactments. The science is pretty neat, but I have some questions about its applications here, and there are some gaps and things that are not really explained adequately. So, it is worth watching, but although I have some criticisms.

Does it matter if we find, or identify, Hatshepsut's mummy? If you think of it only in terms of "Royal Mummies Musical Chairs" as Dennis Forbes, editor of KMT, called it in his Tombs, Treasures, and Mummies (1998), it is little more than an intellectual jigsaw puzzle. Fascinating, yes, but not necessarily a gateway to understanding ancient Egyptian culture. It's laudable that the film tries to go beyond that simple game, but it really is the hook for the show and Discovery isn't shy about playing that card. It also matters because this is an important test case. There are new techniques being applied here, especially the DNA work, that have the possibility to replace decades of conjecture with scientific evidence — if the analysis and interpretation is done right. If it isn't, then things just become more obscure than ever.

The basic structure of the film (which I'll ignore from this point on) is a bouncing back and forth between what Zahi Hawass--head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities and director of this project — is doing and the footwork of Egyptologist Kara Cooney, who talks to various archaeologists about their work at various sites and logs their various opinions about Hatshepsut. The division of labour is Hawass does the mummies and Cooney does the historical background (who was Hatshepsut, how did she move from princess to queen to pharaoh, and who tried to obliterate her name from history)...

Hatshepsut Found; Thutmose I Lost, Mark Rose, Archaeology magazine, Archaeological Institute of America, New York, USA, July 15, 2007.

All of Egypt's royal mummies will get identity checks after scientists found one was wrongly identified as a pharaoh, Egypt's chief archaeologist said last week.

Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said he would use computed tomography scanning and DNA to test more than 40 royal mummies at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

In June, the mummy long thought to have been King Tuthmosis I was found to be a young man who died from an arrow wound, Hawass said. History showed Tuthmosis I died in his 60s.

"I am now questioning all the mummies," he said in an interview. "We have to check them all again..."

Egypt will retest royal mummies, Reuters via The Boston Herald, Massachusetts, USA, July 16, 2007.

A settlement dating back to the time of the pyramid builders was discovered in Egypt's western desert, the first find of its kind there, Egypt's Supreme Council for Antiquities (SCA) said Monday.

"A joint Egypt-Czech archaeological mission found a city dating to the Old Kingdom [2687 to 2191 BC] in the Garat Al Abyad region in Bahariya," SCA chief Zahi Hawass said, referring to an isolated oasis 400 kilometres (250 miles) southwest of Cairo...

The latest find is "an important discovery for Bahariya as it is the first time a site dating to the Old Kingdom has been discovered in this region where up till now there have only been Stone Age remnants or Middle Kingdom ruins," Hawass said.

"This period is a missing link in the history of this region," he added...

Old Kingdom settlement found in Egypt desert oasis, AFP via Middle East Times, Cyprus, July 16, 2007.

cf. Egyptian Old Kingdom ruins found in desert oasis, AFP via Khaleej Times, UAE, July 16, 2007.

Egyptologists at the University of Manchester have carried out a DNA test on the mummy discovered by an Egyptian archaeological team earlier, and confirmed that it did belong to Queen Hatshepsut, Egypt's greatest female pharaoh...

Now, a research team led by Dr Angelique Corthals has compared the DNA samples with those taken from Queen Hatshepsut's royal relatives — her grandmother Ahmose Nefertari, the matriarch of 18th dynasty royalty, and her father Thutmose I, and established that the mummy was indeed hers.

'The difficulty in carrying out DNA testing on the royal mummies resides in the many times the remains have been handled as well as the chemical processes of mummification. Ironically, the chemicals that preserve the appearance of the mummies actually damage their DNA,' said Dr Corthals.

'But the team was able to extract small amounts of genetic information from the areas of the mummies least affected by contamination. When the DNA of the mystery mummy was compared with that of Hatshepsut's ancestors, we were able to scientifically confirm that the remains were those of the 18th dynasty queen,' she said...

DNA test confirms Queen Hatshepsut's mummy, ANI via New Kerala, India, July 16, 2007.

cf. DNA helps identify an Egyptian royal mummy, UPI, USA, July 16, 2007.

cf. Manchester University helps with pharaoh DNA analysis, Aeron Haworth, University of Manchester via EurekAlert, USA, July 16, 2007.