SHE was tall. She was slim. Queen Nefertari — wife of Egypt’s greatest Pharaoh — was a great beauty. But her newly identified remains show she suffered in her old age.

A pair of mummified legs have long been a part of an Egyptology display at an Italian museum.

But their origin was uncertain.

Now an international team of archaeologists have used a broad spectrum of techniques, ranging from radiocarbon dating to genetic testing, to identify their owner.

“The most likely scenario,” the team reports, “is that the mummified knees truly belong to Queen Nefertari.”

POWER AND BEAUTY

Nefertari was the favourite queen of what many believe to be Egypt’s most powerful Pharaoh: the warrior-king Rameses II, who ruled between 1290 and 1224BC.

She is regarded as one of Egypt’s most powerful and important queens, alongside names such as Nefertiti and Cleopatra.

Her remains had never been clearly identified.

But a few scattered remains have revealed new clues to her fate.

While plundered several times in antiquity, Italian archaeologists who excavated tomb QV66 in 1904 found a scattering of objects which they took back to a museum in Turin.

Among them were fragments of a mummy which had been ripped apart by looters seeking valuable amulets and icons wrapped up with the remains.

A new study shows the remains belonged to an adult woman of between 40 and 50 years of age. X-ray analysis also reveals she was suffering arthritis.

But the form of the limbs reveal their owner had been tall for her era and very slim.

University of Adelaide professor Maciej Henneberg helped verify estimates that she was about 165-168cm (5ft 5in to 5ft 6in) tall. This makes her taller than 84 per cent of the women of her time.

NEFERTARI UNWRAPPED

Nefertari was held in such high esteem by her husband that she was given her own ornately decorated royal tomb in the Valley of the Queens. Her beauty is evident in its richly coloured paintings.

Dr Stephen Buckley and Professor Joann Fletcher from the University of York’s Department of Archaeology have published their report in the science journal PloS ONE.

The chemical composition of the embalming materials match that known to have been used in the 13th Century BC.

This, combined with her physical attributes and other scattered clues such as pieces of a pink granite sarcophagus, bricks and jewellery inscribed with her name, have led the archaeologists to believe the mummified legs belonged to the tomb’s original owner.

A pair of size 9.5 woman’s sandals were also found, which match her figure.

ERA ENIGMA

There is one catch, however.

Radio-carbon dating estimates the mummified remains to be about 200 years older than when Nefertari is thought to have lived.

“A discrepancy between radiocarbon dating and Egyptian chronology models has long been debated,” Egyptologist Michael Habicht of the University of Zurich told Seeker. “Indeed, some questions on the chronological model of the New Kingdom may now arise.”