Editing Tutankhamun (section)

====Parentage ====
His parentage is debated as they are not attested in surviving inscriptions. He was certainly a prince, as a fragmentary inscription from [[Hermopolis]] refers to "Tutankhuaten" as a "king's son".{{sfn|Dodson|Hilton|2004|p=149}} He is generally thought to have been the son of Akhenaten{{sfn|Dodson|Hilton|2004|p=149}} or his successor [[Smenkhkare]].{{sfn|Tawfik|Thomas|Hegenbarth-Reichardt|2018|p=180}} Inscriptions from Tutankhamun's reign treat him as a son of Akhenaten's father, [[Amenhotep III]], but that is only possible if Akhenaten's 17-year reign included a long co-regency with his father,{{sfn|Tyldesley|2012|p=167}} a possibility that many Egyptologists once supported but is now being abandoned.{{sfn|Ridley|2019|p=13}} His mother has been variously suggested to be Akhenaten's chief wife [[Nefertiti]],{{sfn|Dodson|2009|pages=15–17}} Amenhotep III's daughter [[Beketaten]],{{sfn|Bommas|2024|p=96}} or Akhenaten's daughters [[Meritaten]]{{sfn|Tawfik|Thomas|Hegenbarth-Reichardt|2018|pages=179–195}}{{efn|His parents are suggested to be Meritaten and her known husband Smenkhkare based on a re-examination of a box lid and coronation tunic found in his tomb.{{sfn|Tawfik|Thomas|Hegenbarth-Reichardt|2018|pages=179–195}}|group="Note"}} or [[Meketaten]].{{sfn|Arnold|Metropolitan Museum of Art Staff|Green|Allen|1996|page=115}}{{efn|Meketaten's candidacy is based on a relief from the [[Royal Tomb of Akhenaten|Royal Tomb]] at [[Amarna]] which depicts a child in the arms of a nurse outside a chamber in which Meketaten is being mourned by her parents and siblings, which has been interpreted to indicate she died in childbirth.{{sfn|Arnold|Metropolitan Museum of Art Staff|Green|Allen|1996|page=115}} This possibility has been deemed unlikely given that she was about 10 years old at the time of her death.{{sfn|Brand|Cooper|2009|page=88}}}} Tutankhamun was [[wet nurse]]d by a woman named [[Maia (nurse)|Maia]], known from her tomb at Saqqara.{{sfn|Zivie|1998|pages=33–54}}{{sfn|Gundlach|Taylor|2009|page=160}}

DNA testing identified his father as the mummy from tomb [[KV55]], thought to be [[Akhenaten]], and his mother as "[[The Younger Lady]]", an anonymous mummy cached in tomb [[KV35]]. His parents were full siblings, both being children of Amenhotep III and his chief wife [[Tiye]].{{sfn|Hawass et al.|2010|pages=642–645}}{{efn|The team reported it was over 99.99 percent certain that [[Amenhotep III]] was the father of the individual in KV55, who was in turn the father of Tutankhamun.{{sfn|Hawass|Saleem|2016|page=123}} More recent genetic analysis, published in 2020, revealed Tutankhamun shared his Y-haplogroup with his father, the KV55 mummy (Akhenaten), and grandfather, Amenhotep III, and his mtDNA haplogroup with his mother, The Younger Lady, his grandmother, Tiye, and his great-grandmother, [[Thuya]], upholding the results of the earlier genetic study.{{sfn|Gad|Ismail|Fathalla|Khairat|2020|page=11}}|group="Note"}} The identity of The Younger Lady is unknown but she cannot be Nefertiti, as she was not known to be a sister of Akhenaten.{{sfn|Dodson|Hilton|2004|page=146}} However, researchers such as [[Marc Gabolde]] and [[Aidan Dodson]] claim that Nefertiti was indeed Tutankhamun's mother. In this interpretation of the DNA results, the genetic closeness is not due to a brother-sister pairing but the result of three generations of [[first-cousin marriage]], making Nefertiti a first cousin of Akhenaten.{{sfn|Dodson|2009|pages=16–17}} The validity and reliability of the genetic data from mummified remains has been questioned due to possible degradation due to decay.{{sfn|Eaton-Krauss|2016|pages=6–10}}