HE 18TH DYNASTY (CIRCA 1550-1295 of the New Kingdom (circa 1550-1070 BC) was one of the most powerful royal houses of ancient Egypt. The pharaoh Akhenaten, who ruled from circa 1351 to 1334 BC, is considered one of the most controversial of the Egyptian pharaohs, because his attempt to radically transform traditional religion affected all facets of society and caused great turmoil.Akhenaten's eventual successor, Tutankhamun, is probably the most famous of all pharaohs, although his tenure was brief. He died in the ninth year of his reign, circa 1324 BC, at age 19 years. Little was known of Tutankhamun and his ancestry prior to Howard Carter's discovery of his intact tomb (KV62) in For editorial comment see p 667.

The anatomic features of a 5,300-year-old mummy, the iceman, were documented with conventional radiographic, portable computed radiographic, and conventional and spiral computed tomographic images obtained between September 1991 and June 2001. A team of scientists and radiologists from Austria, Italy, and the United States supervised the examinations and interpreted the images. The images demonstrated excellent preservation of the mineralized skeleton with profound dehydration of the soft tissues. The skeleton exhibited several types of trauma, including (a) healed rib fractures, (b) hairline skull fractures and a compression deformity of the thorax, probably acquired while encased in the glacier, and (c) damage acquired during the effort to recover the corpse. Skeletal variants were present, as was evidence of degenerative arthritis, frostbite, vascular calcification, and adaptation to cultural and geographic influences. In terms of anatomy and apparent health-related conditions, the iceman was very similar to modern humans. An arrowhead lodged between the rib cage and the left scapula was the probable cause of the iceman's death. Study of the images also provided insight regarding postmortem processes that led to the iceman's mummification.

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SummaryThe history of humankind is marked by the constant adoption of new dietary habits affecting human physiology, metabolism, and even the development of nutrition-related disorders. Despite clear archaeological evidence for the shift from hunter-gatherer lifestyle to agriculture in Neolithic Europe [1], very little information exists on the daily dietary habits of our ancestors. By undertaking a complementary -omics approach combined with microscopy, we analyzed the stomach content of the Iceman, a 5,300-year-old European glacier mummy [2, 3]. He seems to have had a remarkably high proportion of fat in his diet, supplemented with fresh or dried wild meat, cereals, and traces of toxic bracken. Our multipronged approach provides unprecedented analytical depth, deciphering the nutritional habit, meal composition, and food-processing methods of this Copper Age individual.

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