The Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the Manchester Museum and Medical Service
Corporation International of Arlington, Virginia, will use endoscopes to take
samples of tissue, including blood, muscle and internal organs, from mummies.
Tissue taken from the Pharaohs will be stored in Cairo, as the export of royal
remains is banned. Other tissue samples will be brought to Manchester.

The first project earmarked for the Mummy Tissue Bank will be an
epidemiological study of schistosomiasis in ancient Egypt, to be carried out in
collaboration with St Mary’s Hospital in Manchester, Preston Royal Infirmary and
biologists at the University of Manchester. Eggs of the blood flukes that cause
the disease have been discovered in several mummies, and Rosalie David, keeper
of Egyptology at the Manchester Museum, hopes to work out how the disease waxed
and waned over time. The researchers will use antibodies against the parasite to
detect the flukes’ presence in the samples, and also hope to analyse fluke
genes.

Later, David and her colleagues aim to begin DNA fingerprinting to establish
relationships among Egyptian mummies. One goal is to plot the extent of incest
in various Egyptian dynasties, but the researchers also want to establish how
much the Pharaohs mingled their genes with rest of the population of ancient
Egypt.

The project may even identify Tutankhamen’s father. The mummy of the most
likely contender, the heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten, is missing. But Akhenaten is
depicted in later portraits as having a grotesquely distorted body, with a gaunt
face and distended abdomen and thighs. This may have been due to an inherited
disorder called Frohlich’s disease. If Tutankhamen turns out to carry the
Frohlich’s disease gene, it will be very likely that Akhenaten was his
father.

The 338-million-year-old fossil was found in 1988 in a small quarry
in Bathgate near Edinburgh. The previous record for the oldest reptile is
40 million years younger than Lizzie and comes from Canada.

In April 1989, the Stuttgart Natural History Museum agreed to buy the
fossil from Wood for Pounds sterling 180 000. (Wood has lowered his price
so that the fossil can stay in Scotland.) Believing that an export licence
was required to export any object more than 50 years old with a value over
Pounds sterling 20 000, Wood applied to the Department of Trade and Industry
for a licence. The matter was referred to the Reviewing Committee on the
Export of Works of Art – the first time any geological specimen had been
considered by that body. It recommended that an export licence be deferred
for four months because of the specimen’s ‘outstanding significance’. The
DTI turned round the ruling, saying that fossils were not subject to export
controls.

The Stuttgart museum, recognising Scotland’s claim to the specimen,
allowed the Scottish museum until 31 July to raise funds to buy the specimen
at the asking price. This was seen by many as a highly generous move given
that the most important German fossil, Archaeopteryx, resides in Britain’s
Natural History Museum.

The near loss of such an important fossil has caused much controversy.
The DTI is under pressure to consider changes in the law concerning natural
heritage specimens of this nature. Questions have been asked as to why the
museum allegedly has no problems in raising the necessary cash to buy silver
and other works of art of similar value, and yet in this case the keeper
of geology, Ian Rolfe, had to organise the fundraising himself.

Lizzie, whose sex is in fact indeterminable, will be on display at the
museum in Chambers Street, Edinburgh, until October 1990. The fossil will
then be researched and officially described. In 1993 Lizzie will be lent
to the Stuttgart museum for display.

Lizzie has been given the generic name Westlothiana in recognition of
a donation of Pounds sterling 20 000 from West Lothian District Council,
which also granted permission for the excavation of the Bathgate quarry.
The specific name has not yet been chosen.

Wood is convinced that the quarry will turn up more reptiles, not just
of Lizzie’s species but others too: ‘I do not believe that Lizzie and her
husband were alone – no way!’