Who will speak for the pharaoh Akhenaten, the builder of temples and cities who reigned over ancient Egypt 2,400 years ago?
Who will explain his oddly shaped head, sunken eyes, pendulous breasts and a belly that made him look pregnant?
That would be Irwin M. Braverman. The Yale medical school dermatology professor will address a University of Maryland medical school conference today on the genetic disorders that might have determined Akhaenaten's strange appearance. He has spent months pouring over images of Akhenaten and come up with a theory about the teenage pharaoh's peculiarities.
"I think it's very exciting," he said.
Braverman's forum is the Maryland's 14th annual Historical Clinicopatholoical Conference, held each year to diagnose disorders that afflicted prominent historical figures.
The conference, open to the public, is designed to spark interest in pathology and encourage doctors to enhance their powers of observation when they diagnose disorders, according Dr. Philip Mackowiak, the UM professor who organizes the conference.
"I firmly believe it makes one a better physician," said Mackowiak, who has written a book about the disorders that may have killed a variety of historical figures.
Dr. Barry Daly, a professor of diagnostic radiology at the medical school, will speak tomorrow about CT scans conducted on a mummy brought to University of Maryland Medical Center from the Walters Art Museum on March 18.
Scientists are still evaluating the scans, but so far they appear to show the mummy was a woman between 40 and 60, and not a young girl as they once thought, said Regine Schulz, the Walters' curator of ancient art and director of international curatorial relations.
The shape of the pelvis and the size of her skeleton indicate that she was about 4 feet 10 inches tall, while signs of osteoarthritis in her shoulders and spine indicate middle age, Daly said.
Previous UM historical pathology conferences have speculated on what killed Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (kidney failure), Ludwig von Beethoven (syphilis), Alexander the Great (typhoid fever) and Booker T. Washington (malignant hypertension).
Akhenaten doesn't share quite the same name recognition these days. "He's not like Columbus or Alexander the Great," said Mackowiak. "But he is prominent, he is famous, he had what was probably a mysterious medical disorder and there's enough evidence about it to put on a conference."
