Mackowiak, who is also chief of the medical service at the Baltimore Veterans Affairs Medical Center, said he selected the pharaoh because he was important and medical historians have speculated for years about his unusual appearance. "Either he was just uncommonly funny looking-ugly, or he had some sort of genetic disorder," Mackowiak said.
Akhenaten plays a central role in the history of ancient Egypt in part because many believe he was history's first monotheistic ruler, said Donald B. Redford, a professor of classic and ancient Mediterranean studies at Pennsylvania State University, who also will speak at the conference.
"He's the favorite son of ancient Egyptian history," said Redford, who has been studying Akhentaken for more than 40 years.
Subsequent rulers brought back Egypt's pantheon of gods and tried to wipe out any evidence of Akhenaten's rule, dismantling his temples and monuments. His existence was confirmed only when archaeologists found statues and busts embedded in walls and foundations of later buildings where they were used as construction materials by subsequent rulers, Redford said.
"Egyptians were practical, and they simply recycled his masonry," he said.
In the 1960s, medical experts theorized that Akhenaten suffered from Froehlich's syndrome, which would account for the unusual body shape. Others have speculated that he suffered from Klinefelter syndrome, a chromosomal abnormality that can enlarge a man's breasts.
But both those conditions cause sterility - and Akhenaten had six daughters and two sons.
Braverman believes Akhenaten's feminine characteristics were the result of familial gynecomastia caused by an inherited hormone imbalance known as aromatase excess syndrome. His misshapen head was the result of craniosynostosis, where the joints in the skull fuse at too early an age and interfere with healthy skull formation.
No one is sure what killed Akhenaten, but a plague of some sort ravaged the area at the time of his death.
Some Egyptologists believe a mummy found about 100 years ago in Luxor, in a region known as the Valley of the Kings, was his remains. But that has yet to be confirmed with any genetic tests.
There is some question as to whether Akhenaten even looked as strangely as depicted in ancient drawings known as hieroglyphs.
"Hieroglyphs aren't meant to be accurate representations," said Betsy Bryan, a professor of Egyptology at the Johns Hopkins University.
