Scans of King Tutankhamun’s tomb have revealed the existence of two previously undiscovered chambers, one of which may contain the remains of Queen Nefertiti, Egypt’s antiquities minister Mamduh al-Damati announced during a press conference on Thursday .
According to AFP and Associated Press reports, Mamdouh el-Damaty said that the scans showed that there was a “90 percent” chance of secret chambers hidden behind the north and western walls of the tomb, and that those rooms contain either metallic or organic materials.
The minister said that additional scans would be completed later on this month to determine the exact dimensions of these chambers, but declined to speculate if there may be hidden treasures or mummies hidden behind the secret walls in Tutankhamun’s tomb.
UK archaeologist Nicholas Reeves previously claimed his research indicated Queen Nefertiti’s tomb may be located in a secret chamber near Tutankhamun’s tomb, which is located at the Valley of Kings in Luxor in southern Egypt. The new scans from radar expert Hirokatsu Watanabu appears to lend credence to Reeves’ hypothesis, according to the wire service reports.
Find may be ‘the discovery of the century,’ experts say
During a television broadcast last year, Reeves said that his analysis of high-resolution images uncovered straight lines in the tomb that were previously hidden by the color and texture of the stones. Those lines likely indicated the presence of a secret, sealed chamber, he claimed. During Thursday’s news conference, el-Damaty showed radar scans containing anomalies in the walls of the tomb, indicating possible hidden doors covered up and painted over with hieroglyphics.
Reeves speculated that the sudden and unexpected death of Tutankhamun likely forced priests to reopen Nefertiti’s tomb about a decade after her death, as the boy king’s own mausoleum had not yet been completed. In this case, he would have been buried in a hurry in a chamber that was not originally meant for him. Alternatively, the organic matter in the hidden chambers – if, indeed, it is a mummy, could be Kiya, who like Nefertiti was a wife of Akhenaten, the AFP added.
The next radar test is scheduled to take place on March 31, and will involve an “improved” radar which “measure for the dimensions… and the thickness of the walls,” el-Damaty noted during the press event. The results of that test will be announced in Luxor on April 1. He added that the find is “a very big discovery” for Egyptian historians – possibly “the discovery of the century.”
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Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
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