GoKawiilAncient Egyptian queen Nefertiti, thought to have ruled as Pharaoh, might be buried near Tutankhamun. Credit: Filo/Getty
Tutankhamun’s tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings has long puzzled archaeologists. Might hidden chambers — suspected to hold the remains of Nefertiti — lie beyond its walls? Now, researchers say they have found new evidence pointing to this controversial conclusion.
The decision of whether to peek into the supposed chambers, a few metres from the existing tomb, is in the hands of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities. If approved, careful drilling to deploy miniature tractors equipped with cameras could start in November, co-author of the study George Ballard told Nature.
The researchers conducted a range of geophysical surveys, including the first use of gravitational techniques to probe the density of ground around the site, as well as ground-penetrating radar (GPR) from inside the tomb. Taken together with studies of the tomb structure, the ground around it and wall paintings, the data strongly suggest that there is a “hidden complex” of corridors and rooms that predates the entombment of Tutankhamun, says lead researcher Mamdouh Eldamaty, an archaeologist at Ain Shams University in Cairo and former antiquities minister of the Egyptian government.
Is this Nefertiti’s tomb? Radar clues reignite debate over hidden chambers
If confirmed, this could “rank among the most transformative archaeological discoveries of the modern era”, he adds. The team’s conclusions are published online today in the Occasional Papers of the Amarna Royal Tombs Project1.
Teasing out data
The study is the latest in a string of attempts to picture what lies behind the walls of the tomb, known as KV62, since co-author Nicholas Reeves, an independent British Egyptologist who has worked extensively in the Valley of the Kings, suggested in 2015 that it could be hiding the resting place of Tutankhamun’s predecessor, Nefertiti. Many Egyptologists think she briefly ruled as a Pharaoh.
The tomb, which was built in the fourteenth century bc and discovered in 1922, is perplexing because it is unexpectedly small for a royal burial. On the basis of lines and cracks in the north wall of the burial chamber, as well as ancient alterations to the room’s paintings, Reeves suggested that it was a false wall, of a type often used by ancient Egyptian tomb builders to hide further chambers2.
Reeves proposed that KV62 was originally a much larger royal tomb: when young Tutankhamun died unexpectedly, the entranceway was enlarged and modified for his burial, and the deeper sections were blocked off. But geophysical analyses aiming to test his theory have so far yielded mixed results. Some researchers concluded that chambers were indeed present; others found that the data revealed nothing.
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