A comprehensive examination of the ground surrounding the tomb of Tutankhamun has found no evidence of undiscovered secret chambers, disappointing those hoping to uncover the still-undiscovered resting place of the young pharaoh’s mother, Queen Nefertiti.
Hints that hidden passages might exist behind the walls of Tutankhamun’s tomb first surfaced in 2015, when inconsistencies in the tomb’s walls were revealed in high-resolution 3D scans made by Madrid-based conservation group Factum Arte. These inconsistencies led Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves to believe that they were caused by a series of hidden chambers, covered up by the plaster and murals lining The Boy King’s tomb.
It is suspected that Nefertiti’s tomb may have been deliberately hidden after her death: As wife to Akhenaten, she would have been considered a revolutionary by the priesthoods of the established gods, and efforts may have been made to conceal her tomb from her enemies in life, as Egyptian belief was that a soul without a mummy was left to wander after death.
Two separate groups, using state-of-the-art ground-penetrating radar, conducted the surveys, and unfortunately found no cavities in the earth surrounding Tutankhamun ‘s otherwise-famous tomb. One of the teams, from the University of Turin, cross-checked the results of three separate sets of radar readings to eliminate what they referred to as "complexity in the data" that complicated earlier surveys.
"It is maybe a little bit disappointing that there is nothing behind the walls of Tutankhamun’s tomb, but I think on the other hand that this is good science," said survey team lead Dr. Francesco Porcelli, from the University of Turin.
Subscribers, to watch the subscriber version of the video, first log in then click on Dreamland Subscriber-Only Video Podcast link.