Radar points to a hidden chamber in king Tutankhamun’s tomb

Radar scans have turned up fresh evidence of hidden chambers beyond the walls of King Tutankhamun’s burial chamber in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities reported today.

“Clearly it does look from the radar evidence as if the tomb continues, as I have predicted”, he said.

While the first door likely leads to a storage room which has already been discovered, the other passageway situated at the north wall of the burial chamber is speculated to lead to a bigger room which may be Nefertiti’s tomb.

Damati stressed the radar results are preliminary and that a month is needed to analyze the scans.

British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves, who is leading the investigation, said last month that he believed Tutankhamen’s mausoleum was originally occupied by Nefertiti and that she had lain undisturbed behind what Reeves said that he believes is a partition wall.

Howard Carter, a British archaeologist, was the original discoverer of King Tut’s tomb back in 1922.

Egyptian antiquities authorities think they may have found the burial place of Nefertiti, the Egyptian queen who was mother of Tutankhamun and who introduced the worship of a single god in the ancient culture.

“The next step, which we will announce once we agree on it, will be accessing what’s behind the wall without damaging the tomb”, he said.

He shocked his constituents when he died unexpectedly at age 19 in 1323 B.C., after a reign of only about nine years.

Damati said the scans would now be sent to Japan for further analysis.

Discovery of Nefertiti, whose chiseled cheekbones and regal beauty were immortalized in a 3,300-year-old bust now in a Berlin museum, would shed light on what remains a mysterious period of Egyptian history.

The sarcophagus of King Tutankhamun is pictured in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings, close to Luxor, 500 kilometers south of Cairo, Nov 4, 2007.

“If I’m wrong, I’m wrong”, Reeves has previously said of his theory.

Furthermore, Reeves strongly believes that the chamber contains the remains of Queen Nerfertiti, a wife of King Akhenaten, King Tut’s father. One expert is convinced that Nefertiti’s role in the sun cult would eliminate the possibility of her being buried near Tut.

But others, such as Dr Reeves, of Arizona University, believe she outlived her husband and ruled in her own right. The religion they created was labeled heresy by subsequent pharaohs, and some experts have said that would have precluded her burial in the Valley of the Kings.