King Tut’s burial chamber has two hidden rooms, radar scans show: Report

King Tut’s burial tomb has two hidden chambers, Egypt’s antiquities minister announced today.

Minister Mamdouh El Damati said a team of Japanese experts analyzed scans of the walls, and are 90% sure that two chambers containing organic and metal material lie behind Tutankhamun’s burial chamber.

Interest in Tutankhamun’s 3,340-year-old tomb was rekindled by British archaeologist Nicholas Reeves, who believes there may be another tomb hidden behind the walls. Although initially rejected by many Egyptologists, his theory was based on physical evidence at the site indicating that traces of passageways and door openings had been plastered and painted over during the preparation of Tut’s chamber.

During his first round of re-inspection last September, Reeves found mysterious lines on the ceiling and walls of the tomb that suggested they were hiding two secret doorways.

Confirming his theory, unfortunately, wasn’t as easy as breaking down the ancient walls. One of them is painted over with a priceless mural. Destroying it was out of the question.

Instead of using brute force, Reeves turned to radar to see through the stone walls. As National Geographic reported, the high-resolution scans provide clear evidence that his theory was right: There are hidden chambers beyond King Tut’s tomb, and furthermore, they’re lined with metal and organic goods.

What those goods are, however, remains to be seen. Radar is very different from x-ray, after all; while the scans confirmed that there was a “non-natural occurring chamber or cavity” on the other side of the wall and that there were things within that void, it didn’t provide a clear picture of what those things were.

For all of the legends surrounding Queen Nefertiti, she’s been impossible to pin down. Though archaeologists have searched for decades, the final resting place of the majestic queen has never been found. Reeves’ bold hypothesis is that King Tut’s tomb isn’t his at all. The burial equipment in the tomb, he writes, suggests that it was built for a woman.

And that woman, who Reeves believes is the fabled Queen herself, could very well be buried in one of the newly discovered secret chambers.

Agencies/Canadajournal