An elevated view of King Tut’s tomb.
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And he has one in mind; Queen Nefertiti, the 14th century B.C. beauty who a few say could be Tutankhamun’s mother, and whose burial chamber has yet to be found. Reeves’s hypothesis comes from years of studying various tombs and goods.
“That is a tomb type favored by queens”, Reeves said.
“What my Egyptian colleagues discovered is that there is a distinct difference in the surface of the surrounding wall and the central part that would be covering the door”, Reeves told National Geographic.
“After our first examination of the walls we can do nothing more until we receive the all-clear from the radar device to confirm our findings”, Reeves told Ahram Online. He explained that in the room that contains Tutankhamun’s sarcophagus, the line on the ceiling perfectly matches the section of wall that appears to have been plastered over.
The scientists behind this investigation have not yet got around to using radar technology to explore the burial chamber and check whether it really does hide secret doorways and not yet discovered rooms. The 3D scan of the west wall has features that look like a door. He believes there could be two unexplored doorways, concealed by the plaster walls. “At the point where I suspect there’s a doorway, it’s quite gritty”.
He speculated they could find the tomb of Kiya, another of Akhenaton’s wives, or even another royal family member whose tomb would have been extended to make room for Tutankhamen. And in two months, he may be able to prove it.
While Carter was obsessively thorough-he spent almost a full decade excavating and documenting the tomb-he couldn’t have imagined the kind of tools that are available to today’s archaeologists. Reeves had previously only explored his hunch through laser scans of the original site used to create a flawless replica of the tomb. Still, they promise that, by early November, they will sort out this mystery.
The boy king died very unexpectedly at just 19 years old.
Tut’s Treasures-Fit for a Queen?
Dr Reeves suggests there may have been a great rush to find a burial place for him. “Reeves made a brilliant argument that the face mask of Tutankhamun was originally made for a woman”, Ryan said.
If he’s proven correct, Egypt’s Minister of Antiquities believes the discovery will be “more important than Tutankhamun”. Akhenaten was succeeded by a pharaoh referred to as Smenkhare and then Tut, who is widely believed to have been Akhenaten’s son.
Reeves acknowledges that many other archaeologists have vastly different views of the 18th Dynasty and its rulers.
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And the hidden rooms behind the tomb may be the place everything came to rest if Reeves is right.
