Nefertiti was known for her beauty and the subject of a famous 3,300-year-old bust.
Advertisement
The mask of King Tutankhamun, which was found to have been damaged and glued back together, is seen at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo January 24, 2015.
Egyptian antiquities minister Mamdouh el-Damaty said the data would take another month to analyze – but the results are so strong that he’s “90 percent positive” there is another chamber behind the wall of King Tut’s tomb, according to video of a news conference posted online by Luxor Times.
Dr Reeves said: “Clearly it does look from the radar evidence as if the tomb continues, as I have predicted”.
“The radar, behind the north wall (of Tutankhamun’s burial chamber) seems pretty clear”.
Yet most of what we know about Nefertiti is shrouded in mystery and her tomb – let alone, her body – has never been found.
Earlier this month, Reeves and his team did a preliminary scan of the tomb using infrared thermography and determined that different temperatures registered on parts of the northern walls of the tomb.
“There is, in fact, an empty space behind the wall based on radar, which is very accurate, there is no doubt”, Japanese radar specialist Hirokatsu Watanabe said, his hand hovering over a fuzzy blue radar scan he said indicated the presence of a false wall.
“I’m feeling more certain today than I expected to be”, he said outside the Howard Carter House, a site named after the British archaeologist propelled to worldwide celebrity for his discovery of the Tutankhamun tomb in 1922.
On the other hand, Al-Damaty believes that such a chamber, if found adjoining Tutankhamun’s tomb, may contain Kiya, a wife of the pharaoh Akhenaten. The tomb’s structure and design also revealed that it was made to hold the remains of a queen and not a king. However, former antiquities minster Zahi Hawass says no way, no how would Nefertiti be in the Valley of the Kings, because she was involved in Tut’s father’s short-lived monotheistic sun cult.
“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.
“The lady was worshipping Aton with Akhenaten for years”.
Advertisement
Damati said that after the analysis, that would be the next challenge.
