It is almost certain that there are two hidden chambers behind the walls of the young prince's tomb in Luxor :the Egyptian Antiquities Minister announced it, illustrating the preliminary results of a sophisticated radar analysis.
"I think someone very important is buried, but I don't think it's Nefertiti “, Said the minister al Damati .
Contrary to other pharaohs' tombs, which were almost entirely looted, that of Tutankamon , discovered in November 1922 by the British archaeologist, Howard Carter , it was intact:it kept more than 5 thousand objects , dating back 3,300 years ago , many of them in solid gold.
Egyptian authorities have announced that the latest radar survey in Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings has conclusively proven that there are no secret rooms or corridors behind the walls of the 'child pharaoh' burial chamber.
This was declared by Mostafa Waziry, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, on Sunday 6 May, during the Fourth International Conference on Tutankhamun which was held at the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) in Giza.
This announcement thus puts an end to an investigation that began three years ago, when British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves speculated that the tomb of the celebrated 18th dynasty queen Nefertiti might be hidden behind the walls of Tut's tomb, dating back to 3300 years ago.
The first two attempts to detect hidden passages or cameras with radar were inconclusive, while the third and final investigation, conducted last February with the support of the National Geographic Society by the Italian mission of Franco Porcelli of the Polytechnic of Turin, it is considered the most complete and reliable.
The scientific report delivered by prof. Porcelli in Waziry and to the Egyptian Minister of Antiquities Khaled el-Enany ends with this sentence:" We conclude, with a very high degree of certainty, that the hypothesis concerning the existence of hidden chambers adjacent to the tomb of Tutankhamun is not supported by the data of the GPR ".
The ground-penetrating radar ( GPR ), a remote sensing technique commonly used to identify oil, gas or other minerals, is a tool increasingly adopted by archaeologists because it allows them to detect man-made voids in the earth, such as tombs or passages, without unnecessarily disturbing the fragile structures above. .
In 2015 , the Japanese specialist Hirokatsu Watanabe had conducted a first scan in the KV62 and soon after, surprising results announced:clear evidence of bricked-up doors along the north and west walls of the burial chamber.
However, a second study, carried out in 2016 by National Geographic engineers , did not confirm the conclusions of Watanabe .
For this reason, following a heated discussion between the opposing 'factions' during the 2016 GEM Conference, Minister El-Enany commissioned a definitive analysis that resolved any doubts.