While many Egyptologists have voiced strong doubts about the validity of Reeves’ theory, it does explain many unsolved mysteries about the famous tomb and the equally mysterious life and death of its occupant.
At the time, Mr Damaty said the analysis showed “differences in the temperatures registered on different parts of the northern wall” of the tomb.
More recently, most experts, including Reeves, have come to believe she outlived Akhenaten, who may have been Tut’s father, but changed her name and may have briefly ruled Egypt.
Nefertiti’s place in the cult would have excluded her from burial in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, says Zahi Hawass, the country’s former antiquities minister and an Egyptologist.
Reeves had previously said that the discovery of Nefertiti’s tomb will be a “wonderful” find as it pertains to a significant historical figure during “a period of the most superb art”, as noted by National Geographic.
The mystery of who else may be buried in King Tutankhamun’s tomb edged closer to a resolution over the weekend.
“We said earlier there was a 60 percent chance there is something behind the walls”.
“The lady was worshipping Aton with Akhenaten for years. The priests would never allow her to be buried in the Valley of the Kings”, he said.
“I’m feeling more certain today than I expected to be”, he told reporters from outside the Howard Carter House, a site in Luxor, Egypt where King Tut was found, and named after the British archaeologist who discovered the tomb in 1922.
There is a “90% chance” that behind King Tutankhamun’s tomb is a hidden chamber which may be the last resting place of Queen Nefertiti.
Damati emphasized that the findings were “preliminary” results, and a Japanese expert working with the archaeologists needed a month to analyze the scans.
“Clearly it does look from the radar evidence as if the tomb continues, as I have predicted”, Nicholas Reeves said at a news conference on Saturday. Pushing a radar machine on a metal trolley rigged to look like a high-tech lawn mower, he slowly inched along the walls of the hot and airless chamber while journalists and antiquities experts watched in breathless silence. But preliminary results of an ultrasound investigation of the tomb show that it may be hiding other secrets – including rooms behind Tut’s burial chamber.
In an academic paper published this past July, British archaeologist Nicholas Reeves made the startling claim that King Tutankhamen may not be alone in his burial chamber.
