http://www.express.co.uk/news/history/622847/Secret-chamber-mystery-resting-place-tomb-history-Egyptian-Queen-NefertitiTUTANKHAMUN’S tomb could conceal the last resting place of his mother Queen Nefertiti, archaeologists revealed yesterday.
Radar scans inside the boy king’s underground burial chamber suggest a hollow space behind one of its walls.
British Egyptologist Nick Reeves has predicted that the remains of the legendary beauty, said to be Tutankhamun’s mother or stepmother, lie in a secret room beyond the “partition wall”.
Scans were carried out in the Valley of the Kings to test the theory.
And yesterday he announced the scans’ findings at a conference with Egyptian Antiquities Minister Mamdouh el-Damaty.
Mr Damaty said: “We said earlier there was a 60 per cent chance of something being behind the walls but now, after the initial reading of the scans, we are saying it’s 90 per cent likely.”
Data will now be taken to Japan for further study.
If the theory is correct, it would solve a 3,000-year-old mystery and represent the biggest discovery in ancient Egyptian archaeology for nearly 100 years.
Finding Nefertiti would also shed fresh light on what remains a mysterious period of Egyptian history.
Egyptologists have long been uncertain about where Nefertiti died.
She was thought to have died during her husband Akhenaten’s reign, suggesting her grave was in Amarna, where her bust was found in 1912.
The statue, which immortalised her beauty, is now in the Egyptian Museum of Berlin.
Experts, including Mr Reeves, now believe Nefertiti outlived Akhenaten and may even have ruled Egypt briefly.
Mr Reeves said in October that space was cleared in Nefertiti’s mausoleum for Tutankhamun, who died, aged 19, in around 1323 BC.
He lay undisturbed until his intact tomb, complete with his famous gold and lapis lazuli burial mask, was discovered in 1922 by another British Egyptologist, Howard Carter.
Experts believe his tomb is smaller than that of other pharaohs and its shape is more in keeping with that of the Egyptian queens of the time.
