No secret chamber behind Tutankhamun's tomb

Researchers with Italy's Turin Polytechnic University have found no evidence of the existence of any secret chamber behind King Tutankhamun's burial chamber, Egypt's Antiquities Ministry said Sunday.

Experts used ground penetrating radar (GPR) to arrive at the "conclusive evidence," the ministry said in a statement.

The study contradicts claims made by a British Egyptologist, Nicholas Reeves, who said in 2015 that photographs and scans of the tomb's northern wall seemed to suggest the presence of a secret chamber.

Reeves theorized that the hidden chamber might contain the tomb of Queen Nefertiti, the wife of Tutankhamen's father, the pharaoh Akhenaten.

"The studies ... have shown that no chambers exist, or even an indication of any threshold or door frames, which contradicts the previous theory that had assumed the existence of passages or chambers adjacent or inside the burial chamber of King Tutankhamun," said Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Mysterious period

Tutankhamun, one of the last kings of Egypt's 18th dynasty, died at around the age of 19 under mysterious circumstances.

The young pharaoh was buried inside a tomb in the Valley of the Kings near the modern-day city of Luxor.

The tomb was discovered in 1922 and found to contain a wealth of treasures.

Reeves' claims about Nefertiti, whose regal beauty has been immortalized in a 3,300-year-old bust now in a Berlin museum, created considerable buzz among historians, eager to learn more about what remains a mysterious period of Egyptian history.

ap/cmk (Reuters, AFP, dpa)

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