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Is Nefertiti hiding in the Valley of Kings' secret chamber?

Elizabeth GrenierNovember 30, 2015

Hidden chambers adjoining King Tut's mausoleum promise exciting archaeological finds. What they conceal remains a mystery. Nicholas Reeves believes it's the mysterious queen Nefertiti - and others don't.

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Neues Museum in Berlin - Büste der Nofretete
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Sohn

In a paper British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves published last August, he claimed that Nefertiti's tomb may be hidden in rooms adjoining King Tut's burial chamber.

Now Egyptian antiquities minister Mamduh al-Damati has declared experts are "approximately 90 percent" sure that they will be finding "another chamber, another tomb, behind the burial chamber of King Tutankhamun." Al-Damati made the statement at a press conference on Saturday (28.11.2015).

What the chamber actually conceals is still a mystery, and gaining access to it will take months.

"I think it is Nefertiti, and all the evidence points in that direction," said Reeves. If he's right, it could turn out to be the greatest archeological discovery since Howard Carter, another British Egyptologist, found Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922.

Reeves maintains that the mysterious queen was the boy-king's mother and that she ruled over Egypt, succeeding her husband King Akhenaten, but these views are controversial. Click through the gallery above to discover why Nicholas Reeves believes Nefertiti is buried in a chamber right by Tutankhamun and why others prefer to remain more cautious - or even say that Reeves' claim is simply impossible.