No Secret Chambers After All

In some bummer news from the world of archaeology, a new ground-penetrating radar study have found no evidence of additional secret chambers in the tomb of Tutankhamun. Back in 2015 a survey of the tomb detected anomalies behind two of the tomb's walls. This led archaeologists to speculate that the secret chambers might be part of the tomb of Queen Nefertiti, which has never been found. However, a follow-up study was unable to replicate the results, so a more comprehensive survey of the tomb went forward.

Using ground-penetrating radar, three independent teams of researchers failed to detect the presence of doors or empty spaces behind the walls of King Tut’s funeral chamber. It’s a disappointing result, as archaeologists were hoping to find the final resting place of Queen Nefertiti.

“We conclude, with a very high level of confidence, that the hypothesis concerning the existence of hidden chambers adjacent [to] Tutankhamun’s tomb is not supported by the [ground-penetrating radar] data,” stated Franco Porcelli of the Polytechnic University of Turin, the lead investigator, in his final report. Porcelli and his colleagues disclosed their findings on Sunday May 6 at the fourth annual International Tutankhamun GEM Conference, which was held at the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) in Giza, as reported by National Geographic.

It’s an unhappy result, but such is science. The discovery — if it can be called that — discredits a theory proposed by Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves stating that Queen Nefertiti’s tomb is located behind the walls of King Tutankhamun’s burial chamber. The theory was given added credence in 2015 when radar specialist Hirokatsu Watanabe detected signs of apparent hidden doors behind the north and west walls of the 3,300-year-old burial chamber. A subsequent scan performed by engineers with the National Geographic Society could not replicate Watanabe’s results, prompting a “tie breaker” investigation.

To be clear here, a negative result is still a result, because often in science disproving something can be as important as demonstrating it. It would have been pretty amazing if Nefertiti's tomb were found adjacent to Tutankhamun's simply because it would probably mean that the tomb would be found undisturbed. Tutankhamun was a minor Pharaoh, but he is so famous and vitally important to modern Egyptology because his was the only tomb ever to be discovered intact. Grave robbers had hit all of the others.

A second undisturbed tomb would provide important perspective on Egyptian funeral customs and the kinds of goods likely to be buried with their dead, and the tomb of Nefertiti must lie somewhere. But this result means that the odds of it being found ransacked are much higher.