The Ministry of Antiquities announced on Sunday, after months of intensive geophysics studies, that a survey has revealed there is no hidden chamber inside Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, according to Moustafa Waziri, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.
The three-month studies were conducted by a mission from the Polytechnic University of Turin in Italy. The mission announced its results on Sunday in a presentation held as a part of the fourth International Tutankhamun Conference, taking place at the Grand Egyptian Museum, entitled Tutankhamun: Weapons and Statues.
Waziri also asserted in a press release that the mission delivered its report to the Permanent Committee for Ancient Egyptian Antiquities, in which they confirmed that there is no proof or even indicators of any existing chamber inside the tomb.
The report states, Waziri said, that there are no steps, passageways, or doorframes, which goes against the assumptions of any undiscovered attached rooms or voids behind the funeral chamber the king was buried at.
The survey, built on vertical and horizontal axes, assured that there is no existing chamber in the tomb.
“It is concluded, with a very high degree of confidence, that the hypothesis concerning the existence of hidden chambers or corridors adjacent to Tutankhamun’s tomb is not supported by the GPR data,” Francesco Porcelli, a member of the mission, said in the report, according to Ahram Online.
The third survey put an end to the controversial theory stated by British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves in 2015 that suggested that Queen Nefertiti might be buried in a chamber behind Tutankhamun’s burial chamber.
The first survey conducted stated that there was about a 95% chance there might be a doorway and a hall behind the burial chamber. However, it was contradicted by the second one, conducted by an American scientific team from National Geographic, which stated that there is no such chamber.
To reach a conclusion, Minister of Antiquities Khaled El-Anany discussed the issue at the second International Tutankhamun Conference, which took place in 2016. It was attended by archaeology pioneers, who, with the minister, decided a third survey was needed.
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