DNA technology used to identify mummy of Queen Nefertiti

CAIRO – 14 August 2022: Nicholas Reeves once claimed that Queen Nefertiti is buried in a secret room behind the tomb of King Tutankhamun.

This claim was published in a foreign newspaper in a research, on August 13, 2015.But after studies were conducted in the cemetery using the latest radar equipment, it was found that the British researcher was wrong. 

Recently, prominent archaeologist and former Minister of Antiquities Zahi Hawass shed light on Queen Nefertiti and King Tutankhamun in statements to a number of international newspapers.

Famous Egyptologist Zahi Hawass attended a seminar at the 19th Magna Graecia Film Festival. The symposium was held in a cinema in Catanzaro, and was presented by the festival's president, Gian Vito.

Hawass announced that former Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Khaled el-Enani will hold an international conference in the attendance of 40 archaeologists from all over the world, to discuss the antiquities and history of the Golden Pharaoh Tutankhamun. Hawas will also tackle holding a gala dinner inside Luxor Temple and opening Howard Carter's house as a museum, with a huge celebration that is set to be held in front of the tomb of King Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings, according to the Independent and Lavanguardia.

Moreover, Hawass said he will announce in October the details of Tutankhamun’s death, in addition to explaining the method that uses DNA in the discovery of the mummy of Queen Nefertiti and the wife of King Tutankhamun.

For years, the whereabouts of Queen Nefertiti's tomb have raised contraversy among archaeologists. In August 2015, Nicholas Reeves, an archaeologist at the University of Arizona, claimed that Nefertiti may be located behind a wall inside Tutankhamun's tomb, and on October 22, 2015, the Permanent Committee approved Nicholas Reeves' proposal, regarding the use of radar equipment to test the interior walls of Tutankhamun's tomb.

On November 26, 2015, studies were conducted, in cooperation with Egypt’s Minister of Antiquities at the time Mamdouh el-Damaty,  which revealed that the tomb of Queen Nefertiti did not exist behind the walls of Tutankhamun's tomb. However, he was certain of a new archaeological find, which was confirmed by the radar device that spotted the presence of voids behind the tomb.

On May 8, 2016, former Egyptian Minister of Tourism & Antiquities Khaled el-Enani held an extensive conference attended by the British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves, and Egyptian archaeologists led by Zahi Hawass, who warned Reeves, saying: “We cannot rely on your theory without strong evidence, which you do not have.”

Hawass explained that archaeologists must rely on devices other than the ones that were used and gave results in the Japanese language.

During the conference, a number of scholars demanded more research and analysis to identify the size of the voids behind the tomb of Tutankhamun. They also demanded more radar surveys, not only in Tutankhamun's tomb, but in every other project.

In 2017, Francesco Borselli of the Polytechnic University in Turin, Italy, conducted a survey using GPR inside the tomb, ruling out any hidden chambers.

Enani explained in 2017 that when he went to inspect the cemetery, he did not find anything to support the claimed finds, and that he welcomes cooperation with any international scientific body that uses non-harmful radar to examine Egyptian antiquities and that utilizes a different technology than what was previously used.