Egyptian Archaeologists start scanning King Tut’s burial chamber

CAIRO – 2 February 2018: The Ministry of Antiquities announced on Thursday that a group of Egyptian Archaeologists have started “decisive” radar scans in King Tutankhamun’s burial chamber with the hope of finding other hidden chambers. Egyptian archeologists have previously scanned the tomb but the results were inconclusive.

The archaeologists are using ground-penetrating radar in order to verify the existence of empty spaces or corridors behind the walls of King Tut’s burial chamber. The young King was buried inside KV62 tomb in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor.

The tomb that hosts plenty of treasures was discovered in 1922. British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves announced in 2015 that the photos and scans of the tomb’s northern wall seemed to suggest the presence of a hidden chamber.

Reeves claimed that this concealed chamber might contain the tomb of Queen Nefertiti, the wife of King Akhenaton who was Tutankhamen’s father.

“Proving Reeves’ theory would be like winning the lottery,’’ the leader of the investigation Professor Franco Porcelli of the Politecnico university in Turin, Italy, told La Repubblica newspaper.

In November, 2017 the ScanPyramids project announced the discovery of a large void in the Great Pyramid of Giza using muography. This discovery was the first major inner structure found in the Great Pyramid since the nineteenth century.

Tutankhamun was born in the 18th dynasty around 1341 B.C., and was the 12th Pharaoh of that period. He was put on the throne when he was but a small child, and Egypt’s prosperous era was beginning to decline with the rise of Pharaoh Akhenaten and his new cult.

Akhenaten ordered the destruction of numerous statues of Amun and shut down various temples, demanding that the people of Egypt now worship the sun god Aten. He had even ordered a move of Egypt’s capital away from the rich waters of the Nile in order to construct a brand new city for him, out in the harsh desert. Suffice to say, Akhenaten was not popular.

Tutankhamun took his place as Pharoah immediately after Akhenaten’s death, despite the fact that Tut was only eight years old. There was much doubt about how a child could lead Egypt, and most of the work was done by the boy king’s court of royal advisors. His original name was not, in fact, Tutankhamun; originally Tutankhaten, meaning “the living image of Aten”, the boy changed his name to “living image of Amun,” or “Tutankhamun”.

This was a sign that as Pharaoh he was interested in undoing the damage Akhenaten had done, and return to the old ways. Examination of Tut’s mummy showed since that he suffered from malaria, which likely contributed to his untimely demise following a fall that broke his leg. Tutankhamen only ruled Egypt for a short decade before his death.

His early death took Ancient Egypt by surprise, and a tomb had not been prepared for him beforehand. Experts believe that Tutankhamun was simply buried in a tomb that had already belonged to another Pharoah, possibly queen Nefertiti, as his tomb was amongst the smallest found. Tutankhamun was eventually forgotten by the people of Egypt, and the sands swallowed up his grave in the Valley of Kings.


November 4 is King Tutankhamun day, named after the day his tomb was first discovered in 1922 in the Valley of Kings, leading to a monumental excavation of one of the world’s most famous historical figures.