There is probably no childhood obsession that reaches as far into adulthood as ancient Egypt. Why wouldn’t it? It has it all. Gods, drama, violence, wrath, (heaps of) incest and the mysterious deaths of inbred boy kings. But sadly today we need to pull the curtains on one of the juiciest recent theories engulfing Egyptology—the idea that King Tutankhamun’s tomb hid secret chambers that housed the final resting place of Queen Nefertiti.
Spoiler alert: it doesn’t
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In a statement yesterday, Mostafa Waziri, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities said that the much discussed mystery rooms don’t exist. The findings come from an an Italian team who used ground-penetrating radar scans to search for the hypothetical chambers. Francesco Porcelli of the Polytechnic University of Turin detailed their findings at an international conference in Cairo, saying: “Our work shows in a conclusive manner that there are no hidden chambers, no corridors adjacent to Tutankhamun’s tomb,”
The Nefertiti vs Tutankhamun theory theory gained traction in 2015 when British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves suggested that the iconic queen’s tomb could be concealed behind wall paintings in Tut’s burial chamber. The suggestion was the tomb we know as the boy king’s was originally constructed for Nefertiti, but when he died suddenly his body was housed in an outer chamber of her tomb.
At the time Egyptian Antiquities Minister Mamdouh al-Damaty said, “if it is true, we are facing a discovery that would overshadow the discovery of Tutankhamun himself…this would be the most important discovery of the 21st century.”
Nefertiti’s final resting place is one of the great mysteries of the ancient world. Although some archaeologists have speculated that she is one of the many unidentified mummies found in the Valley of the Kings.
It has been a tough few years for King Tut stans. In 2014 the beard attached to his iconic golden mask was knocked off during a move. Rather than undergoing a full restoration, it was repaired with an epoxy glue compound.
Now with the Nefertiti story bust, we’re gonna refocus our attention on remaining cool theories around him—namely that he was an alien.
