Has Queen Nefertiti Been Found
Almost 100 years since its discovery, the tomb of Tutankhamun, the boy-king of ancient Egypt, continues to reveal its secrets.
A researcher claims to have found a ‘ghost’ doorway hiding beneath the plaster on the wall of the burial chamber, which he believes leads to the tomb of the ruler’s supposed mother, Queen Nefertiti.
Famed for her exquisite beauty, the grave of Nefertiti or the ‘Lady of the Two Lands’ has been lost for centuries since her sudden death in 1340 BC.
Previous DNA analysis has suggested King Tutankhamun’s mother may have been a mummy known as the Younger Lady, who is also thought to be his father’s sister.
However, there are some Egyptologists who claim that it is actually Nefertiti, the chief wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten and mother to six of his children, who is Tutankhamun’s mother.
Dr Nicholas Reeves, an English archaeologist at the University of Arizona, has now provided new evidence to support these claims in a report published by the Amarna Royal Tombs Project.
After analysing high-resolution scans of the walls of Tutankhamun’s grave complex in the Valley of the Kings, Dr Reeves spotted what appeared to be a secret entrance.
He described how he uncovered the ‘ghosts’ of two portals that tomb builders blocked up, one of which is believed to be a storage room.
The other, on the north side of Tutankhamun’s tomb, contains ‘the undisturbed burial of the tomb’s original owner – Nefertiti’, Dr Reeves argued.
If Dr Reeves is correct, the hidden tomb could be far more magnificent than anything found in Tutankhamun’s burial chamber.
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