LUXOR, Egypt — Radar tests have revealed a 90 percent chance hidden chambers lie behind one of the walls in the tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamen, Egypt's antiquities minister said Saturday.
Infrared and radar scans of the walls of the tomb have now been completed and will be sent to Japan for detailed examination, which is expected to take a month, minister Mamdouh al-Damati told journalists in Luxor.
The tests were carried out after British egyptologist Nicholas Reeves said a detailed examination of photography and scans of the tomb's north wall suggested it concealed an opening into a further chamber.
Reeves proposed that the hidden chamber could contain the tomb of Queen Nefertiti – the wife of Tutankhamen's father, the heretical pharaoh Akhenaten.
Al-Damati said further surveys in the tomb would be undertaken once Japanese experts have finished examining the radar and infrared scans.
Tutankhamen's tomb, discovered in 1922, was unique among the pharaonic tombs in Luxor's Valley of the Kings for the richness of its contents. Unlike most of the other tombs, it had not been systematically plundered in ancient times.
Story: DPA
