King Tut’s tomb isn’t giving up its secrets that easily.
Egypt’s new antiquities minister said Friday that a third round of radar scans seeking hidden chambers in the famous chamber offered hints, but no obvious home runs, in the search for what could be Queen Nefertiti’s tomb.
“We have a lot of information. So at this moment, 10 hours after finishing work, we can’t say 100% whether there is something or not,” Antiquities Minister Khaled El-Anany said after the scans were complete.
It will take at least a week to review the extensive data collected by two types of radar scanners, he said.
The team needs time to remove signal interference and anomalies in the data, said Mohamed Abbas, the head of the Egyptian team involved in the research.
A fourth round of scanning, using yet another technique, is scheduled for later in April, followed by an international conference of experts on May 8 to discuss the findings.
A British archaeologist, Nicolas Reeves, proposed in August that Nefertiti’s final resting place is tucked away in a hidden chamber inside Tutankhamun’s tomb. Nefertiti ruled Egypt alongside her husband, Amenhotep IV, but vanished after reigning for 12 years.
Reeves said he believes high-resolution images of the wall of Tut’s tomb show evidence of “ghost doorways” that have previously gone unnoticed.
After an earlier scan, then-Antiquties Minister Mamdouh El Damati said scientists were 90% sure they had found two new chambers hidden behind walls in Tut’s tomb.
The scan also revealed metallic and organic material, Damati said.
British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922.
Although he was a relatively minor pharaoh, his tomb — the most intact such chamber ever unearthed in Egypt — has been a boon to archaeologists and the public alike.