Briefing Chat: Evidence mounts for hidden chambers beyond Tutankhamun's tomb

Benjamin Thompson (0:03)

Hi, listeners, Benjamin here, welcome to the Friday show, where we talk about some of the stories we've read about in the Nature Briefing, which is, of course, Nature's daily email roundup of the latest science news. And joining me this week is Lizzie Gibney. Lizzie, how are you doing today?

Lizzie Gibney (0:16)

Hello, I'm very well, thank you, Ben. How are you?

Benjamin Thompson (0:18)

I'm doing OK. You've got an exciting story today. Tell me all about it.

Lizzie Gibney (0:21)

I do. This feels like what would be to Egyptologists like for me discovering dark matter. For Egyptologists, this is something absolutely huge, if true.

This is an exclusive in Nature by Joe Marchand. A group of Egyptian researchers think there is evidence that there may be another tomb beyond Tutankhamun. And there is a chance that it belongs to the famous Queen Nefertiti. Now, Nefertiti, if you remember, was this very, very powerful ancient Egyptian queen from the 14th century BC.

She was Tutankhamun's predecessor and possibly mother, stepmother, that's not exactly clear. But her tomb has never been found. There have been some good theories about where she might be buried. And one of them has been that perhaps she has this burial chamber, which is attached to Tutankhamun's.

Benjamin Thompson (1:12)

And Tutankhamun's tomb, then, is in the Valley of the Kings. And you're right, there has been this debate about what is behind the wall in his tomb, right?

Lizzie Gibney (1:20)

Right. So he had a weirdly small tomb, given that he was such a big name. And when you look at it, you can see that there are like cracks in the walls. And they've done some scans and realized that like the paintings on the walls don't seem to be as you'd expect. And so there's some suggestion that maybe there's a wall.

And so what the theory was, was that maybe Nefertiti was buried there. And then when Tutankhamun died later, he would die young, so he was only 19 So maybe they weren't expecting him to die at that point, they hadn't built him a snazzy tomb yet. So maybe they converted one of the outer chambers of her tombs. Maybe they kind of boarded hers up and made one of the outer chambers bigger and turned that into his tomb.

Benjamin Thompson (2:01)

And this has been the work in hypothesis for a few people, but then other people say, nuh-uh. So what's happened here then?

Lizzie Gibney (2:05)

So, you know, some people study the geophysics with a number of tools and didn't seem to find anything. Bring us up to today and some studies that are being published in the occasional papers of the Amarna Royal Tombs Project have found evidence that actually perhaps there is a network of corridors, perhaps some chambers behind Tutankhamun's tomb. So there were two different techniques that it used. One is ground penetrating radar. So that's literally using like radar. It can go to some extent through the materials there and where you have a change in material, it will bounce back and you'll get something of a picture. Now in the past, they looked for a chamber and found nothing using that. This time, and this is done from within the tomb, they found what may look like a corridor about two meters wide, but perhaps have been filled in with rubble. Previously, they've been looking for a big chamber, and actually they're now saying maybe there is a corridor. The second technique that they did that they haven't done before is called a microgravity survey.

So you're literally looking at the gravitational field strength in that area. So as you'll remember, like matter has a gravitational pull, and if there's less matter, if there's like a lower density area, the gravitational field strength will be lower. So if you do a survey of this area, you might find patches that are lower density, literally the field strength is lower. And that will tell you potentially if you have a chamber or area that is of lower density, that it's surroundings. So both of these techniques put together, they built up a picture which is suggestive of some kind of complex, because for example, they can see right angles. They can see a wall that is parallel with another known wall. They can see what look like potentially open spaces.

The reason this is so tentative is we're not just able to look in pure in as if we put on X-ray glasses.

There's so much that can conflict with these microgravity surveys. So if you have any vibrations, that acceleration mimics gravitational pull. You have to factor in all the terrain around it. The resolution drops off severely with distance. So there's a lot that goes into these calculations. And that is why geophysicists looking at these results have said, it certainly is plausible, but they wouldn't yet say, oh my God, we found these chambers. But that hasn't stopped people getting excited, of course.