By Victoria Caldwell
Contributing Writer

Scholars everywhere are buzzing with excitement after recent evidence from high-resolution images of Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s —commonly known as King Tut —tomb revealed the possibility of two hidden chambers. Archaeologists wait for permission to radar scan the ancient tomb.

One of the secret rooms, according to one archaeologist, could be the tomb of one of the most powerful queens of Egypt, Queen Nefertiti.

After Factum Arte, a Spanish company specializing in art and preservation, uploaded the scanned images of Tut’s tomb on the internet, Dr. Nicholas Reeves, a British archaeologist from the University of Arizona, pored over the images, studying every crack when he made a momentous discovery: long, linear cracks perpendicular to the floor hidden beneath the paint. Reeves believes that one tomb is another storage room, but the other is the tomb of Tut’s stepmother, Nefertiti.

While some archaeologists are skeptical of whether the hidden tomb houses the body of famous Nefertiti, many agree that if the second room was the tomb of another family member predating Tut, it would explain the mysteries surrounding the structure of King Tut’s tomb. If so, then Tut’s tomb was never originally his. Instead, after his sudden death, builders extended the tomb of another royal family member and placed Tut in the antechamber.

When Howard Carter first discovered the young king’s tomb in 1922, he noted the “unkingly arrangement” of smaller rooms and fewer decorated murals than what was previously found for pharaohs. Some scholars have previously speculated that the arrangement of Tut’s tomb followed the models for queens instead of kings, supporting Reeves’ theory.

However, Momdouh al-Damaty, the Antiquities Minister of Egypt, doubtful of idea of finding Nefertiti’s corpse. After inviting Reeves to Egypt for a conference on the theory of the hidden chambers, Damaty, Reeves, and many other archaeologists are reexamining the tomb, and they hope to radar scan the tomb at the beginning of November. While he is “70 percent certain we are going to find something”, as he told “The Guardian,” Damaty believes that it won’t be Nefertiti who lies behind the painted walls, but Kiya, another wife of Akhenaten and possibly the mother of Tut, or another member of the royalty.

Even if it is not Nefertiti or Kiya, Damaty argues that the discovery of any room predating Tut’s tomb “would be a major discovery”.