{"id":21206,"date":"2022-12-14T08:00:47","date_gmt":"2022-12-14T07:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sciencefocus.com\/?p=132599"},"modified":"2022-12-14T08:42:12","modified_gmt":"2022-12-14T07:42:12","slug":"tutankhamuns-tomb-how-scientists-solved-the-mystery-of-its-hidden-rooms","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/rss_feed\/tutankhamuns-tomb-how-scientists-solved-the-mystery-of-its-hidden-rooms\/","title":{"rendered":"Tutankhamun\u2019s tomb: How scientists solved the mystery of its hidden rooms"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Dylan Bickerstaffe\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Wednesday, 14 December 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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On 26 November 2022, it was 100 years since Howard Carter peered through a hole in the entrance to the chambers of Tutankhamun\u2019s tomb and saw \u201cwonderful things\u201d. It was to be one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of all time.<\/p>\n

Before Carter discovered the tomb in November 1922, Tutankhamun was an obscure pharaoh, but far from unknown. It was known that he had started life as Tutankhaten\u00a0and had been married to Ankhesenpaaten, the third daughter of the \u2018heretic pharaoh\u2019 Akhenaten and the queen Nefertiti, and that he had ruled briefly under this name at the city of Akhet-Aten (modern Amarna, about halfway between Cairo and Luxor). This city had been founded by Akhenaten in honour of a single deity, the Aten. This abandoned Egypt\u2019s traditional polytheism of many gods presided over by \u2018the king of the gods\u2019, Amun-Ra.<\/p>\n

However, after a few years, Tutankhamun\u00a0changed his name in respect of the god Amun, and returned to the old religion (his queen becoming Ankhesenamun\u00a0at the same time). He was known to have ruled for a total of about nine years. Despite this, his association with the heretic regime meant that later kings excluded his name from king-lists and usurped his name on monuments.<\/p>\n

Carter was confident that Tutankhamun\u2019s tomb lay in the Valley of the Kings (at Luxor, in Upper Egypt), because a cache of leftover materials from the king\u2019s funeral had been found there in 1907. He was right, of course \u2013 it had been preserved under a thick layer of concrete-hard flood deposits.<\/p>\n

Carter was a meticulous worker and recorded the location of every object in the tomb on plans and sketches, and through the fantastically detailed glass-plate negatives made by photographer, Harry Burton. At some point in its history the tomb had been affected by damp, which led to the spots of mould we see marring the wall-paintings in the burial chamber.<\/p>\n

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Howard Carter and an Egyptian worker with the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun \u00a9 Getty Image<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n

The damp had also caused much warping and deterioration of wooden objects, and dissolved the glues, causing many items to fall apart. Carter\u2019s conservation team, led by Arthur Mace and Alfred Lucas, performed miracles to preserve the treasures we now admire today. In total, less than a quarter of 1 per cent of the tomb contents was lost.<\/p>\n

Now, 100 years later, the artefacts are receiving state-of-the-art conservation in readiness for the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) in Giza, Egypt.<\/p>\n

Visitors to Tutankhamun\u2019s tomb (numbered KV62) are invariably struck by how small it is \u2013 particularly when compared with great royal tombs such as that of Ramesses VI next door. Indeed, it is believed that KV62 was originally intended as the last resting place of a senior courtier, until it was rapidly adapted and pressed into service to house the prematurely deceased young king.<\/p>\n

The treasures may now be in museums, but the magical story of the discovery has drawn literally millions of visitors to stand in the tomb over the years. The impact on the wall paintings of breath, sweat and dust brought in by these visitors created the need for an accurate replica of the burial chamber, allowing the original tomb to be periodically closed.<\/p>\n

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Tutankhamun\u2019s death mask \u00a9 Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n

To recreate the tomb, the Madrid-based company Factum Arte<\/a> scanned the wall surfaces in incredible detail both in 3D and as colour images. Early in 2014 the results were made available online, where they can be viewed in colour or in relief, and examined in fine detail using the zoom facility.<\/p>\n

It was scrutiny of the 3D images that led the Egyptologist Dr Nicholas Reeves to issue a paper in April 2015 suggesting that the walls of the burial chamber concealed hidden rooms<\/a>. On the west wall he thought there were faint outlines of a sealed doorway, and in the main north wall still fainter traces of a partition wall with a service doorway in the centre. This was remarkable enough, but what really caused a sensation was his claim that the beautiful queen Nefertiti lay buried in a hidden chamber beyond. It was a story made for the media, and there were many in the Egyptology community who felt it was just too good to be true.<\/p>\n

It is now generally accepted that Nefertiti reigned briefly as King Neferneferuaten (a name-extension she employed while still queen) as a regent, perhaps of Akhenaten, or for the young Tutankhamun. Reeves\u2019s claim that she lay behind the north wall was based on re-identifying the images of Tutankhamun as Nefertiti, and the figure of his successor, Ay (shown ritually \u2018opening the mouth\u2019 of Tutankhamun), as Tutankhamun himself.<\/p>\n

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Nicholas Reeves entering Tutankhamun\u2019s tomb \u00a9 Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n

Reeves drew support for these re-identifications from the examination of paint and plaster layers made by the Getty Conservation team involved in cleaning and restoration work. They revealed that, while the four walls each differed in some respect, the north wall showed evidence of having been reworked. The yellow background colour seen on the other walls had in this case only been filled-in around the human figures later \u2013 the original base having been white.<\/p>\n

Of the two \u2018doorways\u2019, the one in the western wall is the more convincing, and the most obvious feature in the northern wall is a large fault in the rock a little left of centre with some associated restoration. It should be borne in mind that the 3D scans are so sensitive that they show up the thickness of paint outlining figures, and there are a lot of other lines on the walls.<\/p>\n

There was an almost universal call for wall-scans to settle the issue of whether there were any hidden chambers. Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) scans of the burial chamber walls were carried out in late November 2015 by Hirokatsu Watanabe, a colleague of Reeves, using rather antiquated, customised equipment.<\/p>\n

His results were never formally published, and the initial press releases were greeted with some scepticism because Watanabe not only claimed to have found voids, but also evidence that these voids contained metal and organic materials \u2013 something which several experts pointed out was beyond the capabilities of GPR. What was not noted at the time was that both the voids and the materials within them had supposedly been found extending into areas not predicted by Reeves.<\/p>\n

Read more about Ancient Egypt:<\/strong><\/p>\n