Tutankhamun’s Tomb Discussion Doesn’t Die

More than three millennia after Tutankhamun was buried in southern Egypt, and a century after his tomb was discovered, Egyptologists are still debating who the chamber was built for and what, if any, lies behind its walls. Debate has become a global pastime.

At the center of the confusion is confrontation enthusiast Nicholas Reeves, 66, who shares a house near Oxford, England, with an unnamed cat. In July 2015, Reeves, former curator of the British Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, put forward the tantalizing theory that there were hidden rooms behind the north and west walls of the treasure-filled tomb of Tutankhamen, aka Tutankhamen. as King Tut.

It has long been assumed that the small burial chamber, built 3,300 years ago and known to experts as KV62, was originally intended as a private tomb for Tutankhamun’s successor, Ay, until Tutankhamun died prematurely at age 19. Reeves proposed that the tomb was actually just an antechamber to a larger tomb of Tutankhamun’s stepmother and predecessor, Nefertiti. Besides, Reeves argued, behind the north wall was a corridor that could lead to Nefertiti’s unexplored burial chambers, and perhaps to the queen herself.

The Egyptian government authorized surveys using ground-penetrating radar, capable of detecting and scanning underground cavities. At a press conference in Cairo in March 2016, Mamdouh Eldamaty, then Egypt’s Minister of Antiquities, showed the preliminary results of radar scans that revealed anomalies behind the decorated walls on the north and west sides of the tomb, suggesting the presence of two spaces. voids and organic materials or metallic objects.

With much fanfare, he announced that there was an “approximately 90%” chance that something—”another chamber, another tomb”—was waiting beyond KV62. (Reeves said, “There was constant pressure from the press for probabilities. My own answer was 50-50 — the radar will reveal that there is more to Tutankhamun’s tomb than we currently see, or not.”)

However, after two years and two radar searches, a new Minister of Antiquities declared that there were no locked doors or hidden rooms inside the tomb. The detailed results of the final scan have not been released for independent review. However, the announcement prompted National Geographic magazine to cancel funding for Reeves’ project, and a prominent Egyptologist to say, “We must not follow hallucinations.”

Zahi Hawass, former Egyptian antiquities authority and author of “King Tutankhamun: The Treasures of the Tomb,” said, “I completely disagree with that theory. There is no way in ancient Egypt for any king to block someone else’s tomb. all your beliefs. It’s impossible!” (Reeves responded by pointing out that every successor king was responsible for closing their predecessor’s tomb, as the mythical Horus buried his father, Osiris. “This is even demonstrated by what we currently see on the north wall of the burial chamber, labeled Ay burying Tutankhamun.” , said Reeves.)

Kara Cooney, a professor of Egyptian art and architecture at the University of California at Los Angeles, noted the tension in the academic field.

“Nick’s work is evidence-based and carefully researched,” she said. “But few Egyptologists will say this openly, because they are all afraid of losing access to tombs and excavation concessions. Or they are just idiots.”

Despite the setback, Reeves forged ahead. In “The Complete Tutankhamun: 100 Years of Discovery” [Tutancâmon completo: cem anos de descobertas], a newly revised edition of his 1990 book to be published next January, he draws on data provided by thermal imaging, laser scanning, mold growth maps, and inscription analysis to support his fiercely contested scholarship. The provocative new evidence reinforced his belief that Tutankhamun was hastily buried in the entrance hall to Nefertiti’s tomb.

“A lot of what Tutankhamun took to the grave had nothing to do with him,” said Reeves, who spoke via video from his home office. He claimed that King Tut had inherited a set of luxurious burial equipment that were repurposed to accompany him into the afterlife, including his famous gold death mask.

pyramid scheme

Reeves has conducted research directly at the tomb on several occasions over the years. He arrived at his theory about Tutankhamun in 2014 after examining high-resolution color photos of the tomb, which were published online by Factum Arte, a company based in Madrid, Spain, and Bologna, Italy, which specializes in recording and replicating art. The images showed lines under the plastered surfaces of the painted walls, suggesting unknown doors. He speculated that one door—on the west side—opened onto a Tutankhamun-era storehouse, and that another, aligned with either side of the entrance chamber, opened onto a corridor that ran along the same axis in shape and orientation, reminiscent of a longer corridor of the queen’s tomb.

“I saw from the beginning, from the face of the north wall, that the larger tomb could only belong to Nefertiti,” Reeves said. “I have also suggested, based on evidence from elsewhere, that the storage chamber perceived to the west of the burial chamber could have been adapted into a burial chamber for other missing members of the Amarna royal family.”

To support his radical reappraisal, Reeves pointed to a pair of cartouches — oval or oblong shapes containing a group of hieroglyphs — and a curious misspelling painted on the tomb’s north wall. The figure below the first cartouche is named after Tutankhamun’s pharaonic successor, Ay, and is shown officiating at the burial of the young king in the “opening of the mouth” ceremony, a funeral rite to restore the deceased’s senses—the ability to speak, touch, see, smell and hear. The key, Reeves said, is that both of Ay’s cartouches show clear evidence that they have been altered — Tutankhamun’s birth and throne names.

Reeves suggested that the cartridges originally showed Tut burying his predecessor and that the cartridges — and thus the grave — were put to new use.

“If you carefully inspect the birth name cartouche, you will see clear, underlying traces of a reed leaf,” he said in an e-mail. “Not coincidentally, this hieroglyph is the first character of the divine component of Tutankhamun’s name, ‘-amun’, in all standard writings.”

Under the throne name of Ay can be discerned a rare variant writing of Tutankhamun’s throne name, “Nebkheperure”, employing three scarabs. This is a variant whose adaptation provides the only viable explanation for the strangely misguided, three-scarab version of the Ay throne name “Kheperkheperure” that is there, Reeves said.

He deduced that the scene originally did not depict Ay presiding over Tutankhamun’s burial, but Tutankhamun presiding over Nefertiti’s burial. There are two visual arguments, he said. The first is the “double rounded, childlike chin” of the figure of Ay, a feature absent from any image currently identified with him, implying that the original painting of the king must have been of the plump young Tutankhamun. The second is the facial contours of the mummified man — hitherto presumed to be Tutankhamun — whose lips, narrow neck and distinctive nasal bridge are a “perfect match” with the profile of the painted limestone bust of Nefertiti on display at the Neues Museum in Berlin.

“There would be no reason to include a representation of this predecessor’s burial in Tutankhamun’s own tomb,” Reeves said. “Indeed, the presence of this scene identifies Tutankhamun’s tomb as the burial place of that predecessor, and that it was in her outer chambers that the young king, in extremis, was buried.”

Rita Lucarelli, curator of Egyptology at the University of California at Berkeley, said she has been following Reeves’ claims old and new with interest.

“If he’s right, it would be an amazing find because Nefertiti’s tomb would also be intact,” she said. “Even if there is a tomb there, though, it might not be Nefertiti’s, but another individual related to Tut. We simply cannot know unless we dig the rock.”

The problem, Lucarelli said, is finding a way to pierce the decorated north wall without destroying it.

“That’s also why other archaeologists don’t sympathize with this theory,” she said.

Colleagues who disagree with Reeves are legion.

“Nick is whipping a dead horse with his theories,” said Aidan Dodson, an Egyptologist at the University of Bristol in the UK. “He has presented no clear evidence that the cartridges were altered, and his iconographic arguments about the faces on the wall have been rejected by every other Egyptologist I know who is qualified to give an opinion.”

The heritage policy

At least part of the reaction to Reeves’ ideas can be traced to heritage politics. The narrative that Tutankhamun’s tomb was discovered by the heroic English archaeologist Howard Carter has been openly contested by the Egyptians, who adopted the discovery as a rallying cry to end British rule in the 1920s and establish a modern Egyptian identity. Among Egyptologists today, preferred themes are the decolonization of the field and more inclusive and equitable accounts from Egyptian members of the team involved in archaeological excavations.

“Of course, some in Egypt have a different view than I do, which is easy to understand,” Reeves said. A tired expression spread across his face. “I’m sure archaeologists in the UK would look the other way at any foreigner who guesses who’s buried at Westminster Abbey. But my only interest as an academic Egyptologist, my intellectual responsibility, is to seek out the evidence and report honestly and objectively what I meet.”

^{Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves}