King Tut Died Long Ago, but the Debate About His Tomb Rages On - The New York Times

More than 3 millenniums aft Tutankhamun was buried successful confederate Egypt, and a period aft his tomb was discovered, Egyptologists are inactive squabbling implicit whom the enclosure was built for and what, if anything, lies beyond its walls. The statement has go a planetary pastime.

At the halfway of the rumpus is the confrontational enthusiast Nicholas Reeves, 66, who shares a location adjacent Oxford, England, with a nameless location cat. In July 2015, Dr. Reeves, a erstwhile curator astatine the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, posited the tantalizing theory that determination were rooms hidden down the bluish and occidental walls successful the treasure-packed burial vault of Tutankhamun, different known arsenic King Tut.

It was agelong presumed that the tiny burial chamber, constructed 3,300 years agone and known to specialists arsenic KV62, was primitively intended arsenic a backstage tomb for Tutankhamun’s successor, Ay, until Tutankhamun died prematurely astatine 19. Dr. Reeves projected that the tomb was, successful fact, simply an antechamber to a grander sepulcher for Tutankhamun’s stepmother and predecessor, Nefertiti. What’s more, Dr. Reeves argued, down the northbound partition was a corridor that mightiness good pb to Nefertiti’s unexplored funerary apartments, and possibly to Nefertiti herself.

The Egyptian authorities authorized radar surveys utilizing ground-penetrating radar that could observe and scan cavities underground. At a quality league successful Cairo successful March 2016, Mamdouh Eldamaty, past Egypt’s antiquities minister, showed the preliminary results of radar scans that revealed anomalies beyond the decorated northbound and westbound walls of the tomb, suggesting the beingness of 2 bare spaces and integrated oregon metallic objects.

Yet, 2 years and 2 abstracted radar surveys later, a caller antiquities curate declared that determination were neither blocked doorways nor hidden rooms wrong the tomb. Detailed results of the last scan were not released for autarkic scrutiny. Nonetheless, the announcement prompted National Geographic mag to retreat backing for Dr. Reeves’s task and a salient Egyptologist to say, “We should not prosecute hallucinations.”

Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s onetime main antiquities authoritative and writer of “King Tutankhamun: The Treasures of the Tomb,” said: “I wholly disagree with this theory. There is nary mode successful past Egypt that immoderate king would artifact the tomb of idiosyncratic else. This would beryllium wholly against each their beliefs. It is impossible!” (Dr. Reeves countered by pointing retired that each successor king was liable for closing the tomb of his predecessor, arsenic the mythical Horus buried his father, Osiris. “This is adjacent demonstrated successful what we presently spot connected the burial chamber’s northbound partition — arsenic labeled, Ay burying Tutankhamun,” Dr. Reeves said.)

Kara Cooney, a prof of Egyptian creation and architecture astatine the University of California, Los Angeles, noted the fraught scholarly terrain. “Nick’s enactment is evidence-based and cautiously researched,” she said. “But fewer Egyptologists volition accidental it connected grounds due to the fact that they are each acrophobic of losing their entree to tombs and excavation concessions. Or they are conscionable plain jerks.”

“Much of what Tutankhamun took to the sedate had thing to bash with him,” said Dr. Reeves, who spoke by video from his location office. He maintained that King Tut had inherited a suite of lavish burial instrumentality that had past been repurposed to travel him into the afterlife, including his celebrated golden decease mask.

The begetter of Tutankhamun was Akhenaten, the alleged heretic king whose reign was characterized by social, governmental and spiritual upheaval. The 18th-dynasty pharaoh rejected Amun, Osiris and Egypt’s accepted gods successful favour of a azygous disembodied creator-essence, Aten, oregon the prima disk. In the abstraction of a generation, Akhenaten had created a metropolis from scratch astatine el-Amarna for his caller god, and prepared royal tombs for himself, his children on and his wives, including Nefertiti.

After Akhenaten came an obscure pharaoh named Smenkhkare, whom Tutankhamun succeeded directly. Dr. Reeves has agelong held that Smenkhkare and Nefertiti were the aforesaid person, and that Akhenaten’s queen simply changed her name, archetypal to Neferneferuaten, during a play of co-rule with her husband, and past to Smenkhkare pursuing his death, navigating a play of sole, autarkic rule. To the boy-king would autumn the burial of this uncommon pistillate pharaoh.

During King Tut’s decade-long reign, helium appeared to person been mostly occupied with rectifying the chaos bequeathed to him by his aged man. But it would not beryllium enough: Shortly aft his decease successful 1,323 B.C., a caller dynasty chiseled his tarnished sanction into dust.

Pyramid scheme

Dr. Reeves has conducted probe straight successful the tomb connected respective occasions implicit the years. He came to his mentation astir Tutankhamun successful 2014 aft examining high-resolution colour photographs of the tomb, which were published online by Factum Arte, a institution based successful Madrid and Bologna, Italy, that specializes successful creation signaling and replication. The images showed lines beneath the plastered surfaces of painted walls, suggesting uncharted doorways. He speculated that 1 doorway — successful the westbound — opened into a Tutankhamun-era storeroom, and that another, which aligns with some sides of the entranceway chamber, opened to a hallway continuing on the aforesaid axis successful signifier and predisposition reminiscent of a much extended queen’s corridor tomb.

“I saw aboriginal on, from the look of the northbound partition subject, that the larger tomb could lone beryllium to Nefertiti,” Dr. Reeves said. “I besides suggested, based connected grounds from elsewhere, that the perceived retention enclosure to the westbound of the burial enclosure mightiness person been adapted into a funerary suite for different missing members of the Amarna royal family.”

To enactment his extremist reassessment, Dr. Reeves pointed to a brace of cartouches — ovals oregon oblongs enclosing a radical of hieroglyphs — and a funny misspelling painted connected the tomb’s northbound wall. The fig beneath the archetypal cartouche is named arsenic Tutankhamun’s Pharaonic successor, Ay, and is shown officiating astatine the young king’s burial carrying retired the “opening the mouth” ceremony, a funerary ritual to reconstruct the deceased’s senses — the quality to speak, touch, see, odor and hear. The key, Dr. Reeves said, is that some of the Ay cartouches amusement wide grounds of having been changed from their originals — the commencement and throne names of Tutankhamun.

Dr. Reeves suggested that the cartouches had primitively showed Tut burying his predecessor, and that the cartouches — and hence the tomb — were enactment to caller use. “If you inspect the birth-name cartouche closely, you spot clear, underlying traces of a reed leaf,” helium said successful an email. “Not by chance, this hieroglyph is the archetypal quality of the divine constituent of Tutankhamun’s name, ‘-amun,’ successful each modular writings.”

Beneath Ay’s throne sanction whitethorn beryllium discerned a rare, variant penning of Tutankhamun’s throne name, “Nebkheperure,” employing 3 scarab beetles. This is simply a variant whose lazy adaptation provides the lone feasible mentation for the strangely misspelled three-scarab mentation of the Ay throne sanction “Kheperkheperure” that present stands there, Dr. Reeves said.

“There would person been nary crushed to see a depiction of this predecessor’s burial successful Tutankhamun’s ain tomb,” Dr. Reeves said. “In fact, the beingness of this country identifies Tutankhamun’s tomb arsenic the burial spot of that predecessor, and that it was wrong her outer chambers that the young king had, successful extremis, been buried.”

Rita Lucarelli, an Egyptology curator astatine the University of California, Berkeley, said she had been pursuing Dr. Reeves’s aged and caller claims with interest. “If helium is right, it would beryllium an astonishing find due to the fact that the tomb of Nefertiti would beryllium intact, too,” she said. “But possibly adjacent if determination is simply a tomb there, it’s not that of Nefertiti, alternatively of different idiosyncratic related to Tut. We simply cannot cognize it unless we excavation done the bedrock.”

The problem, Dr. Lucarelli said, is uncovering a mode to drill done the decorated northbound partition without destroying it. “This is besides wherefore different archaeologists bash not sympathize with this theory,” she said.

Dr. Reeves’s unsympathetic colleagues are legion.

“Nick is flogging a dormant equine successful his theories,” Aidan Dodson, an Egyptologist astatine the University of Bristol, said. “He has provided nary wide impervious that the cartouches person been altered, and his iconographic arguments arsenic to the faces connected the partition person been rejected by beauteous good each different Egyptologist I cognize of who is qualified to instrumentality a view.”

The authorities of heritage

Dr. Cooney, whose publication “When Women Ruled The World” argues that Nefertiti whitethorn person been Tut’s grandmother, is 1 of Dr. Reeves’s fewer champions. “I americium not 1 of the galore scholars laughing down their hands,” she said. “Nick’s mentation is superb but easy discounted successful a precise governmental and nationalistic Egypt that has refused to springiness permits to Western scholars who disagree with the enactment line. Maybe there’s thing beyond the northbound partition of Tutankhamun’s tomb. Maybe it’s Al Capone’s safe. But if determination is thing there, this could perchance beryllium the find of the millennium.”

At slightest portion of the backlash against Dr. Reeves’s ideas tin beryllium traced to the authorities of heritage. The communicative that Tutankhamun’s tomb was unearthed by the heroic English archaeologist Howard Carter has agelong been openly challenged by Egyptians, who took the find arsenic a rallying outcry to extremity 1920s British regularisation and found a modern Egyptian identity. Among Egyptologists today, the blistery topics see the decolonization of the tract and much inclusive and equitable accounts of Egyptian squad members progressive successful archaeological excavations.

“Sure, immoderate successful Egypt instrumentality a antithetic presumption from me, which is casual capable to understand,” Dr. Reeves said. A weary look dispersed implicit his face. “Archaeologists successful the U.K. would, I americium sure, look askance astatine immoderate foreigner sounding disconnected connected who mightiness beryllium buried successful Westminster Abbey. But my sole involvement arsenic an world Egyptologist, my intelligence responsibility, is to question retired the grounds and study honestly and arsenic objectively arsenic imaginable connected what I find.”

Nefertiti’s burial is what the raft of caller facts points toward erstwhile considered altogether, helium said, and inevitably Nefertiti positive Tutankhamun is simply a large ask. “I tin recognize the skepticism with which my proposals person been greeted successful immoderate quarters,” helium said. “And I initially shared it; I would walk a twelvemonth investigating and retesting my conclusions earlier feeling comfy capable to publish.”

That was backmost successful 2015, and Dr. Reeves believes the grounds present is stronger than ever. “Indeed, with the find that some cartouches of Ay overlie archetypal cartouches of Tutankhamun, we person the veritable smoking gun,” helium said. “To simply contradict the grounds is not going to marque it spell away.”