NEW TESTS UNDERWAY AT TUT'S TOMB IN SEARCH OF HIDDEN CHAMBERS

A third round of ground penetrating radar (GPR) scanning is underway inside the tomb of King Tutankhamun in search of hidden chambers, Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities announced today.

A team from the Polytechnic University of Turin is scanning the tomb and its surroundings with advanced radar technology. The search seeks to determine if Queen Nefertiti might have been buried in the tomb.

"It will be a rigorous scientific work and will last several days, if not weeks," Franco Porcelli, the project's director and a professor of physics at the department of applied science and technology of the Polytechnic University in Turin, said.

"Three radar systems will be used and frequencies from 200 Mhz to 2 GHz will be covered."

The investigation of King Tut's tomb is part of a wider long-term project to conduct a complete geophysical mapping of the Valley of the Kings, the main burial site of Egypt's pharaohs, which is also being led by the group from the Polytechnic University of Turin.

Ground-penetrating radar, together with instruments based on electric resistance  tomography and magnetic induction, will scan depths of up to 32 feet to provide information on existing underground structures.

"Who knows what we might find as we scan the ground," Porcelli remarked.

The researchers plan to carry out the first preliminary survey of King Tut's tomb by the end of this month.

In two previous tests, radar scans revealed some secrets, but experts cautioned an impatient world that the results require patient study before any firm details can be revealed.

Earlier, it officially had been confirmed that the secret chambers behind hidden doorways in the tomb of Tutankhamun "contain either metal or organic material."

Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities announced that two previously un-discovered chambers have been revealed by scans of King Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

The Ministry said that the two chambers, on the North and Eastern walls of the tomb, contain either metal or organic material, according to scans carried out by Japanese radar specialist Hirokatsu Watanabu.

The revelations come months after Egypt's Minister of Antiquities said there was a 90 per cent chance that one or more hidden chambers were concealed in the tomb.

The latest findings, which lend credence to British archaeologist Nicholas Reeves' theory that NEFERTITI could be buried in those secret chambers.

At a news conference in November 2015, fittingly held at Howard Carter's Rest House on Luxor's West Bank, the Minister of Antiquities, Dr. Mamdouh El-Damaty, announced that the radar scans of Tutankhamun's Burial Chamber revealed there is A LARGE VOID behind what we now know is a false wall in Tutankhamun's Burial Chamber.

The radar scans revealed that the transition from solid bedrock to masonry is stark. There is a straight, vertical line - the line that Nicholas Reeves first spotted earlier this year on high-definition scans of the tomb wall.

It strongly suggests that the antechamber continues through the burial chamber as a corridor.

Reeves believes that what looks like a solid, painted wall, is actually a ruse designed to foil tomb robbers. 

A number of other tombs in the Valley of the Kings used the same device. Tutankhamun's seems to be the only one that worked.

But for now, let's congratulate Dr. Nicholas Reeves for the results so far. He spotted something that ancient thieves, Howard Carter, and hundreds of scientists since missed - the outline of a hidden doorway in Tutankhamun's tomb.

Not only was Nefertiti famous for her beauty, which remains evident through her world-renowned 3,300-year-old painted limestone bust housed at the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, but she was also the Great Royal Wife of the Pharaoh Akhenaten and his chief consort.

Nefertiti's burial site has long been a mystery as archaeologists have so far failed to find the queen’s tomb.

King Tutankhamun's tomb was found in 1922 under the supervision of another British archaeologist and Egyptologist, Howard Carter.