NEW RADAR SCANS AT TUT'S TOMB REVIVE HOPES OF HIDDEN CHAMBERS

IT erupted from the sands of Egypt in 2015, sending ripples of excitement around the world.

But, then, it was killed. And killed again.

Now, the hope that King Tutankhamun’s famous tomb is hiding secret chambers has risen again.

British Egyptologist Dr Nicholas Reeves breathed life into the tale of Tut’s concealed chambers five years ago. He had noticed anomalies in its plastered walls.

A ground-penetrating radar scan appeared to confirm his hopes. Egypt’s enthusiastic antiquities minister asserted "90 per cent certainty" the rooms were there.

But, two subsequent radar scans appeared to kill any expectation of finding hidden mummies.

Both insisted there was nothing there.

Now, according to science journal NATURE , speculation has once again been revived.

There’s been yet another radar survey. This time of the terrain surrounding the tomb.

Previous scans had been restricted to its confines.

"The findings ...  in an unpublished report, details of which have been seen by Nature ... resurrect a controversial theory that the young king's burial place hides the existence of a larger tomb, which could contain the mysterious Egyptian queen Nefertiti," the report reads.

The latest findings 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.