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The wife of king Tut largely remains a mystery.
MUCH is known about the boy king Tut, but the life of his wife — and perhaps his half-sister — Ankesenamun largely remains a mystery.
But scientists reckon they have found the resting spot of the woman who wed the nine-year-old pharaoh during one of the most fascinating periods in Ancient Egyptian history, reports The Sun.
Archaeologist Zahi Hawass plans to crack open the newly discovered burial chamber in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt, to see what secrets it holds.
“We are sure there is a tomb there, but we do not know for sure to whom it belongs,” Hawass told Live Science.
Ankhesenamun survived Tut, marrying his successor, King Ay.
The tomb is near Ay’s final resting place in the Valley which would suggest it could belong to Tut’s half-sister.
Hawass, along with Italian researchers have been excavating the area as part of a fresh investigation into the boy king’s resting place — also in the Valley of The Kings — earlier this year.
They hope they to find the “discovery of the century”.
Speaking when the excavation was first announced, Franco Porcelli, the project’s director, said: “Who knows what we might find as we scan the ground.”
Tutankhamun and his wife Ankhesenamun depicted in a scene on the gilt throne found in the king's tomb.Source:News Limited
The tomb was first discovered by British archaeologist Howard Carter in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings in November 1922.
Carter’s patron Lord Carnarvon died weeks after the tomb was opened, fuelling supernatural rumours.
Carnarvon, who funded Carter’s expeditions, was believed to be the victim of a curse inscribed on the Pharaoh’s tomb which claimed anyone who disturbed it would be “visited by wings of death”.
The Brit was likely killed by an infected mosquito bite and no such inscription was ever found.
But some believe the burial site contains a secret room and the final resting place of the boy king’s stepmother Queen Nefertiti.
Porcelli, a professor of physics at the Polytechnic University in Turin said that his team’s mission will be the “final investigation” which will “provide an answer which is 99 per cent definitive”.
The face of the real King Tutankhamun.Source:News Corp Australia
The team will use a bevy of high tech radar systems to detect the underground architecture and spot any anomalies in between the tomb walls.
The hunt is part of a larger study to map the ancient resting place of the Egyptian Pharaohs.
It is the third time researchers have entered the 3,300-year-old tomb in the past two years.
Doubts have been cast over the existence of the missing chamber.
Nicholas Reeves, a British Egyptologist at the University of Arizona first claimed to have spotted a secret room back in 2015.
Radar scans appeared to back up his theory, and were welcomed by Mamdouh Eldamaty, Egypt’s former minister of antiquity.
The bombshell news was met with concern, with the National Geographical Society failing to replicate similar results.
The current Antiquities minister Khaled El-Enany later reassured that no invasive exploration would take place inside the tomb.
Scientists recently opened ancient Egyptian tomb after 3,600 years and were shocked to discover entire families intact, next to goats and the skeleton of a massive crocodile.