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Archaeologist Nicholas Reeves believes Tutankhamun's remains may have been rushed into an outer chamber of what was originally Queen Nefertiti's tomb. The remains of Tutankhamun, who may have been her son, were found in 1922. He died 3,000 years ago aged 19. ... Dr Reeves developed his theory after the Spanish artistic and preservation specialists, Factum Arte, were commissioned to produce detailed scans of Tutankhamun's tomb. The scans were then used to produce a facsimile of the 3,300-year-old tomb near the site of the original Valley of the Kings in Luxor. While assessing the scans last February, Dr Reeves spotted...

The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities has just announced that a scientific team has found initial evidence of what might be a hidden chamber in the tomb of King Tutankhamun. [Update: See video below.] A survey of the tomb was conducted using infrared thermography, which measures temperature distributions on a surface. According to Mamdouh el-Damaty, the Minister of Antiquities, “the preliminary analysis indicates the presence of an area different in its temperature than the other parts of the northern wall.” One possible explanation is that the variation in temperature is, in effect, an infrared shadow of an open area behind the...

Restorers have put their work on the famed golden burial mask of King Tutankhamun on display in Cairo, over a year after the beard was accidentally knocked off and hastily glued back on with epoxy. A German-Egyptian team of experts showed off the mask in a laboratory in the Egyptian Museum, detailing plans for how the epoxy will be scraped off and the beard carefully removed before being reattached by a method to be determined by a joint scientific committee. Christian Eckmann, the lead restoration specialist, said the work should take a month or two, depending on how long it...

Although monotheism is usually associated with Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, there have, in fact, been a number of other monotheistic religions in world history. Iran, in particular, was a center for monotheistic thought, being home to both Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism. At first glance, ancient Egypt, with its hundreds of exotic gods, would seem the last place for a monotheistic revelation. Yet one of the earliest monotheists known to history was Akhenaten, pharaoh of Egypt from 1352-1336 BC, who perhaps lived in the generation before Moses. Akhenaten was born of royal parents, raised and trained in the religious traditions of Egypt...

After analysing high-resolution scans of the walls of Tutankhamun's grave complex in the Valley of the Kings, Dr Reeves spotted what appeared to be a secret entrance. He described how he uncovered the 'ghosts' of two portals that tomb builders blocked up, one of which is believed to be a storage room. The other, on the north side of Tutankhamun's tomb, contains 'the undisturbed burial of the tomb's original owner - Nefertiti', Dr Reeves argued. If Dr Reeves is correct, the hidden tomb could be far more magnificent than anything found in Tutankhamun's burial chamber. He believes it is her...

Any scholar who knows archaeology should discuss his theory in the presence of scholars who know the Valley of the Kings and are working there now. Instead, this theory was analysed by Egyptologists who have never worked in the valley or written a single article on Tutankhamun or his tomb. Reeves has gained a lot of publicity for saying nothing.

Ahram Online spoke with Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh Eldamaty regarding an upcoming radar scan of Tutankhamun’s tomb to determine if Queen Nefertiti is buried in a hidden chamber. The theory that Nefertiti may be buried in Tutankhamun’s tomb was introduced by Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves. Ahram Online (AO): What is your opinion about Reeves' theory, and could it be true? Minister: It is a respectable scientific theory that could prove right or wrong, and when examining the west and north walls of Tutankhamun’s burial chamber, I realised that all the evidence that Reeves mentioned regarding the existence of hidden chambers is...

CAIRO (AP) — An Egyptian official says the Antiquities Ministry has given initial approval for the use of non-invasive radar to verify a theory that Queen Nefertiti's crypt may be hidden behind King Tutankhamun's 3,300-year-old tomb in the famous Valley of the Kings.

The ancient city of Gezer has been an important site since the Bronze Age, because it sat along the Way of the Sea, or the Via Maris, an ancient trade route that connected Egypt, Syria, Anatolia and Mesopotamia. The city was ruled over many centuries by Canaanites, Egyptians and Assyrians, and Biblical accounts from roughly the 10th century describe an Egyptian pharaoh giving the city to King Solomon as a wedding gift after marrying his daughter. .... The site has been excavated for a century, and most of the excavations so far date to the the 10th through eighth centuries...

Thanks to the careful work of archaeologists, we learned more in the past year about Stonehenge's hidden monuments, Richard III's gruesome death and King Tut's mummified erection. From the discovery of an ancient tomb in Greece to the first evidence of Neanderthal art, here are 10 of Live Science's favorite archaeology stories of 2014. 1. An Alexander the Great-era tomb at Amphipolis [snip] 2. Stonehenge's secret monuments [snip] 3. A shipwreck under the World Trade Center [snip] 4. Richard III's twisted spine, kingly diet and family tree [snip] 5. A teenager in a "black hole" [snip] 6. Syria by satellite...

With strong features cast in burnished gold, Tutankhamun’s burial mask projects an image of majestic beauty and royal power. But in the flesh, King Tut had buck teeth, a club foot and girlish hips, according to the most detailed examination ever of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh’s remains. And rather than being a boy king with a love of chariot racing, Tut relied on walking sticks to get around during his rule in the 14th century BC, researchers said.

The pharaoh was buried in Egypt's Valley of the Kings without a heart (or a replacement artifact known as a heart scarab); his penis was mummified erect; and his mummy and coffins were covered in a thick layer of black liquid that appear to have resulted in the boy-king catching fire... The mummified erect penis and other burial anomalies were not accidents during embalming, Ikram suggests, but rather deliberate attempts to make the king appear as Osiris, the god of the underworld, in as literal a way as possible. The erect penis evokes Osiris' regenerative powers; the black liquid made...

Tutankhamen was the most famous of all the Egyptian Pharaohs, but it's always been a bit of a mystery how he died. He passed at only 19, and he seemed to have pretty bad injuries at his death, but there was no record of an assassination. Thanks to Science, we now know it was probably due to a chariot accident. King Tut is best known because when his tomb was found in 1922, it was in relatively good condition compared to other, more ransacked pharaonic resting places. The sarcophagus and mummy were still there, which is always a good sign,...

The mummified body of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun burst into flames inside his sarcophagus after a botched attempt to embalm him, according to scientists in a new documentary. After his death in 1323 BC, Tutankhamun was rapidly embalmed and buried, but fire investigators believe a chemical reaction caused by embalming oils used on his mummy sparked the blaze. A fragment of flesh from the boy pharaoh, whose tomb was discovered in 1922 by Howard Carter and the Earl of Carnarvon, was tested by researchers who confirmed his body was burnt while sealed in his coffin. Tut has long fired the public imagination....

A committee administering Egypt's antiquities decided Tuesday to re-erect a dismantled replica tomb of King Tutankhamun, placing it beside the former residence of discoverer Howard Carter on Luxor's west bank. Secretary-general of the Ministry of the State of Antiquities (MSA), Mostafa Amin, told Ahram Online that the replica tomb will provide tourists with a better picture of how Carter lived during his excavation work at the Valley of the Kings in the early 1920s. Tourists can already visit the Carter Rest-House in Luxor, which has been restored and developed into a museum displaying the tools and instruments he used during...

Death never dies here. It just keeps getting more interesting, more beguiling. More, well, alive. Alive in every cringe-worthy detail, in every clue about its causes, in every shard of evidence waiting to be spliced to another shard . . . and another shard until a picture starts to form, an image assembled from nuggets of information collected decades or centuries ago. Death, at least for the doctors and history buffs who gather each year at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, is the coolest of puzzles, leading them to the coolest of theories. Could Abraham Lincoln have been saved? (Yes.)...

Stress, family medical history or possibly even poison led to the death of Vladimir Lenin, contradicting a popular theory that a sexually transmitted disease debilitated the Soviet Union’s founder, a UCLA neurologist said. Dr. Harry Vinters and Russian historian Lev Lurie reviewed Lenin’s records Friday for an annual University of Maryland School of Medicine conference that examines the deaths of famous figures. The conference is held yearly at the school, where researchers in the past have re-examined the diagnoses of figures including King Tut, Christopher Columbus, Simon Bolivar and Abraham Lincoln.

Up to 70 percent of British men and half of all Western European men are related to the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun, geneticists in Switzerland said. Scientists at Zurich-based DNA genealogy centre, iGENEA, reconstructed the DNA profile of the boy Pharaoh, who ascended the throne at the age of nine, his father Akhenaten and grandfather Amenhotep III, based on a film that was made for the Discovery Channel. The results showed that King Tut belonged to a genetic profile group, known as haplogroup R1b1a2, to which more than 50 percent of all men in Western Europe belong, indicating that they share...

BREAKING - Looters who raided Egypt's famed museum during the unrest that toppled Hosni Mubarak have hauled off a trove of ancient treasures, including a statue of King Tutankhamun, officials said. The plundered artefacts include a gilded wooden statue showing the boy pharaoh being carried by a goddess, and parts of another statue of him harpooning fish, the minister of state for antiquities, Zahi Hawass, said. Looters broke into the museum in Cairo's Tahrir Square on January 28 when anti-Mubarak protesters drove his despised police from the streets in a series of clashes and torched the adjacent ruling party headquarters....

One possibility that Dr. Harer ruled out is that of a chariot accident. "If he fell from a speeding chariot going at top speed you would have what we call a tumbling injury -- he'd go head over heels. He would break his neck. His back. His arms, legs. It wouldn't gouge a chunk out of his chest." Instead, at his Toronto lecture, Harer brought up another, more exotic possibility -- that Tut was killed by a hippo. It's not as far out an idea as it sounds, hippos are aggressive, quick and territorial animals, and there is an artefact...