Exciting news and it came quickly. Back in mid August there were articles published speculating these rooms existed.
They got permission to use radar in mid Sept. I’m surprised how quickly this is moving along. Theres so much red tape. So they found the rooms. But will they allow anyone to investigate whats in there? Thats going to require damaging the wall.
This is one mystery that may never get solved. But its good to know those rooms are back there.
From the New Yorker article
I’d think they could potentially break through by some special means - a drill of some kind? - to take air samples and eventually, pass in a camera with light. I’d think that would be the next logical step. Exciting news!!!
I wonder if they could tunnel through the side of the pyramid.
That’s pretty cool! I think they should just leave it be, let there be something in this world that we don’t drill a hole into. The mystery is better than reality anyway, just like Al Capone’s vault!
If only there was a way to tunnel under the floor.
I believe the tomb is excavated into solid rock below ground level, not inside a pyramid.
Is it possible to slice through the wall along the margins of the panels? This might allow a panel to be moved without altering it.
:smack:
Shit, he’s in trouble with the county property tax assessor now.
Back about twelve years ago Egypt allowed a team to investigate a vertical shaft. They built a tracked RV vehicle (shoe box size) that could grip the top and bottom of the shaft. It went quite a distance and encountered a rock. The team negotiated with the authorities and eventually came back with a drill attachment for the RV vehicle. It drilled a very small hole and inserted a camera. Revealing a small space and another rock. They still think that shaft was significant (an air shaft for the king’s spirit to travel to the skies) but couldn’t go any further. History ran a documentary quite a few times.
So there is some precedent for drilling and inserting a camera. If they can find a location that doesn’t harm the paintings.
The possibility of two more rooms stuffed with priceless treasure means we don’t have time to be sentimental. The scientists have to get in there before the tomb robbers do (even if the line between them is kind of blurred, some times).
That’s what I’d do next, too.
It’s very exciting, but at the moment, I’m not really persuaded that it’s Nefertiti’s tomb in there. (I subscribe to the “Nefertiti was Smenkhare” theory.) Only one way to find out!
I’m sure if they can, they’ll remove the panel intact. In truth, I’m a little surprised they didn’t do that years ago. I’m also kind of surprised that no one’s used radar in there, before, either. I wonder if Zahi Hawass was saving this for his big final project.
Yes, but presumably, one could drill down from the top of the cliff, above the area of the proposed new rooms. One could probably even find another cave in the area and tunnel over horizontally toward Tutankhamen’s tomb. That might, conceivably, have been done any time this last hundred years.
But taking out the panels and getting them into climate controlled environments would be the best way to go, if possible.
One of the reasons Tut’s tomb made it into the twentieth century only moderately pillaged was because it WAS obscure, as opposed to inside a hunk of architecture you can see for miles. That being said, what are the odds that anyone tunneled into those new rooms and robbed them? If I was an archaeologist, this would keep me up at night…
Looking at the Theban Mapping Project (no! don’t go look! you’ll be lost for days!), it looks as if all the area north of the tomb is clear - they could sink access shafts without disturbing anything much. The long entry passage to KV9 is right above it, but nothing else is in the area.
This is cool.
This is really cool, and I definitely hope they can find some non-destructive way to get in there.
Of course, this is also obviously the set-up for a cheesy horror movie:
*Nefertiti the queen…Beautiful…Cruel…All men desired her…All men feared her…Now, her eternal slumber has been disturbed…And an ancient evil has been unleashed on the world!
NEFERTITI
Improbably hot female archaeologist: “We were fools! We had to know what was in there! God help us, now–God help us all!”
Some rooms should never be entered.
Coming this summer to a theater near you, in IMAX and RealD 3D!
This film has not yet been rated.*
Going by the OP’s links and what I’ve already seen:
No rooms have been discovered. This is speculation only.
It is particularly odd given how specific these guys are on what these two “rooms” are: one is the tomb of a particularly famous person and the other is storage.
Seems like complete guessing on their part.
The second link quotes Nicholas Reeves saying the radar test confirms the rooms are there.
Whats in them is open to speculation. Tomb robbers may have emptied any treasure centuries ago. I’d assume an old covered up, entry point will be the first thing they’ll look for. That might give them easier access to these rooms. I hope no one has gotten in there. There might be another treasure collection similar to Tuts.
Perhaps it is a fake tomb with costume jewelry to hide the real tomb.
I think we probably shouldn’t get our hopes up, too much. We know this wasn’t originally intended to be Tutankhamun’s tomb. His stuff was packed in rather haphazardly. This is probably because he had to be buried in a hurry and his original tomb was unfinished. So the other tombs probably relate to the Original Occupant (and we don’t know who that is.) It’s plausible that Tutankhamun was packed into Nefertiti’s antechamber, but it’s just as likely that some court official was evicted when the King died, suddenly, and they needed a tomb in a hurry.
The tomb was disturbed at least twice, shortly after the burial. Plus there are signs that the plaster wasn’t quite dry when it was finished. Also, possibly, a flaw in mummification process might have caused a chemical reaction that sparked a small fire. Really, the poor boy just had an awful time.
Even if the other rooms are emptied, I’m hoping we get some more great paintings and writings.
Is the radar sensitive enough to discern an Einstein–Rosen bridge portal device?