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A first microgravity survey at Tutankhamun's tomb points to a rubble-packed corridor
Mamdouh Eldamaty's team combined ground-penetrating radar with the first microgravity measurements taken at KV62 and reports a corridor about two metres wide packed with rubble, with the camera test still waiting on Egyptian permits.
The Scientist · Science desk
What happened
- A team whose first author is Mamdouh Eldamaty of Ain Shams University has published new geophysical surveys of Tutankhamun's tomb in Occasional Papers of the Amarna Royal Tombs Project, arguing for a network of unknown spaces.
- The work pairs ground-penetrating radar inside the tomb with microgravity measurements, used at the site for the first time, which register differences in the density of material underground.
- The surveys point to a corridor roughly 6.5 feet wide extending away from the burial chamber, which the researchers say appears to be packed with rubble.
- The hypothesis dates to 2015, when Nicholas Reeves proposed that KV62 is part of an older royal burial complex that might include the tomb of Nefertiti.
- Co-author George Ballard told Nature the team could drill tiny openings and send miniature camera-equipped vehicles in as early as November 2026 if Egypt grants permission.
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Why it matters
- decision Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities has to decide, because no further survey can answer the question for it: allow small openings in the walls of the best-known burial chamber in the Valley of the Kings, or leave the case resting on indirect measurements.
- constraint More geophysics cannot close this question, because a density deficit looks the same whether masons made it or the limestone did, so the team has reached the limit of what non-invasive work can establish.
- exposure A confirmed space would not guarantee intact contents, since Ballard says flooding or other damage may already have reached whatever lies beyond the known rooms.
- precedent Approval of drilling plus camera rovers here would make that combination the expected way to test void claims behind other decorated tomb walls in Egypt.
Microgravity measures differences in the density of material underground, and ground-penetrating radar responds to changes in the electrical properties of rock [9]. Both will flag anything less dense than the surrounding limestone, whether masons cut it or a fracture opened it [19]. The discriminating evidence in this paper is geometry: the team reports low-density features whose shapes and orientations could be consistent with man-made chambers [11].
The corridor is the most concrete of them, roughly two metres across [18]. The paper does not state its length or depth [22]. Rubble is denser than air. A rubble-filled passage therefore shows a smaller density contrast than an open one, and is the harder thing to detect [20].
Nicholas Reeves built the original argument on features in the burial chamber, lines and cracks in the north wall and changes in the wall paint [7]. Carter, who found the entrance in 1922 [1], was surprised by how small the tomb was for a pharaoh, and the interior layout is unusual for a royal burial of that status [8][2]. All of that is architectural and decorative evidence. The new claim is that several independent lines now agree: "The integration of these diverse methodologies and datasets has made it possible to construct a far more nuanced and reliable understanding of the tomb's true structure, one that moves beyond the limitations imposed by any single investigative technique or isolated interpretation," Eldamaty wrote [12].
He is more restrained elsewhere in the same paper. "Although the investigation has not yet reached a final conclusion, the cumulative architectural, decorative, and geophysical indicators strongly suggest the existence of at least one further storage chamber," he wrote [15], adding that even if the space is not Nefertiti's grave, "the evidence increasingly points towards a connection with the Amarna royal family and the immediate circle of Akhenaten's court" [16]. Eldamaty also said in the paper that a confirmed extension "could potentially rank among the most transformative archaeological discoveries of the modern era" [5].
The permit question and the evidence question are not the same one. A camera behind the wall can settle whether a space is there; no gravity map can do that [19]. Whether anything inside it survives is a separate matter, and Ballard told Nature that flooding or other damage could have affected whatever lies beyond the existing tomb [17].
What to watch
- Whether the Supreme Council of Antiquities issues a drilling permit, and what conditions it sets for openings near painted plaster.
- Whether the gravity and radar datasets are released so other geophysicists can reprocess the anomalies independently.
- If cameras go in, whether the low-density features turn out to be cut chambers or natural voids in the limestone.