tomb of Tutankhamun

this looks remarkably like he's planning to ship this to himself.

Yeah, so to this day, Tutankhamen himself is still inside of his own tomb, the tomb known as KV62, rather boringly, in the Valley of the Kings.

His mummy isn't inside the coffins anymore, though.

Since 2007, he's been displayed in a sort of temperature-controlled glass case.

but he didn't declare it.

They get in there, it'd be completely empty.

But what makes this really exciting is that there was a theory proposed in 2015 by an Egyptologist that KV62 may be the front section of a much, much larger royal tomb.

given that Tutankhamen in the grand scheme of pharaohs is pretty minor.

And that oddity is what later fuels the question, was this always his tomb, or was it adapted in a rush after his unexpected death? That's where the later theories sneak in.

The tomb is known today as KV62, and compared with the elaborate royal tombs we'd associate with, you know, new kingdom and pharaohs, King Tut's is relatively modest, which has led to a long-running idea, maybe, maybe Tut died unexpectedly and whatever grand royal tomb was intended for him just maybe wasn't ready.

And Tut probably died around age 19, so there wasn't exactly a 60-year retirement plan here, was there? Which could easily create a, a reasonable question.

If the king suddenly dies and you need somewhere to bury him, could you adapt a tomb that was originally intended for somebody else?

Not, "We found her," question mark, very important question mark, but his idea was that the north and west walls of Tut's burial chamber might conceal additional spaces.

And he goes further.

He proposes that KV62 might originally have been part of a larger tomb, possibly associated with the queen.

And obviously King Tut was later buried in part of it.

where she actually ended up has, for the last decade, centered almost entirely on one particular tomb, that of Tutankhamun, her husband's likely son by another wife, discovered famously intact by Howard Carter in 1922, itself still probably the single most famous archaeological find of the 20th century, and part of why any suggestion of an undiscovered chamber attached to it draws international attention almost instantly.

In 2015, the British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves published a paper arguing that Tutankhamun's tomb, catalogued as KV62, was never actually built for Tutankhamun at all.

Reeves pointed to high-resolution scans of the tomb's painted walls, commissioned by the conservation group Factum Arte, which appeared to show faint straight lines running beneath the paint and plaster.

lines he interpreted as the outline of two sealed, plastered-over doorways.

more evidence emerges that Tutankhamen's tomb might stretch beyond the painted walls that mark its end.

New research has found that observations made via ground-penetrating radar, microgravity readings, and information from previous electrical resistivity studies suggest the existence of corridors and chambers past the KV62 tomb, which has revived the old quest for the tomb of Queen Nefertiti.

This information looks promising, but archaeologists are a long way from opening the suspected spaces, and no mummy or treasure has been found.

A possible complex beneath the Valley of the Kings.

Nefertiti remains a possibility, as her burial has not been discovered, but the evidence does not support the claim that she was the original occupant.

Other royals of Amarna or a storage facility unlinked to royal families are also possible options for explanation.

Earlier Ancient Origins coverage of the KV62 design debate also records how sharply the interpretations have differed.

A tantalizing clue, not a discovery.

And one of the things I love about it is it was voracious in its influences and just gobbling up all of the aesthetics from all the different cultures globally around the world.

Art Deco came into existence around the time that we discovered the Tomb of Tutankhamen.

So there's a lot of Egyptian influence.

There's, of course, the Greco-Roman influence that's kind of like the basis of Western architecture.

The furious academic lambasts Evie, telling her that he'd fire her on the spot if her family wasn't so well-connected, and makes her clean up every last bit of the mess.

This is a reference to a dropped concept for the story where she was meant to be Lady Evelyn Beauchamp, aka the daughter of the Fifth Earl of Carnarvon, who was present at the unearthing of the Tomb of Tutankhamen and died shortly thereafter, and thus originated the legend of the infamous Mummy's Curse that informed the original 1932 film.

but it was decided to steer clear of historical figures and so Carnarvon became Carnahan and her family became generic wealthy explorers.

While Evie is figuring out where to begin her cleanup project, she's startled by an apparent mummy lunging out at her, but it turns out to be just her brother Jonathan playing with an ancient corpse as a prank.