New evidence for hidden chambers beyond Tutankhamun's tomb

3 days ago (nature.com)

The 10 year old inside me is so incredibly excited. My actual 10 year old self was obsessed with tombs and ancient Egypt. I remember a whole summer I couldn't stop thinking about and talking about the "Sphinx on the face of Mars". Thankfully these days I have friends, but I have been rewatching all of Stargate so this is very timely.

Makes sense, the king dies unexpectedly, you need a tomb real quick. It probably takes years to dig these tombs and that's assuming you've found a suitable place to dig. You pick an existing tomb of a less popular ruler, wall of some sections (but maybe leave the artifacts?), renovate the new main chamber for him, and put a new name out front.

It's like those dilapidated buildings in NYC where the ground floor is some store but everything upstairs is basically uninhabitable decay. The store makes enough rental income to justify not renovating the upper floors into something actually usable.

Interesting, I read about excavations in beginning of 20th century on Wiki:

> In protest of the government's increasing restrictions, Carter and his associates stopped work in February 1924, beginning a legal dispute that lasted until January 1925. Under the agreement that resolved the dispute, the artefacts from the tomb would not be divided between the government and the dig's sponsors, as had been standard practice on previous Egyptological digs.

Why they did have a rule that private persons can take away the artifacts? It would be better not to dig anything.

So they're saying there's one tomb, that seems very real, that conceals a hidden entrance to another, larger tomb complex?

Okay, sure, explore away. But I'm not coming along, and if you find any jeweled skulls don't touch them.

this would have been a fun headline 20 years ago but as technology has improved, it's getting more and more absurd that we don't just have multiple datasets from different imaging methods of the whole entire structure.

  • Look no further than the Supreme Council of Antiquities. Nothing is allowed to proceed or be published without their sign off.

    • For anyone doubting this, take a look at Zahi Hawass’s (former Minister of Tourism and Antiquities) response to the ScanPyramids project. From wikipedia,

      > On November 2, 2017, the Egyptologist Zahi Hawass told the New York Times: "They found nothing...This paper offers nothing to Egyptology. Zero." Later, once the North Face Corridor was inspected with an Endoscope, Hawass conversely commented that ScanPyramids's work had provided a "major discovery" that would "enter houses and homes of people all over the world for the first time".

I feel like I see this headline ever 2 months. it's like cancer research. lots of fluff, never any progress. then you get the alien people saying it's cuz they're hiding aliens. i'm exhausted.

  • It’s hard to believe in 2026 someone would bemoan that nothing has progressed in cancer research. Cancer has no single cure, but survival durations are absurdly crazy for most common cancers compared to 30 years ago. Current treatments are like science fiction and are extraordinarily effective. The horizon is remarkable as well. It’s genuinely surprising to hear someone say “never any progress” re: cancer.

    I’ve nothing to say about Egyptian tombs though.

  • While the popular press does bungle nearly all cancer research findings, the last 20 years have been unbelievably productive in cancer treatment. No, we haven't and aren't going to cure cancer any time soon.

    • The thing is that "cancer" is thousands of separate diseases with similar traits.

      We'll never cure all of the at once, which is what "cure cancer" means, but we've been curing plenty of them lately!

      1 reply →

  • Put your phone down, put your laptop down. Go to the park without your devices and lay on the grass under a tree.

    Hear the sound of trees. The smell of nature. Feel the sun warming your face.

    You mind will trick you, convince you "youre too busy for this", "youre hungry", "your back hurts you cant lie down", "you should be doing X", anything to not stay under the tree, dont resist those thoughts, just observe them as they fly by, but take no action on them.

    Rest without guilt is a trait all masters must develop once they get past the adrenaline urgency phase of their skill mastery.

    Dont take your devices, dont take a book, just sit, 3 hours minimum.

    Go human, you are amazing!

    • Sounds amazing. Until the ants start crawling on me, my elbows itch from the grass, I hear planes flying overhead, an ambulance nearby, a souped out honda civic or some loud car in the distance, a freight train passing…that’s my backyard experience. It was a nice five minutes though :)

      2 replies →

What is the physical limitation that prevents a very big metal detector from telling us if there’s gold or other signatures?

  • The balancing act between Egyptian tourism mystery golden goose eggs, and just cutting the pyramid in half.

  • This is a good question and there is a real practical answer. The tomb is not in a Pyramid but deep in a mountain reachable by a narrow stairway. You'd have to cut away or dig through the mountain to come close enough for a metal detector.

I have fond memories of reading National Geographic magazine growing up. I remember they had memorable issues with King Tut. And Ancient Egypt in general. Made me fall in love with learning about Ancient Egypt.

Anyone else here have fond memories of reading those old National Geographic issues?

The tomb, which was built in the fourteenth century bc and discovered in 1922

Discovered 104 years ago, and yet...

Ballard says he doesn’t yet have permission from the Egyptian authorities to release all of the data

Oh FFS... doesn't space-based ground-penetrating radar already exist?

How does this compare to the conspiracy theories floating around?

I’ve been hearing something like this from very disreputable sources.