THE search for hidden rooms behind the painted walls of King Tutankhamun’s tomb will resume this month, with a new radar survey of his burial chamber.

A team of Italian researchers from the Polytechnic University of Turin will use new radar technology capable of peering up to 10 meters into solid rock.

“It will be a rigorous scientific work and will last several days, if not weeks,” the project’s director Professor Franco Porcelli told science news service Seeker.

“Who knows what we might find as we scan the ground.”

It will be the third investigation of the tomb within the past two years.

An initial scan was initially met with excitement by Egypt’s ministry of antiquities. It revealed a ‘90 per cent chance’ there were further chambers yet to be discovered, officials declared.

Egypt’s tourism minister went even further: “We do not know if the burial chamber is Nefertiti or another woman, but it is full of treasures … It will be a ‘Big Bang’ — the discovery of the 21st century.”

But follow-up scans conducted by the National Geographic Society failed to confirm the existence of any chambers.

Tutankhamun’s tomb. Computer illustration showing the layout of the tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun (1341-1323 BC), in Egypt’s Valley of The Kings, Luxor, along with two further possible undiscovered chambers (shadowed). It is thought that one of these chambers may be the tomb of Nefertiti (c. 1370-1330 BC). Another theory is that Tutankhamun is actually buried in the outer section of a larger tomb complex.

‘DISCOVERY OF THE CENTURY’

The hunt for evidence of up to two concealed doorways was sparked in 2015 when Egyptologist Nichoas Reeves published an analysis of 3D laser-scanned photos of the tomb’s 3300-year-old wall paintings.

DELVE DEEPER: In search of the heretic queen, Nefertiti

He says the images reveal two inconsistencies in the plasterwork, indicating the presence of hidden passages.

Reeves went on to point out that many of King Tutankhamun’s funerary goods (including his famous golden death mask) appear to have originally been intended for his stepmother — the heretic Queen Nefertiti.

EXPLORE MORE: Whose face belongs behind King Tut’s famous mask?

He argues the Tutankhamun’s tomb may have originally been part of a larger structure built for Nefertiti. Desecrating her tomb would have been justified, he says, due to the unexpectedly early death of the boy-king and a desire to expunge from history Nefertiti’s role in attempting to impose a monotheistic religion upon Egypt with her husband, Pharaoh Akhenaten.

The results of the first radar scan, in November 2014, were intepreted as indicating the presence of objects behind the wall’s of Tut’s tombs.

SHAPES IN THE SHADOWS

The lack of certainty as to the existence of the hidden doorways spurred Egyptian antiquities minister Khaled El-Enany to declare no invasive exploration would be allowed to damage the tomb.

Instead, efforts would focus on technology including radar and infra-red scans.

“It is essential to perform more scans using other devices and more technical and scientific methods,” El-Enany told media last year.

UGLY TRUTH: Virtual autopsy reveals King Tut was no pretty boy

The new investigation hopes to determine once and for all if Reeve’s idea of hidden rooms is real.

“This will be the final investigation,” Porcelli told Seeker. “We will provide an answer which is 99 per cent definitive.”