It appears that Dr. Hawass mentioned the KV63 discovery in a lecture in January 2006 before the official announcement and speculated that it may be Nefertiti. He also also passes comment on an ‘English expedition’ and based on the previous post I thought this may be of interest.

Here is the transcript of the announcement Zahi made:

Zahi Hawass lecture from the morning of 26/01/2006, Cairo time

Zahi Hawass: Some good news. I was in Luxor two days ago and I did go to the Valley of the Kings to see this shaft that has been excavated by Memphis State University. And they believe that this shaft is intact and the excavators believe that it's the tomb of Nefertiti. I think that they're going to open it two days from now. But the bad news is that I don't think that it's intact. When I looked at it, I found out that it has a Dynasty 19 deposit. Means that, uh, if Dynasty 19 exists in the area means, that the shaft was stolen in Dynasty 19. But it's going to be very exciting.

And at the same time in Luxor I saw the American expedition working also from Johns Hopkins University. And they found this beautiful statue. It's a life size statue, made of granite and it's for a lady. And it has no name except the name of Amenhotep the third which means that this statue should be for queen TI, the wife of Amenhotep III.

This is just to tell you what's happening in the field of excavations, what we are doing.

(Went into the slideshow)

Q and A following slide show.

(Several questions unrelated to the find in Luxor)

Q: This shaft you said they found that might be Nefertiti's tomb, is this a newly found shaft?

Zahi Hawass: Yes. They found it last year. And they did cover it. And they wanted to announce it and I said you can't announce that you found that shaft. You have to excavate the shaft and after that, we can announce that you found something.

Uh, there was an English expedition working on the other side by some one, his name is (I couldn't make it out). And we stopped this man for many reasons. But he came this year to claim that this is his concession. But, then, this is an expedition from Memphis University and they began, for the last month, to clean the deposit above that shaft. It's at the entrance of the Valley of the Kings exactly. And when I went two days ago, I found they are opening today or tomorrow. But I, I can feel it's not really intact. They think it's intact. Then we'll see who's wrong and who's right tomorrow.

(further questions, unrelated)

Thanks to Barb Krause who posted this over at Glyphdoctors.

Many thanks to Dr. Nicolas Reeves for sending me this email which I quote in full here.

Dear friends and colleagues

Because of various rumours now circulating I think it's best I respond to events formally on the Valley of the Kings Foundation / Amarna Royal Tombs Project website: www.valleyofthekings.org. The site will continue to be updated over the course of the next few weeks and months.

With all good wishes

Nicholas Reeves

There has been much talk on the internet about the recent University of Memphis discovery on KV63 by Otto Schaden's team speculating that the team were digging in exactly the same area that Reeves and Martin's Amarna Royal Tombs Project were previously digging before their dig licence was suspended.

The team were suspended from working in the valley after allegations of Reeve's involvement in antiquities smuggling. Whilst the internet has scant details of the charges [Bringing home, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 639, May 22 - 28, 2003] there was no website giving details of any further progress in the case. Dr. Reeves has posted details on the ARTP website, linked above, confirming that he was cleared of all charges at a meeting of the SCA in Cairo on 7 August 2005.

Coming right up to date, last week details of an article published in the January 2006 edition of the Swiss magazine Mysteries Magazin [, a copy of the text can be found on the Legendary Times website,] began circulating claiming that the ARTP team had found the tomb using Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) in 2000 and passed on their results to the Memphis team in mid-2005. Dr. Reeves has confirmed in his post on the ARTP website, linked above, that this is indeed the case and that they passed on the details to Dr. Schaden's team once rumours of the find — the top of the shaft was first uncovered on March 10, 2005 by team member Alistair Dickey — surfaced.

With the discovery by archaeologists earlier this month of the first truly "new" tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Kings since Howard Carter found King Tutankhamen's in 1922, the question arises of who's still missing in the Valley of the Kings.

Within the newly discovered tomb are five wooden coffins believed to contain mummies. Although the identities of the presumed occupants are not known, the excavators think they are more likely to be members of the royal court than pharaohs or their queens.

Nevertheless, when ancient Egypt buffs hear about such a discovery, they hope that a "royal cache," a stash of lost pharaohs, has been found...

New mummies may point the way to lost pharaohs, Detroit News, Michigan, USA, February 19, 2006.

cf. In Egypt, hoping for a royal cache, Lexington Herald-Leader, Kentucky, USA, February 20, 2006.

Earl Ertman brought a pair of swimming trunks with him to Egypt but, sadly, he won't have time to use them.

While the uproar from last week's announcement of a newfound tomb has subsided, the Tallmadge Egyptologist is working long days unravelling the mysteries that lay within it.

"I'm dead tired," he said last week. "I haven't had any time off for a while."

After years of being thrilled finding mere pottery shards, the retired art professor at the University of Akron is part of an epochal find — the first tomb to be discovered in the Valley of the Kings since King Tutankhamen's in 1922.

It's almost impossible to overstate the importance of the discovery to Egyptologists, said Patricia Podzorski, curator at the Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology at the University of Memphis in Tennessee...

Ancient secrets studied at tomb in Egypt, Akron Beacon Journal, Ohio, February 20, 2006.

A request from the Department of Ancient Egypt at the British Museum has resulted in a 4,000-year-old discovery at Hawick Museum.

A box of pottery, long-untouched and undocumented, turned out to contain numbered items, many of them from the Middle Kingdom of 2040-1750 BC.

The items were collected by the Egyptologist John Garstang at Esna, Upper Egypt, in the early 20th Century...

Ancient Egypt pottery discovery, BBC News, UK, February 20, 2006.