The hidden tomb of Khufu's mother Hetepheres held her organs in a sealed chest, but her sealed sarcophagus was empty when it was opened in 1927

Hetepheres I was the wife of King Sneferu and the mother of King Khufu. On 2 February 1925 a leg of a camera tripod set up by George Reisner's Harvard and Boston expedition sank into plaster east of the Great Pyramid. The plaster hid the mouth of a shaft about 27 metres deep. Alan Rowe opened the burial chamber on 8 March 1925. It held gilded and inlaid furniture, silver bracelets and an alabaster sarcophagus. Reisner's assistant Dows Dunham spent two years clearing it. On 3 March 1927 the sarcophagus was opened in front of invited guests. It was empty. Reisner told them, "Gentlemen, I regret that Queen Hetepheres is not receiving." A plastered niche in the wall held her alabaster canopic chest. It was opened on 21 May 1927 and still held her internal organs in a natron solution. Reisner proposed that she was first buried at Dahshur beside Sneferu, that robbers took her body, and that officials hid the theft from Khufu and moved her furnishings to Giza. Mark Lehner later proposed a different sequence. Reisner's version goes beyond the evidence. Her body has never been found. The canopic chest is in the Grand Egyptian Museum. Her reconstructed furniture is in Cairo, and copies are in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.