<HTML>All I know is what Lehner reported. I do know that it is not unusual for there to be disputes - there's a quote of Aidan Dodson's in KMT to the effect that Egyptologists spend far too much time arguing amongst themselves to ever agree what to conspire about !
It is also a fact that - unlike what Hancock might think/believe - archaeology <i>is</i> a science and is continually seeking improvements.
I can suggest several areas that might have been questioned.
Was it mortar that was removed or just muck that had, somehow, accumulated. It may be that the excavation report hasn't been properly published. Petrie could show some current types a thing or two - he frequently published within a couple of years of the excavation. But Howard Carter never published a full, scholarly, report on the tomb of Tutankhamen; I don't really blame him - he spent ten years on the job and it didn't really do much for his health !
Was the "mortar" kept for analysis ? I'd suspect that OK mortar might be different from, for example, Saite mortar - chemical analysis might reveal that. An excavation in the 1950s was probably not "lit" by electric light - did they actually <i>see</i> what was really there ? As an example, I've reported elsewhere on this MB the observations, by Lepre, of red ochre lines on the walls of the passage leading to the Queen's Chamber in the GP. His view is that this suggests that the chamber was abandoned - otherwise the marks would have been cleaned off. These were only "found" with electric light.
However, I don't believe that Lehner would have reported such a "dispute" without something to back it up.
Based on there being, IIRC, jewellery found I could, based on what was found of Hetepheres' burial, suggest a - totally unsubstantiable - but reasonable scenario for an empty, but sealed (if it was) sarcophagus.
John</HTML>
