On March 9, 1925, while the leader of the expedition, George Reisner, was back in the United States, the staff photographer noticed a patch of plaster where he was expecting limestone.

[6][7] Reisner conjectured that originally, Hetepheres had been buried near her husband's pyramid in Dahshur and that her tomb was broken into shortly after her burial.

He thought the robbers had opened the sarcophagus, stolen her mummy with all of her gold trappings, but had fled before taking the rest of her treasures.

Reisner speculated that in order to avoid the wrath of the king, the officials responsible for her tomb, told Khufu that her mummy was still safely inside the sarcophagus.

A third possibility, outlined by I. E. S. Edwards in his review of Lehner's theory, is that G 7000X was meant to be final resting place of Hetepheres and that the mummy was robbed from that structure shortly after her burial.

[8] Dr. Zahi Hawass has suggested that Hetepheres was originally buried at G1-a, the northernmost of the small pyramids, and that after a robbery a new shaft was excavated for a new tomb.

[13] Stewart's descriptions of his work, which involved replacing the greater part of the wood which was "shrivelled or even disintegrated ... reduced to a sort of grey ash by fungus"[6][7], are held in manuscript form by the Griffith Institute.

[14] In 1929 a detailed description of the results of the restoration appeared in the Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston[15] where Reisner stated how he had been "so fortunate as to secure the services of a man ideally fitted for the work".