A royal cemetery behind the cliffs
Across the Nile from the temples of Karnak and Luxor, the desert hills of western Thebes hide a dry valley. From about 1539 to 1075 BCE, the kings of the Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties were buried there, in about 64 tombs known today by numbers, from KV1 onwards (KV stands for “Kings’ Valley”).
The first king known to have been buried in the valley is Thutmose I, placed in tomb KV20 and later moved by his grandson Thutmose III to KV38. The last royal tomb to be cut was KV4, begun for Ramesses XI at the very end of the New Kingdom and probably never used for his burial. In between, the valley filled with the tombs of most of the great kings of Egypt’s richest age.
Why swap pyramids for a valley?
A pyramid announced a royal tomb to everyone, robbers included. The New Kingdom kings separated the two functions of the old pyramid complex. Their mortuary temples, for the cult of the dead king, stood in full view, on the edge of the cultivated land, like the temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari. Their bodies went into tombs cut into the rock of a remote valley behind the cliffs, with the entrances hidden.
The place itself may have helped. Above the valley rises a peak called el-Qurn, “the horn”, about 450 metres high. Seen from the entrance of the valley it looks almost like a pyramid, and some Egyptologists think this natural pyramid was one reason the valley was chosen: the kings were still buried under a pyramid, only one made by nature.
Tombs cut into the mountain
A royal tomb in the valley is a corridor driven into the rock, descending through a series of passages and halls to the burial chamber. The walls were plastered and painted with gods, the king and the texts that guided him through the underworld towards rebirth. The best-preserved painted tombs are among the most vivid surviving Egyptian wall paintings.
The tombs were filled with everything a king needed for eternity: shrines, coffins, furniture, chariots, jewellery and food. That was the problem. Hidden or not, each tomb held a fortune in gold.
The village of the tomb builders
The tombs were cut and decorated by a team of specialist craftsmen who lived with their families in Deir el-Medina, a walled village in a small desert valley on the west bank. Many of them could read and write, and they left a large body of notes, letters and accounts, which makes them some of the best-documented workers of the ancient world.
They also left the first well-recorded strikes. In year 29 of Ramesses III, around 1157 BCE, their grain rations failed to arrive and the officials ignored their complaints. The workers stopped work and staged sit-ins at the royal temples until the rations were delivered. A scribe, Amennakhte, recorded the events on what is now called the Turin Strike Papyrus.
Robbers, inspections and a rescue
The tombs were robbed again and again, with major waves of theft at the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty and during the Twentieth. In year 16 of Ramesses IX the authorities sent inspectors to check the tombs of western Thebes; their report, the Abbott Papyrus, suggests that some state employees were in on the thefts.
In the Twenty-first Dynasty the priests of Amun took drastic action. They gathered the royal mummies, many already damaged by robbers, rewrapped them, put them in new coffins and hid them together in a few secret places. One cache, at Deir el-Bahari (tomb DB320), was found in 1881 when objects began to appear on the antiquities market: it held more than 50 mummies and nearly 6,000 objects, and was emptied in just two days. Another, in the tomb of Amenhotep II (KV35), was found by Victor Loret in 1898. Some scholars now argue that the priests were also recovering gold and materials from the old tombs, under the cover of protecting the dead.
The exception: Tutankhamun
One royal tomb escaped. The tomb of Tutankhamun, KV62, was entered twice shortly after the burial but then disappeared under debris, until Howard Carter found it in 1922. Its small size and full contents give an idea of what the larger royal tombs once held, and the king who lay in it has a page of his own: Tutankhamun.
Where to see it
The Valley of the Kings is on the west bank of Luxor, opposite Karnak. A selection of tombs is open at any time, and the choice changes; which ones are worth your time is covered in our Travel guide.
Sources
- Madain Project, “Tombs in Valley of the Kings”.
- Archaeology Magazine, “Inside a Pharaoh’s Coffin” (2023), on the Deir el-Bahari cache; The Past, “The Royal Cache at Deir el-Bahri, 1881”.
- National Geographic, on the KV35 cache found by Victor Loret.
- UCL Digital Egypt, “Deir el-Medina”; Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae, Papyrus Abbott (British Museum EA 10221).
