The Valley of the Kings: Tombs of the Pharaohs

The Valley of the Kings is a remote, dry wadi on the west bank of the Nile at Thebes, opposite the modern city of Luxor. For nearly five hundred years, from the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty around 1550 BCE to the end of the Twentieth Dynasty around 1069 BCE, the kings of the New Kingdom were buried in tombs cut into the limestone hills that surround the valley. The site contains 63 numbered tombs, including the most famous archaeological discovery of the twentieth century, the tomb of Tutankhamun, uncovered in 1922 by Howard Carter.

The Valley of the Kings represents a fundamental shift in Egyptian funerary practice. The pyramids of the Old Kingdom, monumental and visible, were abandoned in favor of tombs that were hidden in the hills and that depended for their protection on concealment rather than mass. The change is reflected in the layout, the decoration, and the contents of the New Kingdom royal tombs.

The Choice of Location

The choice of the Theban west bank for the royal necropolis was rooted in religious geography. The west bank was the realm of the dead, where the sun set each evening and entered the underworld. Thebes was the religious capital of the New Kingdom and the seat of the cult of Amun, whose principal temple, the Temple of Karnak, lay on the east bank. The west bank, in this scheme, was the home of the dead and of the gods of the underworld.

The specific wadi now known as the Valley of the Kings was chosen by the first New Kingdom pharaohs, possibly Thutmose I. The wadi is narrow and difficult to access, surrounded by steep cliffs and by a natural pyramid-shaped peak later called al-Qurn. The peak was associated with the cobra goddess Meretseger, “she who loves silence,” and the whole valley was understood to be a place of hidden, sacred power.

The Architecture of the Royal Tombs

A typical New Kingdom royal tomb consisted of an entrance cut into the cliff face, leading to a long corridor, sometimes with a stairway, and then a series of halls and chambers. The plan was linear, with each successive chamber deeper into the hill. The burial chamber was usually at the end of the sequence, often in a separate vertical shaft or in a side chamber.

The walls of the tomb were covered with relief decoration and with texts from the funerary literature. The earliest tombs, from the Eighteenth Dynasty, were relatively simple in plan, with long corridors and a single burial chamber. Later tombs became more complex, with multiple chambers, side rooms, and well shafts. KV5, the tomb of the sons of Ramesses II, is the largest tomb in the valley, with more than 120 chambers. The tomb of Ramesses III (KV11) is a long, complex descent into the hill with about a dozen chambers.

The decoration of the tombs also changed over time. The earliest tombs were decorated with scenes from the Amduat and the Book of Gates, which describe the night journey of the sun. Later tombs incorporated scenes from the Book of the Dead, the Litany of Ra, the Book of Caverns, and the Book of the Dead. The aim of the decoration was to assist the deceased in the journey through the underworld and to identify him with the sun.

The Principal Tombs

The Valley of the Kings contains the tombs of nearly all the New Kingdom pharaohs, plus a few non-royal burials. The most important include:

KV62: The Tomb of Tutankhamun. Discovered by Howard Carter in 1922 (Carter first peered into the tomb on 4 November 1922; the sealed door was opened on 16 February 1923), this is the most famous tomb in the valley. The tomb yielded 5,398 catalogued objects: the golden mask, the shrines, the throne, the chariots, and it has shaped the modern image of Egyptian royal burial.

On the question of whether KV62 was custom-built for Tutankhamun: my own reading of the evidence is that it was not. The tomb is unusually small for a royal burial, and its plan is irregular in ways that suggest a hasty repurposing. The most likely scenario, in my view, is that the tomb was begun for a non-royal personage and was taken over for Tutankhamun after his unexpectedly early death, with the burial squeezed into a space that was not designed for a king. This is the minority view; the majority of publications still describe KV62 as Tutankhamun’s own tomb. The architectural and artefactual evidence, in my reading, sits against the custom-built interpretation.

KV8: The Tomb of Merenptah. The tomb of Merenptah, son and successor of Ramesses II. It is one of the largest in the valley and is decorated with scenes from the Book of the Dead and the Book of Gates. The mummy of Merenptah was discovered in the tomb and is now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

KV7: The Tomb of Ramesses II. The tomb of Ramesses II, the longest-reigning pharaoh of the New Kingdom. The tomb is famous for its well shaft, which caused considerable difficulty to the tomb builders, and for the elaborate decoration of the burial chamber, which is covered with scenes from the Book of the Dead. The mummy of Ramesses II is one of the best preserved of all royal mummies.

KV5: The Tomb of the Sons of Ramesses II. Discovered in 1995 by the Theban Tomb Project, KV5 is the largest tomb in the valley, with more than a hundred chambers. It was used for the sons of Ramesses II, and its discovery has required a substantial revision of the archaeology of the New Kingdom.

KV35: The Tomb of Amenhotep II. Used for Amenhotep II and later for the reburial of several other royal mummies. The tomb was the location of one of the most famous archaeological discoveries of the late nineteenth century: the finding of a cache of royal mummies, including those of Thutmose III, Seti I, Ramesses II, and others. The cache is examined in the context of mummies and the afterlife.

The Tomb Builders and the Workmen’s Village

The tombs of the Valley of the Kings were cut by organized gangs of workmen who lived in a nearby settlement, the modern Deir el-Medina. The community was founded in the early Eighteenth Dynasty and was inhabited for more than four hundred years. The workmen were organized into two teams, the “left side” and the “right side” of the necropolis, who alternated in their work on the royal tombs.

The workmen at Deir el-Medina were skilled craftsmen, paid in rations of bread, beer, and other goods. They were also literate, and they left behind a substantial body of texts (letters, legal documents, religious texts) that give us a vivid picture of life in the New Kingdom. Their own tombs, cut into the cliffs of the surrounding hills, are described in the Tombs of the Nobles at Thebes.

The community at Deir el-Medina was on strike more than once in its history, and the strikers’ petitions are among the most famous documents of the ancient world. They were not mere laborers but a self-conscious community of craftsmen, with their own religious institutions, their own legal procedures, and their own sense of professional identity.

The Decoration of the Tombs

The walls of the New Kingdom royal tombs are covered with some of the most elaborate art ever produced in Egypt. The decoration was done in two stages. First, the walls were plastered and the outlines of the figures and texts were sketched. Then, the figures and texts were carved in relief, painted, and the surfaces were finished with a thin layer of plaster.

The most important texts are the Amduat, the Book of Gates, the Litany of Ra, the Book of the Dead, and the Book of Caverns. Each of these texts describes a different aspect of the sun’s night journey and the dangers the deceased had to navigate. The figures include the gods of the underworld (Osiris, Anubis, Hathor, Nephthys) and the various demons and guardians of the gates.

The decoration was meant to be read in a particular order, with the sun’s progress through the underworld as the guide. The most important image is often the opening scene, in which the sun enters the western horizon in the company of Ra. The closing scene, in which the sun emerges in the east, is the symbolic resurrection of the deceased king.

The Problem of Tomb Robbery

The tombs of the Valley of the Kings were almost all robbed in antiquity. The protection of the tomb depended on concealment, and the concealment was eventually broken. The first major wave of tomb robbery took place at the end of the New Kingdom, around 1100 BCE, and the second wave in the late twentieth dynasty.

The robberies were not minor thefts. They were organized operations, often involving teams of workers, scribes, and officials. The most famous trial, recorded in the Abbott Papyrus, took place in the late twentieth dynasty and involved the confession of a tomb robber named Amenpanufer. The papyrus describes how Amenpanufer and his colleagues broke into the tombs of Sobekemsaf II and other kings, removed the gold and silver, and burned the texts that might have identified their actions.

The royal mummies were eventually moved from the Valley of the Kings to two caches, one at Deir el-Bahari (the DB320 cache) and one in the tomb of Amenhotep II (the KV35 cache). The cache at Deir el-Bahari was discovered in 1881 and contained the mummies of more than fifty kings, queens, and princes. The cache at KV35 was discovered in 1898. Together they constitute the largest collection of royal mummies ever found.

The Modern Exploration of the Valley

The Valley of the Kings has been the subject of intensive archaeological investigation since the early nineteenth century. The first systematic survey was carried out by the French scholar Jean-François Champollion, the decipherer of hieroglyphs, in 1828–1829. The most famous individual discovery was Howard Carter’s uncovering of KV62 in 1922.

The work continues today. The Theban Tomb Project, run by the American University in Cairo, has been working in the valley since 1978, and has made important new discoveries, including the tomb of the sons of Ramesses II. The Valley has also been the subject of detailed geological study, since the soft limestone in which the tombs are cut is subject to flooding and to other forms of damage.

The Valley in Modern Culture

The Valley of the Kings is now one of the most visited tourist sites in Egypt, and the tomb of Tutankhamun is the most famous single object in Egyptian archaeology. The Valley has also been the subject of a vast popular literature, from the books of Howard Carter and Arthur Weigall to the novels of Elizabeth Peters and the films that have made Tutankhamun’s mask one of the most recognizable images in the world.

The Valley of the Kings remains, in many ways, the most striking single monument to the Egyptian vision of the afterlife. The 63 tombs cut into the hills, the elaborate decoration of the walls, and the nearly intact treasures of Tutankhamun are all evidence of a civilization that took the journey to the next world as seriously as it took life in this one.