Valley of the Kings: Royal Tombs of New Kingdom Egypt

The Valley of the Kings is a desert valley on the west bank of the Nile opposite Luxor, ancient Thebes, where the pharaohs of Egypt’s New Kingdom were buried from about 1504 BC to about 1070 BC. For roughly four and a half centuries kings, and some queens, princes and favoured officials, were laid to rest in deep tombs cut into the limestone. The valley contains the famous tomb of Tutankhamun and some of the finest painted tombs ever made, and it remains one of the most studied archaeological sites in the world.

Why the pharaohs chose the valley

Kings of the Old and Middle Kingdoms had been buried in pyramids, which marked the royal tomb and its temple in one great monument. By the start of the New Kingdom around 1550 BC almost all of those pyramids had been robbed. The rulers of the 18th Dynasty, who had expelled the Hyksos and made Thebes their religious capital, chose a new solution: hide the tomb, and build the temple for the king’s cult somewhere else.

The valley behind the Theban cliffs suited this plan. It was remote, had only a few narrow entrances and could be watched by guards. Above it rises the peak known today as al-Qurn (“the horn”), whose shape resembles a natural pyramid, and which was linked with the cobra goddess Meretseger, “she who loves silence”. Ancient Egyptians called the necropolis by names usually translated as “the Great Field” or “the Great and Majestic Necropolis”.

The tombs were therefore separated from the “mansions of millions of years”, the royal mortuary temples built along the edge of the farmland, such as Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir el-Bahari, the Ramesseum and Medinet Habu. Priests carried on the king’s cult in these temples, while the body lay in the hidden valley behind them.

Which king first chose the valley is debated. Thutmose I, who reigned from about 1504 BC, is usually credited, and his architect Ineni boasted in his own tomb of excavating the king’s tomb “no one seeing, no one hearing”. The tombs KV20 and KV38 have both been linked with Thutmose I. His daughter Hatshepsut enlarged KV20 for herself and her father.

The valley was used by almost every king of the 18th, 19th and 20th Dynasties. The last royal tomb, KV4, was cut for Ramesses XI around 1100–1070 BC and was never finished or used for his burial. After the end of the New Kingdom, kings ruled from the Nile Delta and were buried there, and the valley lost its role as the royal cemetery.

The site has two branches. The East Valley holds most of the tombs. The West Valley, a quieter side branch, contains the tombs of Amenhotep III (WV22) and Ay (WV23).

How the tombs were built and decorated

The tombs were cut by a specialised workforce who lived in the nearby village of Deir el-Medina. Work on a king’s tomb usually began early in his reign and continued until he died, so a long reign produced a large tomb and a short reign a small one. The typical plan was a series of corridors, stairways and halls running deep into the rock, ending in a pillared burial chamber for the sarcophagus.

The walls were plastered and painted with religious texts and scenes meant to guide and protect the king in the afterlife. The most important were the Amduat (“That which is in the Underworld”), the Book of Gates and the Litany of Ra. The first two describe the sun god’s night journey through the twelve hours of the underworld and his rebirth at dawn, while the Litany invokes the many forms of the sun god. The dead king was believed to join this journey.

Tomb design changed over time. Early 18th Dynasty tombs have a bent axis and simple stick-figure paintings. Later tombs became straighter, longer and more richly carved. The tomb of Seti I (KV17), found by the Italian explorer Giovanni Battista Belzoni in 1817, runs for about 137 metres and is decorated throughout in painted relief. KV5, built for the sons of Ramesses II, has more than 120 known rooms and is the largest tomb in the valley.

Tomb robbery in ancient times

Despite guards and hidden entrances, almost every tomb was robbed, most of them in antiquity. Several papyri from the reign of Ramesses IX, around 1110 BC, record official investigations into thefts from royal tombs on the west bank. The Abbott Papyrus describes an inspection of the tombs, and the Amherst-Leopold Papyrus preserves the confession of a stonemason named Amenpanefer, who admitted to breaking into the pyramid tomb of the 17th Dynasty king Sobekemsaf II and stripping the royal mummy of its gold.

As the New Kingdom collapsed into economic crisis and civil conflict, robbery became more widespread. In the 21st Dynasty, priests of Amun gathered the battered royal mummies, rewrapped them, recovered what valuables remained and moved them to secret caches. One cache was placed in the tomb of Amenhotep II (KV35). Another, much larger, was hidden in a tomb at Deir el-Bahari, known today as TT320 or DB320, which contained the mummies of kings including Seti I, Ramesses II and Thutmose III.

The story of that cache, discovered by local villagers and revealed to the authorities in 1881, is told in Royal Mummy Cache of Deir el-Bahari. The KV35 cache was found by the French archaeologist Victor Loret in 1898.

Visitors and explorers

The valley was never fully forgotten. Greek and Roman travellers visited the open tombs, and more than 2,000 ancient graffiti survive, many in the tomb of Ramesses VI (KV9), which Greek visitors linked with the legendary hero Memnon. Coptic Christian hermits later lived in some of the tombs.

Modern study began with the scholars of Napoleon’s expedition, who mapped the valley in 1799. In 1827 the British Egyptologist John Gardner Wilkinson painted numbers above the tomb entrances, the origin of today’s KV (“Kings’ Valley”) system. During the 19th and early 20th centuries many tombs were cleared, often hastily. Between 1902 and 1914 the American lawyer Theodore Davis financed excavations that found about 30 tombs, including that of Yuya and Tjuyu, the parents of Queen Tiye, in 1905.

Tutankhamun’s tomb

Davis believed the valley was exhausted, but the British archaeologist Howard Carter, funded by George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, kept searching. On 4 November 1922 Carter’s workers uncovered a step cut into the rock near the entrance of the tomb of Ramesses VI. On 26 November Carter looked through a hole in the sealed doorway and saw the treasures of the antechamber.

The tomb, KV62, belonged to Tutankhamun, a young king of the late 18th Dynasty who died around 1323 BC. It was small and had been entered by robbers twice soon after the burial, but it was largely intact. Clearing it took Carter’s team about ten years, and it produced more than 5,000 catalogued objects, including the solid gold innermost coffin and the famous gold mask. The discovery created a worldwide fascination with ancient Egypt that has never faded.

Recent discoveries and conservation

Work in the valley has continued. In 1995 the American Egyptologist Kent Weeks announced that KV5, long thought to be a small, unimportant tomb, was a vast complex for the sons of Ramesses II. KV63, found in 2005, turned out to be a store of coffins and embalming materials rather than a burial. KV64, identified in 2011, held the later burial of a temple singer named Nehemes-Bastet from around 800 BC.

Today the valley faces modern threats. Flash floods after rare desert storms have damaged tombs for millennia, and the breath and humidity of millions of visitors harm the painted walls. The Theban Mapping Project has recorded every tomb in detail, and an exact facsimile of Tutankhamun’s burial chamber was installed near Carter’s old house in 2014 to reduce pressure on the original. The valley is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site “Ancient Thebes with its Necropolis”, inscribed in 1979.

Myths and facts

Myth: the valley held only kings. In fact, fewer than half of the numbered tombs belonged to rulers. Many are tombs of queens, princes and nobles, or simple pits. Most royal wives were later buried in the nearby Valley of the Queens.

Myth: a curse killed those who opened Tutankhamun’s tomb. Lord Carnarvon died in Cairo in April 1923 from an infected mosquito bite and blood poisoning, and newspapers spread the idea of a “mummy’s curse”. Howard Carter, who spent a decade in the tomb, lived until 1939. Studies of the people present at the opening found no unusual pattern of early deaths.

Myth: the tombs were built by slaves. The workmen were skilled, paid craftsmen who lived with their families at Deir el-Medina and left thousands of written records of their lives.

By the numbers

Timeline

• c. 1504 BC: Thutmose I begins his reign; he is usually considered the first king buried in the valley.
• c. 1323 BC: Tutankhamun is buried in the small tomb KV62.
• c. 1279 BC: Seti I is buried in KV17, the longest decorated tomb in the valley.
• c. 1110 BC: Under Ramesses IX, official enquiries investigate the robbery of royal tombs.
• c. 1070 BC: The unfinished tomb KV4 of Ramesses XI marks the end of royal building in the valley.
• 1827: John Gardner Wilkinson numbers the tombs.
• 1898: Victor Loret finds the royal mummy cache in KV35.
• 1922, 4 November: Howard Carter’s team discovers the entrance of Tutankhamun’s tomb.
• 1979: The valley becomes part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
• 1995: Kent Weeks reveals the size of KV5.

Why it matters

The Valley of the Kings shows how Egypt’s rulers rethought royal burial after the age of the pyramids, and its painted tombs are a major source for Egyptian religion and ideas of the afterlife. Its records of robbery and investigation also offer a rare view of crime, justice and economic crisis at the end of the New Kingdom. For modern audiences, the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb made it the most famous archaeological site of all.