Valley of the kings is located on the west bank of the Nile, opposite Thebes, in the heart of the Theban Necropolis. It consists of two valleys, East Valley (where most of the royal tombs are located) and West Valley (only one tomb is open to the public).
The royal tombs are decorated with scenes from Egyptian mythology and provide clues to the beliefs and funerary rituals of the period. Almost all the tombs appear to have been opened and robbed in antiquity, but they still give an idea of the opulence and power of the pharaohs.
Valley of the kings in Egypt is home to the most magnificent and mysterious cemetery in the world. In this dried-up river valley, under the scorching desert sun, Egyptian workers carved graves of fascinating beauty and awe-inspiring size into the rock in the second millennium BC. In this valley, the mortal cover of all rulers of the New Kingdom – since Thutmose I was laid to eternal rest. As a cemetery of the Pharaohs, the Valley of the Kings belonged to the holiest places of ancient Egypt.
The valley has two main branches:
The valley contains 62 tombs from the 18th, 19th and 20th dynasties, numbered according to the chronology of their discovery, the 62nd being that of Tutankhamun, discovered in 1922 by Howard Carter. The most famous of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings is paradoxically the smallest and least beautiful of all the Valley of the Kings, the funerary furniture (1700 pieces), except for the mummy of the pharaoh, being kept in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The entrance ticket gives the right to visit 3 tombs, the one of Tutankhamun giving rise to a specific ticket. Only a few tombs are open to the visit (less than ten). Some are subject to temporary or almost permanent closures, such as the most remarkable, that of Seti I. The tombs in the Valley of the Kings are designated by the abbreviation KV (Kings Valley).
At the beginning of the New Kingdom, the pharaohs left the delta to choose Thebes as their capital, Thutmose I introduced a radical change in the structure of the funeral complex. He separated the tomb, located in the Valley of the Kings, from the funerary temple, built on the edge of the desert.
The hypogeum carved into the rock replaced the pyramid and became the classic type of burial. The mountain, whose summit is shaped like a natural pyramid, offered the deceased the protection of his final resting place.
The first rapes, officially recorded under Ramses IX, seem harmless and, according to the documents, are relatively denied by the officials in charge of monitoring the necropolis. But under the reign of Ramses XI, only a few decades later, they began again. The waves of arrests and trials that accompany the offenses fail to remedy the situation.
The first rapes, officially recorded under Ramses IX, seem harmless and, according to the documents, are relatively denied by the officials in charge of monitoring the necropolis. But under the reign of Ramses XI, only a few decades later, they began again. The waves of arrests and trials that accompany the offenses fail to remedy the situation.
So, in the 21st dynasty, Pinedjem ordered to save the royal mummies. In order to do so, by order of Pharaoh, they were restored, covered with shrouds and placed in wooden sarcophagi with their names inscribed on them. Finally, they are transported to two hiding places: partly in the tomb of Amenhotep II (sixteen mummies, including nine pharaohs, one queen and six anonymous); partly in a cave dug in the cliff of Dayr al-Bahari (forty mummies, including thirteen kings, sixteen queens, princesses or women, three princes and eight anonymous).
But the story does not end there; it was not until the nineteenth century that the mummies were mentioned again. In 1876, the Egyptian Antiquities Service noticed that objects stamped with royal cartridges were appearing on the antiquities market, suggesting a source of supply that was as important as it was unknown. Five years later, Gaston Maspero finally unmasked the culprits: a family from Gourna, Abd el-Rassul brothers, having discovered the cache of Dayr al-Bahari in the 1870s, found a buyer among antique dealers to sell these royal treasures. Thus, the mummies and their meager treasures left Luxor to join the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
Walk the sites of the pharaohs of Egypt and discover ancient tombs while visiting valley of the king Egypt through one of our vacations in Egypt packages.
