Valley of the Kings | Ancient Egyptian Tombs & Archaeology
The Valley of the Kings, also known as the "Valley of Biban of the Kings," is a valley in Egypt that was used for 500 years between the sixteenth and eleventh centuries BC to build tombs for the pharaohs and nobles of the New Kingdom, which lasted from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Dynasties in ancient Egypt. The valley is located on the western bank of the Nile River, facing Thebes (currently Luxor), in the heart of the ancient funerary city of Thebes. The Valley of the Kings is divided into two valleys: The Eastern Valley (where most of the royal tombs are located) and the Western Valley With the discovery of the last burial chamber in 2006, known as (Cemetery 63), as well as the discovery of two additional entrances to the same chamber in 2008, the number of graves discovered so far has reached 63, ranging from a small hole in the ground to a complex grave containing more than 120. A burial chamber inside. All of these tombs were used to bury the kings and princes of ancient Egypt's New Kingdom, as well as select nobles and members of the ruling family. The royal tombs are marked by the inclusion of images and inscriptions from ancient Egyptian mythology that depict the religious beliefs and memorial ceremonies of the time. All of the uncovered graves were opened and looted in antiquity, yet they nevertheless serve as compelling evidence of the monarchs' power and affluence. Since the late eighteenth century, this location has served as a hub for scout excavations to research archeology and Egyptology, as its tombs pique scientists' interest in expanding such studies and archaeological investigations. The valley rose to prominence in the contemporary period following the discovery of Tutankhamun's whole tomb and the spread of tales about the Pharaohs' curse. The valley remained noteworthy for the archaeological digs that took place throughout it until 1979 when it was designated a World Heritage Site. In addition to the whole funeral city of Thebes. Detection, excavation, and restoration operations continue in the Valley of the Kings, and a tourist center has recently opened.
Geology,
The soil of the area where the Valley of the Kings is located consists of dense layers of limestone and other sedimentary rocks (forming the slopes scattered in the Valley and the nearby Deir el-Bahri temple area) as well as thin layers of marl clay, and these sedimentary rocks date back to more than 35 to 56 million years ago, where they were deposited in this area at a time when the Mediterranean Sea occupied a vast area much larger than over time, they merged to form the present Valley. Studies show that this part of the Egyptian territory is exposed to constant rainfall with little throughout the year. The area is also commonly subject to flash floods, leaving impurities attached to open cemeteries.
The rocks found in the valley of the Kings are characterized by their heterogeneous nature, ranging from fine smooth rocks to large-sized hard rock pieces, the latter type is not suitable for construction or construction, in addition to the lamellar child, whose layers cover scattered areas of the valley, which has increased the difficulty of building tombs or preserving bodies because of the unsuitability of the surrounding environment, as the lamellar child expands in the presence of water, which causes the surrounding rocks to diverge, causing cracks in the walls and floor of the tombs, which in turn leads to water leakage inside the cemetery, causing great damage both in the construction itself and the mummy preserved inside it, causing it is believed that the quality of the rocks used is the reason for the mutations Which affected the shape and size of some of the discovered graves.
The Egyptian builders took advantage of the geological differences in the valley, where some tombs were constructed by direct digging in the cracks between the limestone layers, while others were built behind gravel cliffs, rubble of rock collapses, or on the edges of rocky outcrops resulting from ancient floodwaters.
To understand the difficulty of constructing these tombs, it is worth looking at the tombs of Ramses III and his father Set Nakh, where Set Nakh began digging (Tomb 11), but work on it was stopped after the excavation work led to the penetration of the Tomb of Amun Masu and then set Nakh found no escape except rape (Tomb 14) of Queen tosert. When Ramses III took power, he completed the tomb that his father had already begun to dig. As for the Tomb of Ramses II, it was built in the arched axis style, which is the first method of building royal tombs, and this is due to the quality of the rocks used in the construction of the tomb, which are often the rocks resulting from the rock collapse that occurred in the city of ISNA.
Valley of the Kings in hieroglyphs,
Pronunciation = Pa-cher-aa-schepes-en-heh-en-renpetju-en-Pera'a-anch-wedja-seneb-her-imentet-en-waset
Pronunciation in Arabic letters = other words, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
The meaning of the name = is " the great coward of Pharaoh for a million years - he lived healthy and healthy in the western (city) Thebes.
The name in ancient Egyptian is read here according to the explanation in English from left to right.
Note: we know the direction of reading from the direction of the gaze of the drawn objects. All the drawn objects here look to the left, based on which we read the line from left to right.
As part of the restoration project of the royal tombs of Amarna, between 1998 and 2002, the valley floor was surveyed using radar, and researchers discovered that the cracks in the Valley extend under the rubble of rock collapses, forming natural rock shelves as one piece on top of the other for many meters below the rock surface forming the floor of the Valley.
Hydrology,
The Theba Hills, where the Valley of the Kings is located, are located in one of the areas prone to severe thunderstorms, and recent studies have confirmed that at least seven active flood paths flow into the heart of the valley, an area that was reported to have been flooded at the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty, which led to the disappearance of many tombs under the flood deposits, which was confirmed by excavation and excavation during the discovery of Tomb 63, Tomb 62 and Tomb 55, which were revealed in the actual rocky floor of the valley, which was covered by flood deposits, and therefore the true level was determined the floor of the valley at that age, which drops more than five meters below its level Now. After the Eighteenth Dynasty, The Pharaohs settled the valley floor, and then the flood deposits accumulated away from the area of the tombs, and those tombs remained preserved until they were discovered in the late twentieth century. that flat area of land was studied within the framework of the restoration project of the royal tombs of Amarna. radar surveys of the area confirmed the existence of many differences under the surface of the Earth. it was later proved that one of these compositional differences is the Tomb 63 finally discovered.
History
Ancient Egyptian man began to inhabit the Valley of the Kings in the Mesolithic era. The summit of the horn is topped by the Theban plateaus, all of which were known by the ancient Egyptians as Ta dehnet (the summit means hieroglyphs), which looks pyramidal when viewed from the entrance to the valley in an appearance similar to the pyramids of the Old Kingdom, which were used as tombs thousands of years before the establishment of the first Royal Cemetery in the Valley, and some Egyptologists believe that the pyramidal shape of the summit is one of the reasons for choosing this spot for the construction of the tombs of kings and the gravediggers came to him, which helped the Royal Special Forces for the protection of graves (madchai) to protect the funeral city The whole thing.
It has been believed for a long time that pyramid-shaped buildings, especially the Giza Pyramids, are the traditional model of the royal tombs in ancient Egypt at various times, but most of the royal tombs are completely carved out of rock, although the pyramids and terraces (models of royal tombs in the Old Kingdom era) were constructed by cutting from the ground level, in Egypt there are many royal tombs carved entirely out of the rock (similar to the royal tombs in the valley of the Kings), which date back to the Old Kingdom era.
After the defeat of the Hyksos and the reunification of Egypt under the leadership of Ahmose I, the Theban Kings worked on the construction of magnificent tombs for them, which would be evidence of their rising power, although some studies indicate that the tombs of Ahmose I and his son Amenhotep I are located in the funerary city of the seventeenth dynasty in the area of Abu Naga arm, west of Luxor, (although the location of the two tombs has not been definitively revealed so far), however, other studies confirm that the first royal tombs constructed in the valley are the tombs of Amenhotep I (which has not the walls of which appear to be the advice of his chief adviser Enni, who advised the king to choose this spot for the construction of his tomb (Studies are continuing to date to definitively identify the Tomb of Thutmose I, as the dispute revolves around the two tombs, Tomb 20 and Tomb 38).
I saw alone the carving of His Majesty's tomb in the rocks here, and no one heard and no one saw.
The Valley began to be used for the burial of Kings for the first time around 1539 BC.M. The burial of the Kings of the modern state continued in it until 1075 BC. It includes at least 63 tombs, starting from the Tomb of Thutmose I (and perhaps also before that date, specifically during the era of Amenhotep I) and ending with the reign of Ramses X or Ramses XI, but burials of individuals not related to the ruling families continued in usurped Tombs after this date.
Despite the name, the Valley of the Kings contains not only tombs of Kings; it also includes tombs of nobles close to the Kings, in addition to tombs containing the wives of kings and their sons, as well as the wives of nobles and their sons. therefore, the actual tombs containing the remains of kings, nobles, and members of ruling families do not exceed twenty tombs, while the graves whose owners have not been identified, as well as mummified mummies buried in pits in the ground, constitute the rest of the tombs and burial chambers that have been uncovered.
And with the beginning of the reign of Ramses I (about 1301 BC.M.) Work began separately on the construction of the Valley of the Queens near the Valley of the Kings.
The Royal Funeral City
The Valley of the Kings was known in ancient times as the Great Royal funerary city for millions of years of the Pharaoh's life, power, and health in western Thebes (the name of the city in hieroglyphs is written below), it was also known as Ta sekht Maat "i.e. the Great Valley" and this was the most widespread name
At the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty, only kings were buried in large tombs, and when a member of the ruling family was buried outside, he was usually buried in a rock-cut chamber next to his master's tomb, as was customary for the king to be buried in a tomb next to his father's tomb, and this is evidenced by the Tomb of Amenhotep III, which was built in the western valley, and when his son Akhenaten assumed power, he moved his personal tomb to Amarna and then believed that the unfinished tomb (Tomb 25) is the one that was prepared in advance for him, and with the return to religion at the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty, the Kings returned to be buried in the funerary city, and at the head of these kings was Tut Ankh-Amun, the experts of Ra-i and Horemheb.
The era of the nineteenth and Twentieth dynasties witnessed an increase in the number of tombs built either in the valley of kings or queens, starting from the reign of Ramses II and then Ramses III, who built two huge tombs for them and their children from afar, the tombs are tomb 5 and Tomb 3 respectively, and there are many kings who were not buried in the funerary city or their graves have not yet been inferred; for example, there is an allegation that Thutmose II was buried in the area of Abu Naga's arm (although his royal mummies were found in the royal tomb of Deir el Bahri), and Thutmose II was buried in the area of Abu Naga's arm (although his royal mummies were found in the royal tomb of Deir el Bahri), and Thutmose II was buried in the area of Abu Naga's arm (although his royal mummies were found in the royal tomb of Deir el Bahri), and Thutmose II was buried in the area of Abu Naga's arm (although his royal mummies were found in the royal tomb of Deir el Bahri), and Thutmose II was the burial site of semnakh-ka-Ra, as well as Ramses VIII, which is most likely buried in a different area from the funerary city, has not been inferred.
In line with the authentic religious rituals since the era of the pyramid builders, where a funerary temple was attached next to the pyramid, the same curvature continued in successive eras, but with the work to deliberately hide the King's Tomb, these temples were built at a great distance from the main burial site and close to the agricultural lands facing the city of Thebes, and these temples turned into shrines during the various holidays held in the funerary city, such as the Beautiful Valley Festival, in which the God Amon-Ra and his consorts MUT and Khonsu west of the Nile and their tombs in the funerary city.
Thanks to the creation of these tombs and decorating them with inscriptions and frescoes, the workers of the village of Deir el-Medina, located in the narrow valley separating the valley of the Kings and the valley of the Queens, facing Thebes, and the workers were moving between their village and their place of work by paved roads between the hills of Thebes, and a lot was learned about these workers through official records and documents found in the tombs, and among these documents is a document talking about a workers ' strike that may be the first in the history of mankind, which is the document known internationally as the Turin papyrus strike.
Exploring the Valley
The valley of the Kings area is considered one of the largest areas of archaeological exploration related to Egyptology over the past two centuries, after it was just a tourist attraction in ancient times (especially the days of the Roman era), and this area was also a witness to the transformation that affected the methodology of studying the history of ancient Egypt, which began from the theft of antiquities and looting of tombs until it reached what it is now of scientific explorations that unveiled the entire funerary city of Thebes, and despite all these explorations, more than eleven tombs have not been fully documented after knowing all the details related to them and their owners.
Many tombs contain inscriptions on their walls left by tourists since a long time ago, where the researcher Jules Baillet identified more than 2100 inscriptions on the walls of the tombs in Latin and Greek, in addition to a smaller number of inscriptions in other languages such as Phoenician, Coptic and some other languages, and most of those inscriptions were found in Tomb Tomb 9, in which about a thousand inscriptions were found, the oldest of which dates back to about 278 BC.M.
By 1799, the first map of the sites of the tombs discovered so far was drawn due to the scientists of the French expedition to Egypt, especially Dominique vivant, and the existence of the western valley was noted for the first time (where both prosper golois and Edouard du Villiers Du terache identified the location of the Tomb of Amenhotep III, known as Tomb 22), and the description of Egypt included two of the twenty-four volumes containing a complete record of the observations of the expedition scientists and their description of the area around Thebes.
European scouting expeditions continued after this date with the early nineteenth century, motivated by Champollion's success in deciphering the writing of the hieroglyphic language, so the scouting expeditions began led by Belzoni, commissioned by Henry salt, and indeed Belzoni was able to discover many tombs of them; the Tomb of kheperkheperro-Ra-AI in the western valley (Tomb 23) in 1816 and then the Tomb of Seti I (Tomb 17) the following year, and at the end of his visit to the area Belzoni announced that what was found during this expedition it can be found and there is nothing else of value left to excavate, it is reported that at that same time the French consul general was Bernardino drovetti (grim Belzoni and Soult) He also works independently in the same research area.
With the re-assumption of Gaston Maspero as head of the Egyptian Antiquities Authority, the method of excavation in the Valley changed, as Maspero appointed Howard Carter as chief inspector in Upper Egypt, and indeed the young man succeeded in discovering many new tombs in addition to his contributions to the discovery of the two tombs, Tomb 42 and Tomb 20.
The entrance to the Tomb of Horemheb immediately after its discovery in 1908.
As the dawn of the twentieth century dawned, American lawyer Theodore Davis succeeded in obtaining permission to search and excavate in the area from the Egyptian government, and his team led by British Egyptologist Edward Russell Ayrton succeeded in uncovering many royal and non-royal tombs (including Tomb 43, Tomb 46 and Tomb 57), they also succeeded in finding evidence of the cowardice of the Amarna era in Tomb 55, after which they extracted the remains of Tutankhamun's buried relics from the two tombs Tomb 54 and Tomb 58 and thus announced the end of exploration in Kings forever and the impossibility of finding any other monuments or tombs stated this in the book that Davis himself published in 1912 under The title of the tombs of Horemheb and Tutankhamun concludes the book on its last page by commenting on recent explorations:
I think the Valley of the Kings is completely exhausted
After the death of Davis in early 1915, George Herbert (the fifth Earl of Carnarvon) obtained the right to search and excavate in the Valley of the Kings and appointed Howard Carter as the head of his team of explorers, and indeed the team was able to find the real tomb of Tutankhamun, known as Tomb 62 in November of 1922.
Many scout expeditions continued to excavate and search until the present time, adding Much information and facts about this area until the Taiba planning project came in 2001 and placed many guidebooks that provide a lot of information and maps of open cemeteries.
Evolution of cemeteries
Location
The first tombs were built inside the cracks located above the slopes of the rubble of stone avalanches and below waterfalls that were fed by rainwater before (an example is the two tombs Tomb 34 and Tomb 43). with the exhaustion of this space, the construction of tombs began on the valley floor itself and then gradually returned to climb the slopes again when flood deposits began to fill the valley floor. this theory is evidenced by the finding of two tombs; Tomb 62 and Tomb 63 built on the valley floor.
Design
View of the Descending Passage from inside the Tomb of Tosert and set Nakh.
Tombs were usually designed in the form of a long descending corridor carved into the rocks penetrating one or more atriums (similar to the journey of the sun god to the underworld) and ending at the burial chamber, and initially these corridors rotated at least 90 degrees once during their march towards the burial chamber (such as Tomb Tomb 43 of Thutmose IV), and the burial chamber was cartridge-shaped, especially in the more ancient tombs and early tombs built in the valley of the Kings (this can also be seen inside the Tomb of Thutmose IV), and this was known the design in the construction of tombs is called the "arched axis" system, and after the completion of The Mummy burial the upper part of the corridor leading to the chamber fills the art with rubble and then hides At the end of the Amarna era, the "arched axis" system began to be abandoned in the design of tombs, and engineers began to design more straight tombs gradually, relying on the "jogging axis" system in the central part of the cemetery (Tomb 57 of Horemheb is an ideal example of this design, and it is one of the tombs that are open to visitors sometimes) until they adopted the "straight axis"system in the construction of tombs for the late kings of the Nineteenth Dynasty and the Kings of the Twentieth Dynasty (as in the two tombs 11 and Tomb 6 of Ramesses III and Ramesses IX, respectively), and with the straightening of the axis of the tomb, the angle of inclination of the passages decreased The aim behind this was to reduce the amount of flood water that reaches the bottom of the burial chamber, and then a magical religious tint was added to these wells, as they were considered wells that swallow the souls of Thieves and those tampering with the graves of kings, and from them also fawn on the soul of the deceased to his body, and although this well was not drilled inside some of the tombs of the Twentieth Dynasty, the room where the well was usually drilled inside remained in those cemeteries.
Decorations
Inscriptions from the Tomb of Ramses IV.I
Most of the royal tombs were decorated with religious images and texts; the first tombs were decorated with scenes from the amduat, which means hieroglyphs (this is the one in the underworld) and these scenes describe the journey of the sun god during the twelve dark hours until dawn, and with the beginning of the era of Horemheb began decorating the tombs with scenes inspired by the book of gates, which depicts the crossing of the sun god from the twelve gates of darkness that divide the night until his ascension to the sky at the beginning of the new day and then sends reassurance to the owner of the tomb and saves him from the monster of the night, and it is worth mentioning here the first royal tombs in the valley of the Kings were sparsely decorated, while the non-royal tombs were not decorated at all.
By the Nineteenth Dynasty, the texts of the Book of Caves were added to the upper part of the tomb. they are religious texts describing the underworld divided into six very large caves where gods and humans meet waiting for the sun god to ascend to heaven to resurrect them all again. the full texts of the Book of Caves have been found in the Tomb of Ramses VI, while the Tomb of Ramses III shows texts from the Book of Earth, which describes the underworld divided into four sections and the texts end with the God NU retrieving the sun disk from the Earth and ascends to heaven to begin eternal life.
With the beginning of the first SETI era, the roofs of the tombs began to be decorated with religious scenes and texts inspired by the Book of the Heavens, which again describes the journey of the sun god during the twelve hours of the night until his ascension to heaven again, and phrases from the prayer of RA appeared on the walls of the tombs for the first time, which are long funeral texts representing the deceased's monologue to The Sun God asking him to resurrect him to life again.
Contents of the cemetery
The tombs were rich in the contents inside, which served as all the belongings of the deceased that would enable him to have a comfortable life in the afterlife, the tombs also included many magic spells such as ushpati in addition to statues of the Gods, The Tombs also included some of the King's belongings in his early life (such as a pair of slippers for Tutankhamun)
Numbering of cemeteries
The letters KV are used before each number to encode the discovered tombs, and the letters are an abbreviation of the words Kings' Valley and mean the valley of the Kings in English, and the tombs are numbered according to the priority of discovery; starting from the Tomb of Ramses VII, which is tomb 1 or KV1 until Tomb 63 (KV63), which was discovered in 2005, regardless of the fact that many tombs have been discovered a long time ago, except Tomb Tomb 5, which was rediscovered in the nineties of the last century (after its original discoverers ignored it is not of great historical importance), while the WV pre-ML number is used to encode the tombs discovered in the Western Valley, although they follow the same numbering system as in the Valley Tombs The two letters are short for the words West Valley and mean the western valley in English), although the abbreviation KV has been circulated for all the tombs discovered in the valley of the Kings in both parts; the eastern valley and the western valley with the beginning of the implementation of the Taiba planning project.
It is worth mentioning that there are some unoccupied tombs, others have not yet been identified, in addition to some pits in the ground that were used for storage, and most of the open tombs are located in the eastern valley of the Kings, where the most frequent tourists to this area are in addition to the necessary facilities and facilities.
Eighteenth Dynasty
The tombs of the Eighteenth Dynasty differ among themselves in terms of Design, Decoration, and location, as the tombs were initially designed without prior designs or following the designs of previous tombs, which is evident in the unique interior design of Hatshepsut's Tomb (Tomb 20), especially in the winding Descending Passage for a distance of 200 meters from the entrance to the tomb to the burial chamber, which is only 97 meters away from the surface, and after this date, the construction of tombs began according to fixed and organized designs, the tombs of Thutmose III and Thutmose IV, which are tomb 34 and Tomb 43 are the best examples of the tombs of the Eighteenth Dynasty, both in terms of the design following the arched axis system and simple decorations.
The Tomb of Amenhotep III in the western valley (Tomb 22) is the most luxurious tomb of the Eighteenth Dynasty ever, this tomb was re-studied in the nineties of the last century by a scientific team from Waseda University in Japan, but this tomb is not available for visiting until now.
Since the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty, nobles began to be allowed to be buried in tombs next to the Kings, and one of the most famous tombs of the nobles in the Valley of the Kings is the Tomb of the spouses Yuya and teoyo (Tomb 46), who are believed to be the parents of Queen Tiye and their tomb was the best tombs in the valley of the Kings immediately until the discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun.
There was a significant change in the interior design after the return of the royal tombs back to Thebes at the end of the Amarna era, especially with the adoption of the jogger axis design as a typical design for the tombs of the Kings of this era, which paved the way for the adoption of the straight axis design during the era of the following dynasties, an unfinished tomb was found in the western valley believed to have been prepared for Akhenaten and was no more than a gate and a descending basically Tutankhamun (it has the same style of Engraving and decoration as in the tomb where the mummy of Tutankhamun was found But it was later usurped for burial by AI, which means that Tomb 62 is AI's original Tomb, hence the explanation of its relatively small size and inscriptions that do not match the inscriptions of the royal tombs at that time.
As for the rest of the tombs of the Amarna kings, they are located in the central region of the eastern valley, with the possibility that the mummies found in Tomb 55 are also of Kings from the Amarna era, such as Tiye, smenkh-ka-Ra, and Akhenaten.
Near this cowardice of mummies is the Tomb of Tutankhamun, which is considered the largest discovery by Western archaeologists in modern times, It was discovered by Howard Carter on the Fourth of November in 1922, and continued to be uncovered and restored until 1932, and this was the first of the royal tombs to be uncovered and found in good and almost complete condition despite the entry of grave robbers and was considered the last major discoveries in the valley of the Kings until the discovery of the last Tomb (Tomb 63) on the tenth of March in 2005, although from the relatively small size of his tomb, however, the contents of the Tomb indicate the prosperity witnessed during the reign of Tutankhamun, and there may still be other tombs that include Treasures larger than those contained in the Tomb of Tutankhamun.
In the same central area that includes the two cemeteries; cemetery 62 and Cemetery 63, there is also room 64 or Cemetery 64, which are defects in the lower layers of the Earth revealed by the radar survey during the Taiba planning project and its discovery was announced on the twenty-eighth of July 2006 on the basis that it is a cemetery or burial chamber at the very least, but the Supreme Council of Antiquities returned to deny any allegation of the existence of an archaeological Cemetery in this place.
Also near this area is the Tomb of Horemheb (Tomb 57), which visitors are rarely allowed to enter, but it includes many distinctive features in addition to its delicate decorations, which represent a transitional stage in the art of Tomb decoration between the Amarna era and the Nineteenth Dynasty era following it.
The Nineteenth Dynasty,
The tombs of the Nineteenth Dynasty witnessed a kind of constancy, both in terms of design and inscriptions decorating the walls, and the Tomb of King Ramses I was the first tomb of the Nineteenth Dynasty to be built in the Valley of the Kings, and the haste in completing its design is noted due to the death of the King, the tomb is no more than a Descending Passage carved between the rocks ending with a burial chamber, however, the tomb contains many vibrant inscriptions in addition to the royal coffin, and its intermediate location in the middle of the Valley indicates its importance and the importance of its owner and is one of the most frequented tombs by visitors after the death of the King during religious holidays and funeral ceremonies, the cemetery is also a model of the development of design The entrances to the royal tombs, as well as the roads and inscriptions inside them.
As for the Tomb of his son and Crown Prince Seti I (Tomb 17) (also known as the Belzoni cemetery as well as the APIs cemetery), it is considered the best tomb of the valley all because of its frescoes and bas-relief that Belzoni himself, when he rediscovered this tomb in 1817, declared that this day "...The luckiest days...».
Ramses the elder, son of Seti I and his successor on the throne of Egypt, founded a huge tomb, Tomb 7, but it is in a very dilapidated state and is currently undergoing conservation and restoration operations by a joint Egyptian-French team led by Christian LeBlanc, and the tomb was built on a larger area than that on which the Tomb of his father Seti I was built, although the two are about the same length.
At the same time that Ramses built his own tomb, he issued orders to expand the Tomb of one of the unknown Eighteenth Dynasty nobles (Tomb 5) facing his tomb so that it would be for his sons, and 120 burial chambers were revealed inside this tomb and work is still underway in it until this time, and then it is believed that it is the largest tombs of the valley of kings ever, and when it was discovered for the first time, the tomb was found open and all its contents were stolen, and it was also prone to sudden floods that were hitting the valley from time to time because of its design at a low depth below the surface of the Earth, which it led to the accumulation of many deposits that blurred the features of the cemetery and narrowed its area, and it is subject to rescue operations The restoration is not yet available to visitors.
The Tomb of the eldest son of Ramses II and his successor on the throne of Egypt was also discovered; Merneptah, a long time ago, a 160-meter-long Tomb ending with a burial chamber in which four overlapping coffins were found, which is the King's stone coffin and inside it three other wooden coffins, and the walls of the tomb are topped with delicate decorations and is open to visitors most of the year.
The same design (the design of the running axis) continued to be followed until the last kings of the Nineteenth Dynasty, who built tombs similar to those built by their predecessors before, and perhaps the sabtah cemetery is the best model for the tombs of the late kings of the Nineteenth Dynasty because of its very delicate decorations, especially the decorations and inscriptions on the ceiling of the cemetery
The twentieth family
Set Nakht was the first king of the Twentieth Dynasty and two separate tombs were found for him. When he ordered the start of work on the Tomb of his son Ramses III first, the excavation work led to the penetration of another tomb, and then ordered set Nakht to stop work on that cemetery and usurp a tomb for himself, the Tomb of the 14th Queen. The Last Queen of the Nineteenth Dynasty expanded and ordered the completion of work on it and the creation of a second burial chamber to become one of the largest royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings, extending over an area of more than 150 meters.
Tomb of Ramses III.
The Tomb of Ramses III (which is known as the Tomb of Harpists because of its inscriptions of the players of this instrument) is also one of the largest tombs in the region and is open to visitors and includes many very beautiful colorful frescoes, which makes this cemetery a permanent tourist attraction.
The sons and successors of Ramses III continued to build their tombs using the same design (straight axis design) and the tombs included almost the same inscriptions, one of the most important tombs of that era was Tomb Tomb 2 of Ramses IV, which was discovered since ancient times and was opened to visitors a long time ago and contained many inscriptions in the hieratic language, the walls of the tomb were covered with many paintings inspired by many religious texts and the tomb is one of the new tombs that has remained in good condition, another cemetery worthy of attention is tomb 9, which is a joint tomb of Kings Ramses V and Ramses the sixth (it is also known as the Memnon cemetery), which is distinguished by its decorations Inspired by religious texts, this tomb was also discovered a long time ago and opened its doors to visitors from everywhere, which explains the presence of many inscriptions on its walls in various languages such as ancient Greek, Latin and Coptic. the excavation and disclosure of the tomb, as well as the accompanying construction of workers ' huts, has led to the blurring of the features of Tutankhamun's tomb, and perhaps this is the reason for saving the tomb from early detection and tampering with it and its contents.
Tomb of Ramses IX.
One of the tombs of the same historical era is tomb 6, belonging to Ramses IX, which is one of the tombs discovered in ancient times, which explains the presence of Roman and Coptic inscriptions on the walls of the cemetery, which is located in an intermediate location in the valley between the two tombs Tomb 5 and Tomb 55, the cemetery extends for a distance of 105 meters on the side of the Plateau, including many side chambers that have not been decorated or even completed, and the tomb shows the features of the wheel in the excavation and engraving (the inscription is incomplete after the first half of the Tomb), indicating that it was not prepared at the time of the King's death and then it was never completed so that there was no burial chamber and it was replaced by the burial of the king in the colonnade lobby which was completed in That time.
Another of the tombs of the same era is Tomb 19, belonging to mentuhrekhshef (son of Ramses IX), a small tomb with an incomplete passage but featuring high-resolution inscriptions. the tomb has been restored and opened to visitors recently.
The Twenty-First Dynasty and the decline of the funerary city
With the end of the New Kingdom era, Egypt entered a long stage of political and economic collapse, as the fork of the Kings weakened and lost their control over most of the southern regions, announcing the demise of the Ramesside era and the establishment of the state of priests in Thebes, which ruled most parts of Upper Egypt, while the part controlled by the Kings of Egypt dwindled to Lower Egypt only after they took the city of San al-Hajar as their capital, and attempts to use open tombs began by benozem I, the high priest of Amun Thebes during the reign of the eleventh Egyptian dynasty, who added his own cartouche to the Tomb 4, and with the succession of years looting and looting increased in the valley, prompting the priests of Amun to open most of the tombs and move all the mummies In order to provide greater protection for those bodies, they also removed all the gold necklaces and bracelets from the mummies to ward off the danger of Thieves, and in a later period they transferred most of those mummies to one cowardice in the Deir el-Bahri area (known as the Deir el-Bahri hideout), specifically in the rock cracks in the hills overlooking the famous temple of Hatshepsut, and this mass grave contained a large group of disorganized royal mummies, many of which were placed in coffins other than their personal coffins. So far, the owners of many of these mummies have not been identified, and other mummies were transferred to a mass grave in the Tomb of Amenhotep II (Tomb 35), where more than a dozen royal mummies were found inside.
During the third decay and subsequent eras, most of the open tombs were used to bury members of the ruling families of Egypt, and the Copts also used them as churches, horse stables, and even as houses to live in during the Coptic era of Egypt's history.
Secondary cemeteries in the Valley of the Kings,
The vast majority of the sixty-five tombs discovered in the valley of the Kings can be called secondary tombs for one of two main reasons, either because there is a paucity of information about them and the identity of their owners until the present time, or because the results of their study were not sufficiently recorded by their original explorers, or lack of attention to their details and or a staircase leading to a Descending Passage or a set of interlocking passages that eventually reach the burial chamber, that is not Some of these tombs are of a larger size and include multiple burial chambers, and these tombs had many purposes; some of them were intended for the burial of lower-ranking royal figures, and some of them were designed for special purposes, and some contain the remains of mummified animals, while others seem to be completely empty and no living being has ever been buried there before, in addition to the use of these tombs for purposes other than those for which they were designed, which explains the finding of some collectibles related to such uses, and although some of these tombs were discovered since ancient times, the majority were discovered in the late nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century, when the scouting work in the valley was at its most intense.
Grave robbers
Almost all the tombs have been looted since ancient times, which is confirmed by many of the papyri that have been found, which carry the facts of trials involving grave robbers, and those papyri date back to the Twentieth Dynasty, including the papyrus known as (Meyer's papyrus B), which includes a description of the confessions of those accused of stealing the Tomb of Ramses VI, and that papyrus was most likely written in the ninth year of the reign of Ramses IX:
Nessamon took the foreigner to show us the location of the Tomb of King Ramses VI I spent four days trying to break down the door and enter it, and the five of us were at the site all those four days until we opened the cemetery and entered it We found a bronze cauldron and three more bronze washing utensils.
The tombs were also looted during the undeclared civil war that took place during the reign of Ramses IX, where the tombs were opened and the mummies were recovered and stripped of their valuables and finally they were all pushed to two main cowards; the first in the Royal Cemetery of Amenhotep II where sixteen mummies were pushed and the rest in the Tomb of Amenhotep I, and during the next few years all those mummies were transferred to the only the tombs that he could not reach, namely the Tomb of Tutankhamun, the tomb of Yuya and teoyo, and the Tomb of Tomb 63, survive from this mess The newly discovered tombs of Tutankhamun, Yuya, and teoyo, however, were broken into shortly after the burial of their owners. And if you don't get hurt.
Tourism,
Most of the tombs are not available to visitors, there are only eighteen tombs that are all tourists can visit and they are rarely available to visit at the same time, officials close the tombs subject to repair and restoration operations, and the large number of visitors to Tutankhamun's tomb has led to the imposition of additional fees to enter the cemetery, and there is only one cemetery in the western valley one, all this is to reduce the time that visitors spend inside the cemetery The crowd was prevented from causing any damage to the inscriptions on the walls of the tombs, and it was also forbidden to take photographs inside.
In November 1997, tourist convoys located near Deir el Bahri were subjected to an armed attack carried out by activists from the Islamic group, killing 58 tourists of different nationalities, as well as four Egyptians, which negatively affected tourism in this area.
The number of visitors to the Eastern Valley varies daily between four and five thousand and reaches nine thousand on the days when Nile cruises come to Luxor, and the Ministry of Tourism in Egypt is working to increase these rates to twenty-five thousand tourists a day by 2015, and these figures differ sharply from those in the western valley, which has only one cemetery open to visitors.
Valley of the Kings and World Cinema,
The Valley of the Kings has always been a source of inspiration for world cinema producers because it contains monuments and secrets about ancient Egypt that attract the attention of a foreign viewer seeking to learn more about the Pharaonic civilization and see archaeological places that he had not been able to visit before, and the American cinema has produced two adventure films bearing the same name of the valley, the first of which is the film "The Valley of the Kings" produced in 1954, while the other was produced ten years after this date, the valley of the Kings was also the scene of the events of the American film "awakening" (in English: The Awakening) produced in 1980, as well as many short television series, both American and French.
This is in addition to many documentary films that talked about the tombs of the Valley of the Kings, including those that limited his talk to the Tomb of the Young King Tutankhamun, where the first documentary films were filmed and produced in 1938, an American film entitled "Ancient Egypt" (English: Ancient Egypt) and talked about the discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun and was only nine minutes long, then followed the filming of documentary films in the valley of the Kings by international companies, the last of which was in 2004 under the title Seven Wonders of Ancient Egypt, meaning "the Seven Wonders of ancient Egypt".
The Egyptian and Arab filmmakers were not far from that area, which was the scene of the events of the Egyptian film Gram in Karnak, which was produced in 1965 and its cameras moved between the Valley of the Kings, Deir el Bahri and Abu Simbel, and an Egyptian television series of the same name (valley of the Kings) is currently being filmed with a huge budget exceeding eighty million Egyptian pounds.
