The Valley of the Kings

On the west bank of the Nile lies the Valley of the Kings, a necropolis used to house the bodies and belonging of many pharaohs from Thutmose I all the way until Ramsesses X or XI. There are 63 tombs in the area, built there between 1539 BC to around 1075 BC.

The tombs are known by the order of discovery: the first tomb found was Ramesses VII and was given the label of KV1, where KV stands for "Kings' Valley." Not all of the tombs were used to house bodies, some only held supplies, while others were completely empty.

The Valley of Kings is divided into two separate valleys, East and West. The East Valley holds a significantly larger number of tombs than the West, which has only four known tombs. In the East Valley in 1922, Howard Carter found what was labeled KV62: the tomb of Tutankhamun, which was the last large find until early 2006, when KV63 was excavated, and KV64 was found using radar technology. These recent discoveries are as fascinating as the ones found earlier in the twentieth century, though KV64 has yet to be excavated itself.

New finds in the Valley of the Kings shows that KV63, however, is not a tomb but a storage chamber, as none of the seven coffins hold mummies; instead, there are clay pots used in the mummification process. KV64 is either a tomb or another empty chamber, but is has not been verified by the Supreme Council of Antiquities, as the find was not properly presented before the Council before sending out news of the find.

In the nearby temple of Deir el-Bahri is a mortuary temple commissioned to be built by Hatshepsut, the first woman to take the title King of Upper and Lower Egypt, as no title existed for the female equivalent; the closest there came was Queen Consort, and this was not her role at all.

The mortuary temple was found by a local family to house a large number of mummies; the family would remove artifacts from a mummy or two and sell them, though this came to a halt in 1881 when authorities found out and were sent  to investigate. The mummies of over 50 kings, queens, and assorted nobles were moved from the Valley of the Kings to this temple by priests during the 21st Dynasty to preserve them from looting and desecration by grave robbers. Nearby, another cache was found holding the mummies of the priests that had moved the pharaohs to begin with.

While the whole of the Valley of the Kings is believed by some to have been thoroughly excavated and discovered, others feel there is much left to learn, and much left to find. And while many tombs are being re-examined, the field of archaeology will be alive and well in this long-unused valley of tombs.