Grand Tour of Egypt: Valley of the Kings, Luxor

Ancient Egyptians always built their cities on the East of the Nile and their tombs on the West of the Nile, representing birth and living as the sun rises in the East and rest as the sun sets in the West. Archaeologists had suspected the presence of tombs opposite the city of Luxor (ancient Thebes) and just dug in a likely spot, eventually finding 62 tombs so far.

The tombs were originally built during each king’s life, with decorations, treasures and sarcophagus all prepared in readiness. If the king died early, sons might complete the tomb or it would be left as was. The main thing was to hide all evidence of the presence of a tomb by covering everything with sand, particularly the entry. The whole undertaking was supervised by priests, who knew and passed on the location of the tombs to the next generation of priests. To guard against tomb robbers, the second section of any tomb was a deep pit, but over the years, all the contents of the tombs were plundered.

The tombs have had concrete entrances built around their openings in recent years.

Only the last tomb to be found, that of Tutankhamen in the 1920s, was discovered with everything. It was found by accident when the tomb above it was being excavated and a donkey’s foot went through the floor, revealing a step. At some stage priests must have gathered up the mummies of many of the kings to protect them, because they were recently found all together in one particularly well hidden tomb.
Alighting from our donkeys, we laughed at the cowboy gait that many of us had all developed, and set off on a small motor train for a 200 metre ride into the Valley of the Kings. Mamdoh gave a fascinating talk on the tombs in general and at each of the three tombs that we visited. That belonging to Tusmes III was unusual in that the entry was high up in the mountain and the connecting passages led downwards inside the hill. The ‘well’ (robber trap) was clear, being only partially covered with boards. The air was hot and oppressive. A constant stream of tourists climbed the ladders and filed past each other and the decorations to the sarcophagus chamber. Most decorations are carefully done and can be attributed to a period by their artistic style and merit as well as by the content that they depict. In this case the drawings were extremely simplistic and poorly executed, but they were very well preserved and the colours were startlingly bright. In the cartouche shaped sarcophagus room (oval shaped – the shape used to enclose a King’s name in hieroglyphics) the ceiling was painted blue with yellow stars so that when the king awoke he would feel that he was looking at the sky in the afterlife.

The Tesnaut/Setnakht tomb was interesting because there were two burial chambers. Seknakht had taken over the tomb, erased a few names and details and made it his own.
The tomb of Sety 11 featured beautiful reliefs created in a sophisticated and careful way. On each side of the entry passage the same scenes were depicted with the matching pictures made in reverse relief; one had all the backgrounds dug away and the other had all the foregrounds dug away. Deeper in the tomb this standard drops and some urgency to complete the task must have developed. This resulted in some more slapdash drawn pictures in colour and ultimately in some rough sketches that were never completed. We waited while some members of the tour inspected Tutankhamen’s tomb at an additional cost and then it was off to find our donkeys again.

In the centre of this picture is a line of people making their way along the narrow valley to visit various tombs.

This boy was one of several selling postcards and souvenirs illegally in the Valley of the Kings. He had run away from the police and was biding his time up a steep hillside waiting for an opportunity to come down and resume selling.