Valley of the Kings

The Valley of the Kings, or Wadi el-Muluk (وادي الملوك) in Arabic, is a valley in Egypt where tombs were built for the Pharaohs of the New Kingdom, the Eighteenth through Twentieth Dynasties. The official name for the site was 'The Great and Majestic Necropolis of the Millions of Years of the Pharaoh, Life, Strength, Health in The West of Thebes', or more usually, Ta-sekhet-ma'at (the Great Field).

Grave robbers

Almost all of the tombs have been ransacked, including Tutankhamun's, though in his case, it seems that the robbers were interrupted, so very little was removed. King Tutankhamun was a minor king and other kings probably had more numerous treasures.

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The valley was surrounded by steep cliffs and heavily guarded. In 1090 BC, or the year of the Hyena, there was a collapse in Egypt's economy leading to the emergence of tomb robbers. Because of this, it was also the last year that the valley was used for burial.

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The valley also seems to have suffered an official plundering during the virtual civil war which started in the reign of Ramesses XI. The tombs were opened, all the valuables removed, and the mummies collected into two large caches. One, the so-called Deir el-Bahri cache, contained no less than forty royal mummies and their coffins; the other, in the tomb of Amenhotep II, contained a further sixteen.

Related Topics:
Ramesses XI - Deir el-Bahri - Amenhotep II

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