By the 20th Dynasty of ancient Egypt, the tombs of the pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings had been so plundered by tomb robbers that almost every tomb had been despoiled, and many of the mummies damaged. In desperation, the High Priests of Amen gathered the mummies and what grave goods were left, and hid them all together in the tomb of Queen Inhapi. This time, when the tomb was sealed and the entrance hidden, it was not found by robbers--at least, not until the 19th century.
Egyptian Antiquities in the Early 19th Century
In the early 19th century an inventor and explorer named Giovanni Belzoni arrived in Egypt from England. He got a commission to collect antiquities for the British Consul-General and in 1817 explored the Valley of the Kings. He discovered several tombs, including the spectacularly decorated tomb of Seti I. Although scholars today think of Belzoni as little better than a tomb robber, he measured and described many of the tombs he discovered, and even published plans of the tombs and a topographic map.
A number of other expeditions visited the Valley in the 19th century. James Burton sketched tombs in 1825, and in 1827 John Gardner Wilkinson gave many of the tombs the designations still used today (KV, for King’s Valley, plus a number). One tomb numbered by Wilkinson, KV 5, was then forgotten and the entrance lost for over 150 years. Between 1843 and 1845 Richard Lepsius of Germany headed an expedition that took measurements in the valley, made casts of wall reliefs and transcribed cartouches with royal names.
Pharaonic Treasure Rediscovered
Around 1875 artefacts began to appear on the black market that made officials suspect that an intact tomb had been found. There were small statues and texts on papyrus from the New Kingdom that were extremely well preserved. In many cases, these items, which were quickly bought by collectors, were of far better quality than anything owned by the Egyptian Museum. Officials at the museum were eventually able to track down the origin of the artefacts. A whole family of tomb robbers, who had passed down the profession for generations, has found a crevice in the wall of the Valley of the Kings. It was the mass burial of the New Kingdom pharaohs that had been lost for 3000 years. Inside the tomb, scientists found forty mummies and all kinds of grave goods of immense scientific value.
Howard Cater and King Tut
In the early years of the 20th century a man named Howard Carter began to explore the Valley. He discovered a number of tombs, many of them small and undecorated. Between 1917 and 1922, Carter focussed his attention on finding one tomb in particular – that of the boy king Tutankhamen. Carter believed that tomb robbers might have missed King Tut’s tomb. His work was funded by Lord Carnarvon, and after four years of finding very little, Carnarvon was ready to give up. Carter persuaded him to pay for one last season of digging. In 1922 Carter took his team back to an area they had first sampled in 1917. They had originally found only traces of workmen’s huts, and so had gone elsewhere. This time Carter dug right down beneath the huts and found a tomb entrance.
The tomb of Tutankhamen showed signs of entry by tomb robbers, but very little had been disturbed. It seemed that robbers had broken in within ten or fifteen years after Tut’s burial, but were probably chased away and the tomb resealed. The tomb must have been lost and forgotten soon after, as most of the grave goods were intact and the inner chambers had not been entered at all. This tomb was full of objects, many of them gold or covered in gold leaf. It was probably the greatest find in the history of Egyptology, with so many artefacts that it took until 1928 to carefully remove and record everything.
Read More
Read about how the tombs of the Pharaohs were lost in the first place in Lost and Found in the Valley of the Kings: How the Tombs of Egypt Were Plundered, Hidden, and Rediscovered.
You can read about Egypt's greatest pharaoh in Ramses II: King of Kings - Egypt's Biggest Pharaoh in More Ways than One.
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Time-Life Books. What Life Was Like on the Banks of the Nile: Egypt 3050-30 BC. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life, 1997.
Weeks, Kent R. “Valley of the Kings.” National Geographic 194.3 (September 1998): 2-33.
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