the valley of the kings

In the mountains near the valley of the Nile close to modern day Luxor hundreds of pharaohs, queens and noblemen were buried in caves which were dug deep into the rocks. The emperors of the old kingdom in the north had built the famous pyramids for their afterlife, but later pharaohs thought it was wiser to be buried in a remote valley where the graves couldn’t be discovered and plundered easily. Archeologists are still searching for undiscovered tombs in the area. Over 80 tombs of pharaohs and noblemen have been excavated in the Valley of the Kings, most of them richly decorated. Some contained the mummified corpses of the pharaohs and their wives. They are being preserved in museums and carefully examined.

Hundreds of images on the walls tell us about the mythological existence of the deities and their interaction with the pharaohs. On some of the images presented here I carefully repaired some of the damage.

Extensive descriptions of the tombs and the artwork is available at the site of the Theban Mapping Project.