Valley of the Kings — archaeological site
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Valley of the Kings

  • 2 min read
  • 25.740° N 32.602° E
  • UNESCO World Heritage

Interesting facts

  • Workmen who cut and painted the royal tombs lived in the nearby village of Deir el-Medina, and their records include what may be history's first documented labour strike.
  • Hatshepsut's tomb, KV20, curls more than 200 metres into the hillside, leaving her burial chamber some 97 metres below the surface.
  • Only about twenty of the valley's tombs actually held kings; the rest belonged to queens, princes, favoured nobles, or served as embalming caches.
  • Tutankhamun's entrance stayed hidden partly because rubble from cutting the tomb of Ramesses V and VI, plus workmen's huts, was heaped right on top of it.
  • In 1912 the American excavator Theodore Davis announced that the valley seemed exhausted; a decade later Howard Carter found Tutankhamun's tomb.
  • Setnakhte's diggers accidentally broke into a neighbouring tomb, so the pharaoh abandoned the site and took over the tomb of the female pharaoh Tausret instead.
  • A papyrus from about 1118 BC preserves a thief's confession that his gang spent four days breaking into the tomb of Ramesses VI.
  • During the 21st Dynasty priests gathered the plundered royal mummies for safekeeping, and at least forty eventually ended up hidden together in a cliff cache near Deir el-Bahari.
  • The KV numbering still used today began in 1827, when John Gardner Wilkinson painted numbers over the entrances of the 21 tombs then open.
  • The vast tomb KV5, built for the sons of Ramesses II, was dismissed by earlier explorers as unimportant and only rediscovered in the 1990s.

Why it is worth it

For nearly five centuries, from about 1539 to 1075 BC, the pharaohs of the New Kingdom were buried not under pyramids but in tombs cut deep into a dry valley on the west bank of the Nile opposite Thebes, modern Luxor. The valley lies beneath al-Qurn, a pyramid-shaped peak that may have been part of its appeal, and its hidden entrances were meant to defeat the robbers who had emptied the older royal tombs. Mortuary temples for the cult of the dead kings were built separately, down by the fields. Some 65 tombs and chambers are now known, from simple pits to KV5, the vast burial complex of the sons of Ramesses II, with more than 120 rooms.

The tombs follow a pattern: a long sloping corridor cut into the limestone, descending through halls to the burial chamber, a path that may echo the sun god's nightly journey through the underworld. The walls carry the texts that were supposed to guide the king through it, the Book of Caverns, the Litany of Re and the Book of the Heavens on the ceilings, painted in colours that are often still intense. The tomb of Seti I (KV17), found by Giovanni Belzoni in 1817, is generally rated the finest in the valley; the tomb of Ramesses VI holds a complete version of the Book of Caverns, and Ramesses III's tomb (KV11), with its famous harpists, is one of the most visited. Almost every tomb was robbed in antiquity, and tourists have been coming since Greek and Roman times: over 2,100 ancient graffiti have been recorded, nearly half of them in KV9.

The exception was KV62. On 4 November 1922 Howard Carter, working for Lord Carnarvon, found the tomb of Tutankhamun, the first royal burial found largely intact, and clearing it took until 1932. The tomb itself is small beside the great Ramesside tombs, but it is the only one where the king still lies: Tutankhamun's mummy has stayed in the valley, while his treasures moved to Cairo and now to the Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza.

Guides are not allowed to lecture inside, and visitors move through the corridors in single file to protect the paintwork. The valley and the rest of the Theban Necropolis have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979.

Getting there

The valley lies on the west bank of the Nile, about 3.5 km from Aţ Ţārif and across the river from the city of Luxor. Luxor International Airport (LXR) is about 13 km away. From central Luxor, cross by the local ferry from the landing opposite Luxor Temple or by the road bridge upstream of the town, then continue by taxi.

Plan your visit

We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.

Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Luxor 6The Most Beautiful Places in Egypt 35The Most Mystical Places in Egypt 5The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Sacred Places in Egypt 5The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Cemeteries 6The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Egypt 8The Most Remarkable UNESCO-Listed Necropolises 9The Most Mystical Cemeteries 10The Most Remarkable Archaeological Sites Seen on Screen 10The Most Mystical Archaeological Sites 11The Most Remarkable Archaeological Sites in Egypt 13The Greatest Archaeological Wonders in Egypt 15The Greatest Archaeological Wonders Seen on Screen 15The Most Remarkable Necropolises 18The Most Beautiful Sacred Places in Egypt 18The Most Beautiful Cemeteries 26The Most Beautiful Sacred Places Seen on Screen 34The Most Mystical Sacred Places 49The Most Mystical Archaeological Wonders 73The Most Remarkable UNESCO-Listed Archaeological Sites 114The Most Mystical Places 138The Greatest UNESCO-Listed Archaeological Wonders 149The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Sacred Places 179The Most Remarkable Archaeological Sites 193The Most Beautiful Film Locations 221The Greatest Archaeological Wonders 306The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites 557The Most Beautiful Sacred Places 623

From the encyclopaedia

The Valley of the Kings, also known as the Valley of the Gates of the Kings, is an area in Egypt where, for a period of nearly 500 years from the Eighteenth Dynasty to the Twentieth Dynasty, rock-cut tombs were excavated for pharaohs and powerful nobles under the New Kingdom of ancient Egypt.

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25.74025, 32.60236per Wikidata