The Valley Of The Kings



It was called The Great, Noble Necropolis of Millions of Years of Pharaoh, and for five hundred years it The

was the burial place of Egypt’s New Kingdom rulers. Sixty-two tombs and twenty unfinished pits have been found here, seven of them in the large West Valley of the Kings, the rest in the East Valley of the Kings. It is the East Valley that is visited by most tourists.

The Valley of the Kings was chosen as the royal burial place for several reasons. The quality of its limestone bedrock is generally good: solid, strong, and at least in some areas, relatively free of cracks and fractures. The valley was convenient: a long wadi, along which a funeral procession could move, meanders from the northern end of the Theban Necropolis westward to the Valley of the Kings; footpaths provided easy access over the hills to areas to the south and east. It was easily protected: steep cliffs surround it and guard huts built above them provided 360 degree coverage. The large mountain at the southernend of the Valley of the Kings, al-Qurn or “Horn,” looks from the valley—and only from the valley—rather like a pyramid, a form associated with solar deities who play so great a role in the iconography of royal tombs