Revelations in the Valley of the Kings
Even with its hordes of tourists, the Valley of the Kings still retains the aura of the magical machine in which the pharaohs went to join the gods. Work continues on tombs, and discoveries are made all the time, yet at various stages during the 20th century archaeologists believed that the valley’s treasures had all been found.
In 1932 Howard Carter completed his decade of work on Tutankhamun’s tomb. Excavations had been ongoing in the valley since the Paduan explorer Giovanni Belzoni found the tombs of kings Ay, Ramesses I and Sethy I (late 14th and early 13th centuries BC) in 1816–17, thus adding to the dozen or so sepulchres that had lain open since antiquity. On his return to Europe, Belzoni had declared that, in his “firm opinion… there are no more [tombs] than are now known”.
Undeterred, Victor Loret, head of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, found more royal and non-royal tombs in 1898. Between 1902 and 1912, American lawyer Theodore Davis uncovered more tombs of kings, their families and officials; he then echoed Belzoni: “I fear that the Valley of the Kings is now exhausted.”
Then came Carter’s discovery, in November 1922, of Tutankhamun’s almost untouched tomb. At that point the general opinion was that the site really had revealed its last secret.
