Dan Snow's History Hit - Tutankhamun: The Valley of the Kings

Episode Date: November 1, 2022

1/4. On the West Bank of the Nile in Luxor lie the burial chambers of some of Ancient Egypt's greatest pharaohs - Ramses II, Seti I and Tutankhamun. From Luxor, Dan delves into the history of the Valley of the Kings with Alia Ismail whose current project is 3D mapping the tombs. He ventures deep into the earth inside the most magnificent of all the valley tombs- Seti I - as he and celebrated Egyptologist Salima Ikram tell the story of Giovanni Belzoni and the many explorers and archaeologists who set the stage for Howard Carter's discovery of the century.This podcast was written and produced by Mariana Des Forges and mixed by Dougal PatmoreIf you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.

It's 5.30 in the morning, it's already 30 degrees. I'm standing on the east bank of the Nile, it's early summer in Upper Egypt, in Luxor. It's perfectly still morning, the birds are singing, the bougainvillea is flowering all around me, palm trees on either side. I could just hear faintly the call to prayer being carried along the surface of the still Nile. One of the three great rivers, the Yangtze, the Ganges, the Nile, sources of life, sustenance for innumerable civilizations that have lived and died on the banks of these great rivers.

I'm excited this morning because I'm about to head across to the West Bank. It's a journey, no matter how many times I do it, that never, ever ceases to thrill. It's what locals call the side of the dead. And it's on this other side that you find the Valley of the Kings, home to some of the most spectacular archaeological sites on earth. Within the desert valley, carved into its limestone, are burial chambers of some of Egypt's greatest New Kingdom rulers,

Seti I, Ramesses the Great, and, of course, the most famous of them all, Tutankhamen. For more than 3,000 years, the boy pharaoh lay undisturbed and pretty much forgotten, until in 1922, 100 years ago, the British archaeologist Howard Carter noticed a set of steps that led, eventually, to Tutankhamen's tomb. He'd just discovered perhaps the most extraordinary gateway to the afterlife the world had ever seen.

You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit. This is our special mini-series marking the 100th anniversary of the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb. From Egypt, we're telling the dramatic story of the Valley of the Kings, this once magnificent royal cemetery, and how many of its greatest tombs were lost beneath the shifting desert sands.

When you look around and see how these mountains have survived for centuries, even before the pharaohs, and this was the meaning of eternity. How it became a battleground in a gold rush that saw adventurers, robbers and different nations race to find the ultimate prize. A totally undisturbed tomb filled with the legendary royal treasures of the pharaohs. It's extraordinary the kind of exploration he had to do Pitch blackness, bats flying around, dust in your face Not really knowing what you were going to see next and what would happen next

And the discovery that captivated the world And still does to this day The awe surrounding the discovery was not simply what was found, it was the fact that you could see inside. You could see the king's throne, you could see the statues, you could see the objects that had just been found. This is Tutankhamun, episode one, the Valley of the Kings. Episode 1. The Valley of the Kings. I'm now walking down one of the side wadis, the ravines in the Valley of the Kings. This place was carved out of the landscape by infrequent but dramatic rainstorms that turned this dry landscape into a raging torrent of water from time to time over the centuries.

That's what gives it this kind of wonderful topography of a central valley with these little valleys leading off it, these tiny little ravines and gullies cracking the limestone. And it was into those places, into those little notches and nooks and crannies that they placed the entrances to the tombs. I'm walking now past one tomb, i think is kv14 and there's a swiss group there reconstructing giant new kingdom era pots out of tiny little shards i'm glad someone's doing that i'm glad it's not me i'll tell you that much that looks like a fairly miserable task in this

35 degree heat today and i come down to the valley floor itself and there are tombs to the left and right of me as we go down this valley. The topography's changed so much over the years. When early explorers arrived here, there would have been a huge amount of alluvium, meaning just little bits of shale, little bits of limestone that had been eroded, freeze-thaw action,

cracked off the cliffs and the hills around me and been washed down to the middle of this valley. But the early work of these Egyptologists was just clearing tons and tons of tons of this broken rock away. And then you start to see the two mentions revealed beneath all that. And it's so exciting to be back here.

I came 20 years ago, the first time, to Egypt. My first ever job in TV was to Egypt. I wore a hat that I'd bought as a somnambulist in my 20s, thinking it made me look a bit like Indiana Jones. And today I'm still wearing that battered, smashed up hat, despite half a million people on Twitter telling me how stupid I look in it. But you know what? If you can't wear it here, you can't wear it anywhere. So we'll come down. The crowds have been to swell down here, even on this hot day. Lots and lots of people. Oh yes, Ramesses III, everyone's going to that.

KV11. And in front of me now, well, we've got Ramesses V, VI on the left. And then underneath that, it's the reason lots of people are here, we've got Tutankhamen, curiously dug right into the floor of the valley. That's why people didn't think he was there. They thought Egyptian engineers would never have put a tomb there because it risked being constantly flooded. But there he is, big queue outside Tutankhamen's tomb today. Everyone has come to see the only undisturbed royal tomb ever found in the valley. The old kingdom, roughly four and a

half thousand years ago, saw the construction of the wondrous pyramids at Giza, the flat-roofed mastaba at Saqqara, and the Great Sphinx. But the New Kingdom pharaohs, who lived nearer to 3,000 years ago, established their religious capital at Thebes in the south of Egypt, wanting to be closer to the source of their dynastic roots. So for their necropolis they sought a place befitting the majesty of their power, and they found the towering Theban hills with their dramatic cliffs and ravines on the west bank of the Nile. Their predecessors pyramids have been impressive, maybe too much so. They offered a sort of X marks the spot to looters and these new kingdom pharaohs

were determined to lie undisturbed so they cut elaborate warren-like mausoleums into the rugged stone mountains. In ancient times, the Valley of the Kings had a somewhat longer name, the great and majestic necropolis of the millions of years of the pharaoh, life, strength, health in the west of Thebes. For about 500 years, tombs were excavated for not just the pharaoh, but queens, high priests and other members of the elite. Ali Ismail is an Egyptologist leading a project that makes large 3D scans of the necropolis and its tombs. They chose this place because there is a very special thing about this place. First of all, when you look around and see how these mountains

have survived for centuries, even before the pharaohs. And this was the meaning of eternity. For them also to see this shape of the pyramid that is at the head of the valley, this shape, it's a very sacred symbol for them. And so this was like a marker saying make it here make it the valley of the kings and was it also for security was it a bit more removed from people that might want to loot their tombs of course this valley was for secure reasons like one of the most secure places because it was already really complicated to get up here. But also the ancient Egyptians, they were like the sun, rising and setting. And so the sun sets here in the west and they have to be buried where the sun sets. Currently, there are over 60 known tombs in the valley, each different in layout and decoration.

Well, for most of ancient Egyptian history and for most of ancient Egyptian people, we have no idea what burial practices they had because they haven't been preserved. The tiny minority at the top of society, the nobility kings, had rather elaborate funeral preparations. And that's what you get in very famous cemeteries like the Valley of the Kings where Tutankhamen was buried. This is Dr Campbell Price, curator of Manchester Museum's Egypt and Sudan collection. If I died in the Egyptian New Kingdom and I had any power or significance I would probably be mummified and mummification has been significantly misunderstood. It's not really aiming at preserving the body. It's aiming at transforming the body into a permanent,

impervious, divine, statue-like effigy. And so if you are wealthy enough, well-connected enough, you would be subject, your body would be subject to this elaborate process, and you would be buried with various ritual objects. Not necessarily things that you are going to take into the afterlife, but things which will help your transformation into divine status. Which means status of permanence, of durability, of eternity. And it's different from the normal conventional accepted wisdom that the ancient Egyptians all want to enjoy the afterlife is maybe they want to be in the company of gods and goddesses, and they want to be either a god or a goddess themselves. In the tombs are packed food, clothing, including underpants, furniture, gold, ivory and jewels,

things that have always lured those tempted by incredible treasures. One aspect of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings that we actually know quite a lot about is the robbery. Because we have documents, a series of documents, which are basically court transcriptions of court business, where robbers have been caught and they've been forced to confess. And then they've been executed, of course. But in those documents, it's quite clear that there were intact tombs. They were opened at various points by various unscrupulous people. But then there's other evidence that the state itself, the priestly state, the military state in the south of Egypt, is exploiting the Valley of the Kings as a kind of a gold mine, literally, as a bank whose reserves that can be dipped.

And so some of the tomb robbers are the people who built the tombs or who are in the community of workers who go on decorating tombs and making funerary goods and decorating temples. But also the people who are ordering the clearing of tombs, maybe that were already opened, are people in high positions of authority. So it is the ancient Egyptian state, such as it was, robbing or pilfering from its own ancestors. And it wasn't just treasure hunters that came to the valley, but also local tourists and Arabic scholars. So any notion that the valley was ever completely lost is something of a myth. For a lot of the time, security was lax.

We know tomb robbery was happening consistently throughout the time the valley was being used. And many of the tombs were never really lost. and many of the tombs were never really lost. So they were tourist attractions in Greek and Roman times, the last centuries BC, the first centuries AD. And so some of those tombs have been open since ancient times. So the Valley of the Kings has always been known about by local people and was famous to tourists even in the reign of Hadrian, second century AD.

The Greeks and Romans had been enchanted by ancient Egypt. But in the late 18th century, a new wave of obsession overtook Europe with Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt in 1798. The French were determined to interrupt British routes to India. They launched a military campaign, and Egypt became an unwitting battleground for the colonial powers. As well as soldiers, among the French invasion expedition, there are also scholars determined to explore every corner of Egypt's landscape,

from its mountains to its ancient monuments. So people are still visiting occasionally and exploring, So people are still visiting occasionally and exploring, but when is the first modern attempt to really understand the Valley of the Kings? In the modern era, we have the Napoleonic expedition, which came here with a lot of scientists and you have a lot of engineers, artists. They were all here to document everything. But this place, to the locals, it was not something to be discovered. It was something that lived within them. Even in the Ottoman period, this place had a different name. Previously, in Arabic, it was referred to as which means the doors of stone.

And then later on, the doors of the kings. So this here, the locals lived with the environment and understood everything as it is, but they did not study it. They just lived with it. And they didn't tell the rest of the world. They didn't tell the rest of the world. But Napoleon did.

Yes. So for Egyptologists like you, they must be so useful, those documents. Yes. The original books are actually that they made, which is La Description de l'Egypte. There were like about seven copies. And I am very lucky to have actually been able to touch one of these copies. Because you have to wear like all these special gloves to deal with them. And here you have like the map of the Valley of the kings it looks incredibly detailed doesn't it you can see where we are at this little ravine here but

there's only about 11 tombs we now know there's so many more did they find any of the newer tombs the napoleonic expedition were not interested in finding things they were interested in documenting with accuracy they were coming here to show what they see and what people lived like here they didn't find any new tombs at all little did they know how many new tombs they were they were walking on top of yes but when news of this got back to europe people people went bananas. Yes, that was Egyptomania. Aeroplanes, spacesuits, condoms, coffee, plastic surgery, warships. Over on the patented podcast by History Hit, we bring you the fascinating stories of history's most impactful inventions and the people who claim these ideas as their own. We uncover exceptional stories behind everyday objects.

We managed to put two men on the moon before we put wheels on suitcases. Unpack invention myths. So the prince's widow immediately becomes certain. Thomas Edison stole her husband's invention and her husband disappeared around the same time. Can only have been eliminated by Thomas Edison stole her husband's invention and her husband disappeared around the same time. Can only have been eliminated by Thomas Edison, who at the time is arguably the most famous person in the West. And look backwards to understand technologies that are still in progress. You know, when people turn around to me and say, oh, why would you want to live forever?

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By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. As well as mapping the Valley of the Kings, Napoleon's expedition uncovered something truly extraordinary, the Rosetta Stone, which when deciphered by Jean-Francois Champion in 1822, unlocked the key to reading hieroglyphics and understanding the ancient Egyptian world. Across Europe, Egypt-inspired architecture emerged. Fountains in Paris, building facades on London's Strand, sphinxes, obelisks and pyramid monuments at Britain's stately homes, and statues and motifs in grand city hotels.

Egypt became the fascination of the elite, a doorway to the world of the exotic, romance and mysticism. and mysticism. The stories and intrigue ignited by the French invasion captured the imagination of a man who's been called the Italian Indiana Jones, Giovanni Battista Belzoni, whose daring determination, although cavalier and destructive at times, led to some of the greatest discoveries archaeology has ever seen. He was born in Padua, Italy in 1778. After an unhappy love affair in his teenage years, he embarked on a life as a Capuchin monk where he studied hydraulic engineering. But in the 1790s, when Napoleon invaded Italy, Belzoni fled to avoid conscription. For four years he attempted to make a living as an engineer on the continent before arriving in London. There, his career took an unlikely turn

when he began performing as a strongman at fairs, theatres and on London's streets. At six foot seven, he called himself the Patagonian Samson and astounded audiences with his feats of brute strength. His show-stopping tricks saw Belzoni carrying a specially constructed frame on which 12 grown men sat. Meanwhile, he fell in love with a woman called Sarah Bain. The pair married and for a while joined a travelling circus. Belzoni had an interest in phantasmagoria, a sort of theatrical horror that uses lanterns

which project frightening images of skeletons and demons onto walls, smoke and screams to thrill and excite. It was something he often incorporated into his shows. In 1812, he left England to perform in Portugal, Spain and Malta. Then in 1815, he headed to Egypt, where he offered his services as a hydraulic engineer to the Pasha, Muhammad Ali. He had plans for an ox-driven water pump to work on the banks of the Nile, but the idea flopped. Even so, the Pasha gave Belzoni a grant to stay in Egypt a little longer. That's when he heard stories of a mighty head carved in stone, lying half-buried in the desert at Thebes. He applied to the British consul Sir Henry Salt for funds to investigate the possibility of moving it to England. In June

1816 he set off to claim it. The granite head, part of a pair of full-length statues of the great pharaoh Ramesses II, was almost nine feet tall and six and a half feet wide. It weighed over seven tons. Using his understanding of hydraulics and engineering, Belzoni came up with an ingenious way to transport the head on wooden rollers and ropes to the banks of the Nile. It took hundreds of workmen 17 days. From there, it made its way back to London. It's now housed in the British Museum, while the remaining pieces of its pair are still at the Ramessian Mortuary Temple at Luxor. He got the bug and kept looking. In the course of his career,

Belzoni made a number of astonishing discoveries in Egypt. Now we might call it pillaging, but at the time his pursuit of adventure and treasure made him famous. He cleared the entrance to the great temple at Abu Simbel. He excavated Karnak. He was the first to penetrate into the second pyramid of the Giza complex and he was the first to penetrate into the second pyramid of the Giza complex, and he was the first European in modern times to visit the Baharia oasis. He also made an incredible discovery in the Valley of the Kings. While in Egypt, I met the celebrated Egyptologist Salima Ikram. Salima, he's felt only a slightly absurd figure. Did he just get lucky? Was he here first?

Or is he rather praiseworthy? I think it's quite fashionable nowadays to say that Belzoni was not a good thing but I think that there was a lot going for him and as a result for us as well because he did amazing things he found extraordinary stuff he moved extraordinary things

like massively large objects I don't always think it's a good thing that we don't have them here anymore found extraordinary stuff, he moved extraordinary things, like massively large objects. I don't always think it's a good thing that we don't have them here anymore. But in terms of his persistence and his ability to find things and to follow through, so going to Abu Simbel, for example, because his friend had said, yo, big temple, your kind of thing. And so they often did that. I think that Belzoni is now being unfairly criticized. He might not have been the best archaeologist,

but at that point in the early 19th century, archaeology was a baby discipline, if that at all. So you can't fault him for not taking proper notes. And he did take quite a few measurements. He did try and know where things were and why, but the whole archaeological process hadn't been born. So I think to completely dismiss him is, in fact, ridiculous. And obviously, he'd have an eye for it.

People had looked before, Napoleon's men. I mean, he must have been doing something right. Yeah, many people had looked before, I mean, including a lot of the Arabs. I mean, he went into the Middle Pyramid at Giza, in Khafre's Pyramid. No one had managed to do that before, I mean, including a lot of the Arabs. I mean, he went into the middle pyramid at Giza, in Khafre's pyramid. No one had managed to do that before, and a lot of people had tried.

So I think that that and just finding things and being adventurous enough to go places where other people were too timorous to go was really quite an achievement. And also, I guess we like to write him off as a circus strongman, but he did have an engineering background as well, which probably was more useful than his... Well, actually, his physical strength was important as well.

Yeah, both, but I mean, he managed to marry brains and brawn together, and then he was also a bit of a businessman, though I don't know, maybe his wife Sarah had a lot to do with that. But certainly he came here, got an interview with the Khadiv, too bad his engineering feats went all wrong, got in with Henry Salt, the British consul, and then started collecting artefacts and selling artefacts, but studying artefacts. So he really was multi-talented.

The Valley of the Kings in that period, now it's also cleared out, it looks a bit like a sort of rather neat canyon. It would have been a messy old place, would it? It would have been lots of alluvium, lots of broken off bits of limestone, metres presumably, covering the entrance to these tombs. Yeah, many of the tombs were invisible, I mean, because things had tumbled over. In fact, the entrance to the valley was also quite different because the road has widened it, but it was very narrow.

It was this tiny little pathway, and then there was a bit of an arena, and then again it narrowed. So this whole space has changed so radically over the years with excavations. So he's in the valley. What's his greatest triumph in the valley? Well, his greatest triumph in the valley, I think, is the tomb of Seti I. And here he was wandering through saying, ah, marvellous things, and I want to be known for having found something here. The valley had not really been well explored, ah, marvellous things and I want to be known for having found something here.

The valley had not really been well explored and at that time, I mean, Napoleon's people had enough trouble with the residents of this area trying to raid him and attack him. So for Belzoni to come to the rather remote at this time valley and poke around and get people to dig for him and suddenly saying, I think this is a likely spot because of what I can see with the landscape and poke around with his large stick and say, dig here, was quite an amazing thing

because what he found is one of the most beautiful tombs, if not, in fact, it is the most beautiful tomb in the Valley of the kings. I'm walking down now into one of the most extraordinary sights on earth. It's a tomb far bigger, far more richly decorated, and far more exciting in many ways than the tomb of Tutankhamun in terms of what's on the walls and the various chambers. Unlike Tutankhamun, it was disturbed in the years that followed the internment of the pharaoh here. But it is mind-blowingly beautiful. I'm now walking into the upper chamber of Seti I's tomb. This is the 19th dynasty pharaoh.

of Seti I's tomb. This is the 19th Dynasty pharaoh. He ruled just after Tutankhamun. And he was the father of the warlike Ramesses II. And he has left an absolutely bananas tomb. It dwarfs that of his predecessor Tutankhamun. If we're going ever further into the earth, it's getting quite cool down here. It's rather nice.

Hieroglyphs, of course, all over the walls. Images of Egyptian deities still with their original colours, showing no sunlight penetrates down here, so they don't fade. Now, this is a very exciting section we're coming up to here. There's a shaft that goes straight down. It actually acts as a sump. It's meant for flash floods, so that the water, if it does find its way into the tomb,

won't destroy the burial chamber that lies further down. There's a bridge across it, but it does look a bit like a kind of Indiana Jones obstacle because it's a sheer sided chamber that goes down, I don't know, 15, 20 meters below me. And when Belzoni the explorer first found this, he got to this point and realized the tomb had been robbed because he found a bit of rope hanging there that some previous tomb robber had used to get across this

particular obstacle having crossed that on a bit of a rickety wooden bridge i'm down now in a beautiful chamber there's the image over here of seti being mummified there are images of egyptian life and of the egyptian gods all over walls. It is a gigantic tomb this one. It would have been piled high with artifacts, goods to see Seti comfortable in everlasting life. Let's go even further down here we're getting towards the burial chamber or at least the area where the sarcophagus is at. I've been all over the world. I've been privileged to see many remarkable archaeological spaces and

buildings and things. And this, I can tell you, is one of the best. Nothing prepares you for entering a tomb like that of Setes I. SETI, one of the most magnificent tombs, but he's not the super popular pharaoh. Overshadowed by his son, perhaps? Yes, Ramses II did sort of throw his weight about a bit.

Not one to hold back, not modest. But SETI, in fact, was a very great pharaoh, both militarily, as well as in terms of production of art, architecture and diplomacy. So he did achieve a huge amount and Ramses capitalised on it and then just sort of put his name everywhere. And when Belzoni found this, he had a flaming torch in his hand. He had to use a rope to sort of swing across the great sump. What do you call that cavernous bit? The well, in fact. Yes, exactly. It's extraordinary the kind of exploration he had to do. And pitch blackness, bats flying

around, dust in your face, not really knowing what you were going to see next or what would happen next, snakes, the possibility of a ceiling falling down on you, and wriggling, and Belzoni was not a small man, so for him a wriggle was really quite an achievement. You've had similar experiences. You've been into undisturbed tombs and had to crawl around in tight little spaces with inadequate light. I mean, what's it like?

Well, luckily for me, I'm smaller than Belzoni, but it's great fun and sometimes slightly terrifying because you're caught up with the excitement. You're wriggling on your belly and suddenly you put your hand down and you think, that's a mummy, oh my God. I hope I'm not destroying it. And the ceiling's about three inches from your head

and then suddenly a bat wishes by and that's when you think oh maybe this wasn't such a good idea. It took just 10 days for Belzoni and his team to clear the tomb completely. Only the sarcophagus remained preparing to be shipped to London. While they were waiting Belzoni actually set up camp and lived with his wife in the mouth of the tomb. News of his discovery spread and Belzoni quickly found himself on the receiving end of a lot of attention, some of it unwanted. According to Belzoni's account, he was busy at work when he suddenly heard gunshots and saw, he writes, a great many Turks on horseback entering the valley. They were troops of the local governor

who'd heard rumours of treasure. Politely, they asked Belzoni, Pray, where have you put the treasure? I told him we had found no treasure. Somehow, Belzoni eventually managed to convince the men that there was no gold, but that wasn't the end of it. By the banks of the Nile, as Belzoni was loading some of his finds onto a ship back to Cairo, more shots rang out around him, this time

from French archaeologists working in the area who were resentful and jealous of Belzoni's success. By this time, Belzoni had had enough. He'd made astonishing discoveries and was ready to return to England. In September 1819, Belzoni left Egypt for good, writing in his diary, Thank God. Upon his return, the sarcophagus of Seti I was housed in the Soane Museum in London, where it can still be seen today. Now, when I'm in the Soane Museum in London, I'm extremely glad that there's a beautiful sarcophagus in there.

I think it's exactly the right place for it. When I'm here, I regard it as an act of disgusting vandalism and theft that is not sitting here where it should be. Yes, Belzoni actually hauled it out and took it to London. He wanted to sell it to the British Museum, but they were not interested. So it lay around for a bit until Sir John Cern took it. And it is a beautiful centre point there, and it is sad that it is not here. Interestingly, Belzoni was ahead of his time because now, you know, we're doing 3D scanning and virtual tours. So in those days, the 19th century, you couldn't do that. But what Belzoni did do was he had squeezes and casts made, so basically copying the tomb and painting it. There were two copies made. One was shown in

the Egyptian hall in Piccadilly in London and the other one in France. And so basically it was a recreation of the tomb. So you could physically walk into this copy of the tomb, the 3D copy, and it did inspire people for quite some time. And the one in Britain vanished. I think it got burnt. But the one in France is lurking somewhere, which it would be great to find.

Oh, that's cool. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans.

Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. 2,000 people visited Belzoni's exhibition at Piccadilly on its first day alone. The journal he kept while in Egypt was published and became an instant bestseller. The world was well and truly captivated by Egypt and the Valley of the Kings. Over the following decades, Egypt became a number one destination for European tourists and archaeologists, seeking to unearth treasure and secrets, just as

Belzoni had. Up and down the country, temples, monuments and sites were excavated and investigated. But despite the interest, the Valley of the Kings remained relatively untouched, partly due to its difficult inaccessibility. But also, upon his return, Belzoni had declared, difficult inaccessibility. But also, upon his return, Belzonia declared, I've emptied the valley. In the years after, an Englishman by the name of John Gardner Wilkinson spent 12 years visiting more ancient Egyptian sites than anyone before him. Everywhere he went, he would painstakingly draw and record every inch of every surface he saw. So when he got to the Valley of the Kings, he was determined to record every tomb he found, scouring the landscape in forensic detail. Until he came along, people sort of knew how many tombs

had been found and roughly where they were, but there was no system. Wilkinson changed that. The naming convention we have now, KV1 or KV17, Kings Valley and a number, that's Wilkinson's. By the time he'd finished, Wilkinson had walked every inch of the valley and labelled 17 tombs, including the ones noted by Napoleon's teams and Belzoni's discoveries. In all that time, though, with all that effort, Wilkinson never added to the list. He never found a new or complete tomb. All were missing things, either from robberies or natural interference from bad weather.

17 tombs had been discovered when he started his mission, and there were still 17 when he finished. But ancient texts suggested that there had been at least 42 royal burials in the valley, so archaeologists continued to search. By 1900, excavation in the valley had become a hobby of the wealthy and well-to-do in Europe and the USA. Theodore M. Davis was a businessman and lawyer who funded a young inspector of antiquities by the name of Howard Carter to supervise a systematic exploration of the valley.

Carter had arrived in Egypt just a few years earlier from Britain as a 17-year-old artist. in Egypt just a few years earlier from Britain as a 17-year-old artist. In the 12 years Davis sponsored excavations, some under the supervision of Carter, but later by other archaeologists, about 30 tombs were discovered or cleared in his name. Again, all incomplete. Amid those discoveries, something curious was found. In one dig site, his team found traces that there had been a king by the name of Tutankhamun, possibly buried somewhere in the valley, a tomb that was yet to be uncovered. Another was a different, uninscribed tomb found in 1909, known as KV58, that contained pieces of a chariot harness with the name

Tutankhamun on it. Davis believed that this KV 58 was all that remained of Tutankhamun's burial. If this was the case it meant that virtually all of the king's tombs expected to exist in the valley had now been accounted for. Davis, much like Belzoni, declared, the valley of the tombs is now exhausted. But that young British inspector of antiquities disagreed. Howard Carter sensed there was more to be uncovered in the valley of the kings. Join me for another podcast tomorrow, the next part of the story of Carter's obsession with the young pharaoh Tutankhamun

that led to one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of all time. Howard Carter was sure that he was going to find something impressive and he was sure it was going to be a tomb. So he kept looking and finding things but five years nothing and he was almost losing hope you're listening to dan snow's history hit make sure to subscribe for the next installment dropping in this feed tomorrow this episode was written and produced by mariana deforge and mixed mixed by Dougal Patmore. I'm Dan Snow. Thanks for listening. you