The Ancients - Valley of the Kings

Episode Date: November 17, 2022

On the west bank of the Nile, across from the ancient city of Thebes, lies the Valley of the Kings - the final resting place of several Pharaohs and their families. The valley is a 1,000 ft wide wadi [valley] that was utilised as a royal burial ground by three dynasties of the New Kingdom for over half a millennia. Made famous by Howard Carter's discovery of Tutankhamun in 1922, the Valley of the Kings is home to the most celebrated archaeological finds in history.For this third episode of our special miniseries on Tutankhamun, Tristan is joined by renowned egyptologist, broadcaster and author, Dr Chris Naunton to learn more about the incredible place where Tut and so many others entered the realm of the dead.Edited by Aidan Lonergan.For more Ancients content, subscribe to our Ancients newsletter here. If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's podcast, well, we are talking about one of the most astonishing locations in the whole of planet Earth, when it comes to ancient history we're going to the west bank of the river nile near the ancient city of thebes to a place that is called the valley of the kings this was where most famously of all tusen carmen's tomb was discovered some 100 years ago but the valley of the kings is home to so many more tombs than just

tutankhamen's i think there are more than 60 70 or now tutankhamen's is 62 i might be wrong there but it's around that number basically the point i want to get across in this intro is that there are so many tombs of ancient egyptian pharaohs in the valley of the Kings and it's an extraordinary location with so much incredible ancient Egyptian history. It's a very eerie, almost alien lunar-like atmosphere too, going to a place like the Valley of the Kings. There's nothing quite like it, the whole landscape of it all. In today's podcast we're going to be doing a deep delve into the story of the Valley of the Kings. We're not going to be focusing on the Valley of the Kings in more recent history when all these various antiquarians and budding Egyptologists went to excavate over the past couple of hundred years from Belzoni to Carter and so many others. This is the ancients so we're going to be focusing on the ancient history of the

Valley of the Kings. What was it used for by the ancient Egyptians? What do we know about the tombs themselves? And also, what do we know about the figures buried in some of these tombs? Are there any tombs where we're not exactly sure who the occupants were? Do we know if any of these relate to Tutankhamen? I'm giving you a little hint there because it revolves around a name we mentioned a couple of weeks back. The mysterious figure was Menkakara we'll also hopefully talk a bit about the valley of the queens and the valley of the monkeys yes you heard me right there's a valley of the monkeys as well it's a great story you're going to absolutely love it because to tell us through this story we've got the good friend of the podcast the legend and he is a legend dr chris norton i headed over to his house just about a week or so ago to do this podcast chat with him

it was a really good fun conversation and i know you're going to absolutely love this one I headed over to his house just about a week or so ago to do this podcast chat with him. It was a really good, fun conversation, and I know you're going to absolutely love this one. So without further ado, to talk all about the Valley of the Kings, here's Chris. Chris, always a pleasure to have you on the podcast. It's great to be doing another one. Great to be here, Tristan. Thank you for having me back. You're more than welcome. And for a topic like this, the Valley of the Kings, quite a mysterious name in itself and we might think of Tutankhamun straight away when talking about the Valley of the Kings but his tomb is just one small part, there's so much more, so many other incredible tombs in this valley aren't there? Yeah that's right, Tutankhamun's tomb is given the number Kings Valley 62, after a certain point that

numbering system came to be extended as more and more tombs were discovered. So Tutankhamun is the 62nd tomb to be discovered in the valley. They're not all tombs as such, they weren't all used for burials, some of them are caches of equipment, but nonetheless there's an awful lot of very important people from Tutankhamun's time, a few centuries either side, buried in that area. So it is a very important place. Very important place. Let's set the scene. No such thing as a silly question. Straight away with the background. What exactly is the Valley of the Kings? So in terms of the geography, it is what we call a wadi, essentially a network of little valleys in the high desert. We call them mountains, probably not really as high as real mountains. But anyway, in the high desert, we call them mountains, probably not really as high as real mountains,

but anyway, in the high desert hills at the western extent of the Nile Valley, so far away from where people were living, far away from the cultivated land. This is a very dry, barren, kind of lunar-like landscape. And the ancients cut tombs into the natural bedrock in the sides of this network of wadis in the 18th 19th and 20th dynasties and this is a great era for ancient Egypt. Egyptologists refer to it as the new kingdom it's the time when Egypt was unified and powerful enough to invade the territory of other peoples and kingdoms to the south and to the north and east up into the Levant. And in that way made itself very rich, very powerful. So this is a very great era. And the Egyptian king, Pharaoh, is at the top of an enormous empire at this point. And the Valley of the Kings is the cemetery in which the kings of

that era 18th 19th and 20th dynasties were buried. So that's interesting so this royal cemetery it's not in use for all of ancient Egypt's incredible you know multi-millennia long history in the large scale of things it's actually only used for quite a small amount of time. It is I mean it's a period of a few centuries so with a brief hiatus in the late 18th dynasty, which we could perhaps talk about later, it was the royal cemetery for a period of about 500 years. So it is a fairly long time. But in the context of, you know, wider Egyptian history, which lasts for more like three and a half thousand years. Yes, it is just a part of that. So yeah, and it's quite a particular and distinctive place. Thebes, the city that lies across the water from the Valley of the Kings, well that region was not the place of the royal cemetery for most of Egyptian history. And the mode of burying kings in hidden rock-cut tombs is quite distinctive and unusual as well. In earlier times kings were buried beneath

or within pyramids, in later times in tombs within temple complexes. So this idea of hiding burials away in the high desert in concealed, mostly concealed rock-cut tombs is very distinctive. So it is a very distinctive site but one of course that captured the imagination of all the royal cemeteries it's probably the best known so from that point of view the valley of the kings isn't as you say the only royal cemetery but it's the best known certainly royal cemetery and it's interesting us chatting about this before we started and we will delve into some of those tombs and you mentioned that hiatus as well which I'm no doubt we'll talk about too but also this idea that if it was to protect the treasures maybe

to conceal where these pharaohs were buried unlike the big come rob me signs of the ancient pyramids in the temple complexes later but from what you were saying earlier before we started recording this becomes a tourist site even in antiquity. You're absolutely right that the earlier tombs, pyramid tombs in particular, were not designed to be concealed. Quite the reverse. They were intended to be very visible, albeit visible in the distance.

And of course, it would have been the intention that they would have been secured. We know very well that tomb robbery was just about as old as tomb construction. And in fact, most of those royal tombs, which were robbed by the time they were rediscovered as it were in modern times but they were most probably robbed in ancient times as well quite soon after the deposits were made, frighteningly soon

it seems. And in fact this idea of hiding tombs away at a site like the Valley of the Kings may well have been a response to a security problem. So, you know, if you can hide them away in a place which is separate, this is very important as well, a place that is separate from the cult place, the place where the cult of the deceased king was to be maintained and the king be worshipped in death. Those places, those temples and other buildings were separated and placed down in the Nile Valley. That means that the Valley of the Kings is exclusively a place for burial.

And once those tombs are sealed, there's no good reason for anybody to be there other than people involved in tomb construction or security or whatever. So if you're an ordinary Joe who's wandering around the Valley of the Kings, then, you know, you'd have a bit of explaining to do. And in that way, the Valley of the Kings is a site that is intended to be very secure. As you say, it's not a, you know, look at me kind of site. It's quite the reverse. Sorry, you asked about tourists. So in ancient times, although the area was intended to be hidden far away from people, it was obviously known to people. In fact, and again, this is perhaps

something we should talk about a little bit later, but it was abandoned at a certain point. It ceased to be the place of burial of the kings of Egypt at the end of that new kingdom period. Things then change. But we know that certainly not later than the time of the Ptolemies, or say the end of the Ptolemaic, when you've got writers like Strabo providing us with accounts of what there was to be found in Egypt. We know that the Valley of the Kings was already by this time a kind of like an ancient tourist site. It was a place that was known to house the tombs of kings and it was known that these tombs were beautifully decorated, interesting things to go and see. And by the time of what I'm going to call the kind of modern European rediscovery of ancient Egypt in the last 500 years or so, by the time Europeans started to

go to Egypt and write accounts of what they were seeing, the Valley of the Kings was on the itinerary. It was a place that people were aware of, a place that they would be taken to, and a number of the tombs were simply open. So you could very easily, provided you could get somebody to take you to the location, you could then enter these tombs. And they are incredibly large, complex, beautifully decorated. They were among the finest, most sensational things you could see in Egypt. So right from the very sort of beginnings of modern Egyptology, if you like, this was already known to be a place where there were incredible things to see. It's also so interesting when you visit there today, all the way down to the present day, when you got in Monde Luxor on the east bank of

the river Nile, that incredible temple complex at Karnak and Luxor down the road, monumental remains, and as soon as you cross the river to that west bank you have the Ramessium, you have Hatshepsut, the river to that west bank you have the Ramessium, you have Hatshepsut, Diaghel Bahri, you have the Valley of the Kings. The Egyptians very much leave this legacy of east bank, land of the living, west bank, this is the land of the dead, and the Wadi with the Valley of the Kings, that was right at the heart of it all. Yeah, absolutely right. It's not as though there are no exceptions to this, but as a general rule, larger settlements, cities, tend to be found on the east side of the river. Cemeteries tend to be found on the west. As I say, there are exceptions to this. And there were people living and going about their daily lives on both sides of the river.

But the west in particular seems to have been associated by the Egyptians with the idea of death and burial, because it's the place where they see the sun setting every day and for the Egyptians the sun and that idea of the sort of daily cycle of you know sun rising, sun crossing the sky, sun providing the world with light and light being a kind of life-giving force, the daytime and the sun in their beliefs was analogous to the life of the individual and the setting of the sun therefore is analogous to death to the point of death so the west is where they lots of their beliefs are kind of caught up in this idea of the sun setting in the west Osiris is referred to as the foremost one of the westerners. It's believed that you make a journey towards the

west, the sun sets in the west, Osiris dwells there, each individual in death will come to dwell there in the west. And the Valley of the Kings absolutely is across the river, west of the city of Thebes. The river isn't quite pointing absolutely north-south at this point, but you would have been able, if you were in the city of Thebes, to see the sun setting in approximately the place where the Valley of the Kings is located. So it would all have seemed absolutely perfect. This is actually one of the things I love when talking about places in the ancient world, looking at their geographic position and the meaning of that for these people, whether it's Neolithic Orkney or the Valley of the Kings, as we're talking about here. Just before we go on to the tombs themselves, I'd like to talk a bit more

about Strabo and what he says when he sees the tombs because what does he say when he visits the valley of the kings and he witnesses how many tombs are there and later who does that inspire yes it's almost as though you already know about this huge only homework um yeah so the crucial thing in terms of informing the much much later archaeology and digging in the Valley of the Kings is that Strabo and others talk about the number of tombs in the valley. And I think Strabo talks about there being 40 odd. At this point, let's say 210 years ago, only around about 15 tombs were known in the valley. And as I mentioned, Tutankhamun is the 62nd. Officially, there are

now 65. Three more tombs, in inverted commas, have been added since Carter made his discovery. So clearly, it has proved that there are many, many more tombs in the valley of the Kings than were known and open and visitable prior to the beginning of the 19th century. So that inspires, the first person it inspires is Giovanni Battista Belzoni, this celebrated former circus strongman turned logistics man and excavator who was in the employ of primarily a man called Henry Salt, who was the senior most British political diplomatic presence in the country at the time. And so Salt was himself interested in ancient Egypt and interested in acquiring a collection.

And along with that, Salt sort of understood Salt is collecting kind of on behalf of Britain and in fact would eventually sell many of the objects in his collection to Britain for the National Collection, the British Museum. So Belzoni, although Italian himself, was very much working for Britain. And initially his work for was all just about having the engineering and logistical skills to move heavy objects. But as I say, Belzoni takes it upon himself to start doing some digging after a while. And the Valley of the Kings is one of the sites that he's most interested in, clearly captivated by the tombs that you could see. And he's hugely successful and finds half a dozen or so tombs, some of them unremarkable, undecorated, not very large, but he finds the tombs of three pharaohs in that time as well. And that's a significant achievement in itself. One of those tombs is probably the most

spectacular ever built in the valley, the tomb of Seti I. But it's also significant in that Belzoni shows the potential of the valley for archaeology. So he reaches the conclusion of his work at a certain point, having taken things forward. But the baton is then taken up later on by other excavators. And of course, that is what eventually brings us to the 65th tomb in the valley. Well, I'd love us to go through a few of these tombs now, select a of these tombs not all of them not all of them we can't go 65 in 20 minutes it'd be really impressive if we did be too quick for our thing but i think it makes nice sense maybe not chronologically but from what you were saying there were bells only and you

mentioned seti the first that we start with seti the first tomb so if you'd be happy to talk us through give us an overview of seti I's tomb and its sheer incredible magnificence. I'm not sure that I can do it justice in just talking about it here. But yeah, so Seti I is the second king of the 19th dynasty. He is the son of Ramesses I who came to the throne as a commoner not long after the time of Tutankhamun. Forgive me if I just digress into a bit of historical after the time of Tutankhamun, forgive me if I just digress into a bit of historical context here, so Tutankhamun died having not had children and as a result of this his death brings to an end the 18th dynasty family line. So it's actually a very significant point in Egyptian history from that point of view. He's then succeeded by three commoners in succession.

One of them is a guy called Ai who seems to have been a kind of pharaoh's right-hand man for some time. He, we think, was most probably quite elderly by the time he came to the throne, safe pair of hands, but not somebody who's going to last very long. So he reigned for half a dozen or so years. He's then succeeded by a military general, a man called Hormheb. And then there's a third non-royal individual, Ramesses, who's another military general, who establishes the 19th dynasty and a new family line on the throne. And it's likely, I think,, Ramesses, who's another military general who establishes the 19th dynasty and a new family line on the throne. And it's likely, I think, that Ramesses I himself came to the throne not as a very young man, having established himself as a very senior

military man. So he didn't last very long either. Bersetti I is the first of this new line to be born into it, rather than inheriting it as a senior official. He had a long reign. He was himself a very successful military leader. He restored much of Egypt's territory, did a very good job in maintaining the empire therefore and continuing to ensure that large quantities of materials and other wealth from all over the empire come flowing into Egypt. It's a time of great building and this comes off the back of this slightly troubled period for Egypt, the interim between these two great families, if you like, the 18th dynasty line of Tutankhamun and the 19th dynasty line of the new Ramesside kings. So he's a very great king, sets about building great monuments up and down the country. And as you would expect, he has a

very large tomb. And in fact, his is the first of a kind of new type of very very large very long so linear tombs essentially a kind of like a very very long corridor penetrating deep into the rock hundreds of meters with at certain points junctions where the corridor might open out into a large room there might be then side rooms leading from that. But essentially it looks like a very, very long corridor. And the walls are more or less completely covered in decoration of one kind or another. The decoration leads you through a series of ideas connected to Egyptian beliefs in the afterlife. So the closest sections to the entrance are concerned largely with images of the sun, the sun god, and for the Egyptians

it's all rather complicated, a bit difficult to get your head around, but for the Egyptians they believe that in death, Pharaoh is kind of represented by the sun god if you like, that in death, Faer is kind of represented by the sun god if you like, the sun makes this journey through the sky in life through the night in death and that is the same journey that the king is going to make through the netherworld to reach eternal resurrection. So the outermost parts of the tomb are concerned with the sun from hereafter and I'm massively skating over huge quantities of detail I mean the wall surfaces are very extensive in the tomb. They are all covered in sort of minute detail. I mean, we could spend hours and hours and hours talking about all the details.

But the next parts are concerned with the journey that the sun is going to make through the night, which, as I say, is essentially the same thing as the journey the king is going to make to the next life. So there are lots of images. If you're ever in the Valley of the Kings, the thing to look out for is an image of a boat with a number of gods in it, the central figure of which is a ram-headed figure, and that is the sun god in his ram-headed form. And he's making this journey on a boat. All good journeys in Egypt are made by boat on the Nile, of course, so why not through the netherworld? so and a lot of what is going on concerns the sun god equals the king making this journey with a whole host of helper gods and

goddesses making his way through a perilous landscape always in a boat sometimes though strangely in the desert and encountering lots of threats very often manifested as serpents so you see lots of serpents sort of facing towards the sun god and his boat as he's making the journey along and then you see lots of gods and goddesses wielding knives and the knives are there so that they can vanquish the serpent and eventually all of the images are oriented in the direction of the burial chamber so it's as though if you're walking along you're sort of reading the walls as if like a comic strip. And you're heading ultimately to the burial chamber, which in the Tomb of Seti I is a very grand space, a vaulted chamber with a ceiling which has a depiction of the sky goddess Nut.

birth and rebirth imagery here in that one strand of the belief is that so that the sky goddess Newt is depicted as this goddess with like ridiculous elongated body arcing over the whole of the ceiling actually two images back to back the idea being to show that she arcs across the sky and she swallows the sun at a certain point that's's the point the sun sets, and then the sun is reborn from exactly where you would expect something to be reborn, from the body of a goddess. And that is the point at which the sun is reborn. And again, so that's sort of magically conjuring up this idea of the rebirth of the king into the eternal hereafter.

So the decoration in some ways is kind of impenetrable in that when you're in there, you are looking at images of dozens and dozens, hundreds of figures of gods and goddesses and demons and beasties and foes. And it all seems, I haven't said yet, but it's all staggeringly beautiful, you know, as well. So the tomb is huge. It takes 10 or 15 minutes at a sort of stroll to get from the entranceway to the burial chamber. It's very difficult not to, of course, keep stopping because there are so many of these fascinating images. It's brightly painted, has a very much kind of blue and yellow colour way, if you like, in the tomb. For much of it, or parts of it not painted, much of the decoration is carved in extremely fine raised relief.

or parts of it not painted. Much of the decoration is carved in extremely fine raised relief and Seti I's reign is characterised by extremely fine, particularly raised relief sculpture. His sculptures are staggeringly good. The tomb is one place in which their talents are manifested. So it's fabulously beautiful whether you understand what's going on or not. But if you do have some sort of inkling of all of this, you sort of understand that magically what's on the walls is bringing about the resurrection of the king that's what the tomb decoration is for and then you have this burial chamber as i say vaulted with the newt seen on the ceiling there would have been a very very beautiful translucent egyptian alabaster sarcophagus in the center of that, in which the coffin and the body of the king were placed. Those are not there anymore. We know that the body of the king was removed from the tomb towards the end of the New Kingdom. We can't be sure exactly when,

possibly into the next period, into the 21st dynasty, possibly even slightly later than that. The sarcophagus was discovered by Belzoni, its lid was found if I remember rightly smashed and in pieces on the floor but the box part of the sarcophagus still in place. Belzoni was able to remove that from the tomb, not sure how I feel about that, not sure now that would be the way things are done but anyway it was removed and of course that's the sarcophagus which now very famously is in the sewn collection in london in the sewn museum and is the star piece in that museum we sometimes get so focused on tootin coming there's so many other incredible pharaohs and seti the first is one of them whether it's the hyper start of all that

karnak or his tomb this was a man who was determined to leave his legacy in stone like in these incredible buildings wasn't he was determined to ensure his legacy in stone like in these incredible buildings wasn't he was determined to ensure that like now the 19th dynasty it's here to stay yes absolutely the relative size of those two tombs Tutankhamun and Seti I actually I think says more about Tutankhamun than it does about Seti because King Tut's tomb being as small as it is is the anomaly but having said that Seti I is not quite the largest in the valley but it is almost the largest and he as I mentioned he established this new design if you like very long linear tomb certain aspects of the decoration the newt ceiling for example become established

as the way of doing things in Valley of the King's Tombs from this time onwards so it's a very important monument in that way and And he's a very, very important pharaoh. And as you say, I mean, when you look at his program of building, this was somebody who can lay a much better claim to having been a great pharaoh than Tutankhamun, actually. And of course, what we can't know, because the tomb was emptied in ancient times, at the end of the New Kingdom at some point, what we can't know is what goodies would have been in there. Tutankhamun's tomb, Tutankhamun himself is so famous because his tomb was discovered intact and full of stuff. Full of more stuff than any tomb has ever been found to contain before or since.

Was Seti I's tomb similarly equipped? I think you have to assume it probably was. It's just that we're missing all that stuff now, sadly. Hi there. I'm Don Wildman, host of the new podcast American History Hit. Twice a week, I'll be exploring stories from America's past to help us understand the United States of today. Join me as I head back in time to witness Thomas Jefferson write the Declaration of Independence,

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I'll speak with leading experts from across the United States and beyond to bring American history to life. Join me every Monday and Thursday for American History Hit, a podcast by History Hit. So Chris, we've talked about the incredible tomb of Seti I, one of the most astonishing, but of course there are so many other tombs and let's focus in on a few of the other ones as well. We will get to Tutte and the 18th Dynasty, but one other question I'd like to ask going on a slight tangent in regards to tombs. Do we know who the first person was? KV1, is that the first person who's buried in the tomb? No, no, but it's a very good question. Just very briefly to explain the numbering system. In the first couple of decades,

two, three decades of the 19th century, there were several numbering systems in place for the tombs. The one that we now use is the one created by the English Egyptologist John Gardner Wilkinson. And what he and most of the others did was to enter the valley via the normal valley entrance and start numbering them as he encountered them. So first on the right is the tomb of Ramesses VII, I think, KV1. Next on the right is tomb of such and such KV2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. So they don't follow the chronological sequence from ancient times, they just follow the sequence as they were found. So in John Gardner Wilkinson's time, basically the tombs that were known were the ones that had been opened since antiquity and the ones that Belzoni had opened through excavation.

antiquity and the ones that Belzoni had opened through excavation. Altogether this is about 20-ish tombs. Once that became established as the definitive numbering system then as they were discovered they were added in sequence. So from 20-something onwards they appear in the sequence as they were discovered. So again nothing to do with the chronology. As for who was first to be buried in the Valley of the Kings it's an open question because we don't have the tombs of the first two kings of the 18th dynasty. We talk about the Valley of the Kings as being the royal cemetery of the 18th, 19th and 20th dynasties. We don't certainly know the location of the tombs of Ahmose I and Amalote I. It's not completely beyond the realms of possibility that either of those tombs could turn up in the Valley of the Kings in the future, in which case we'll be able to say, right, those would be the

earliest. But at this point, we don't know where they were buried. Thutmose I, who's the next king in the sequence, does seem to have been buried in the Valley of the Kings, but it's not clear whether he cut a tomb for himself and was buried there or whether a subsequent later pharaoh cut a tomb in the Valley of the Kings and then moved Thutmose I into that tomb. So I think the consensus view is probably that it's the latter. So Thutmose I is not the person responsible for cutting the first tomb. We don't know the whereabouts of the tomb of Thutmose II, so that's another one that, if it turned up, could become the first. The earliest that we certainly have good evidence

for in the valley would be either Hatshepsut or Thutmose III. Again, it's not quite clear which of those was being cut first. Probably the tomb of Hatshepsut KV 20 so that's the earliest we can certainly say was cut there is another one I want to mention which is it has the number 39 which is sometimes claimed to be the tomb of Amenhotep I second king of the dynasty so therefore earlier but it's really a little way outside the value of the king's proper and in fact we don't know certainly that it was the tomb of Ammon Host at the first my own view is that it probably wasn't in which case yeah Hatshepsut, Thothmoses III. I mean Thothmoses III I remember going

near his tomb but it was closed on the day it's up those stairs it's in like another cavern completely isn't it? Yeah it is it's important to remember yeah i suppose for anybody who doesn't know it the valley of the kings is not like one single sort of linear valley it's a network of wadis so when you approach from the cultivation from the nile valley you wind up via what is now a tarmac road is following the line of the main wadi floor that is kind of the main branch of the wadi and that is where a lot of the tombs are to be found including the tomb of Tutankhamun but then there are a number of side wadis so Seti I, Ramesses I are off slightly a beginning of a side branch and yes Thutmose III is to be found you have to follow the main wadi all the way to the end, follow it round to the

left and then you've got a kind of what's sometimes described as a chimney in the cliffs. It's almost as though the cliffs have come to be folded and inside the fold you've got a very well concealed space and there are actually a number of tombs. I think there's two or three up there. Extremely difficult to access. To get up there now you have to go up a very steep, quite long iron staircase, which you will have seen. Of course, without an iron staircase, they're extremely difficult to get up there. And then the tomb itself is not much more than a kind of enlarged hole, very steep staircase descending down into the rock. So once the tomb was completed and sealed,

extremely difficult to get to it, extremely difficult to find, and then even once you get there, you know, it would not have looked like much. We're not talking about something that was very grandly advertised as being the tomb of a king. As we've already said, you know, this was something that was more or less deliberately hidden away. And in that sense the tomb of Thutmose III follows the pattern of tomb cutting at that time the early 18th dynasty this pattern of building tombs in very hidden away places in these rock chimneys so they do seem to have been very concerned with this idea of trying to hide tombs and the fact that that follows the pattern of that kind of tomb construction

even if the other examples we have are not in the Valley of the Kings, they're elsewhere, it does kind of suggest that Thutmose III perhaps was the first to build in the valley in this well-established early 18th century way. Very, very, very interesting. I love Thutmose III

and his whole story as well with Hatshepsut. He's another one for our list, isn't he? Oh, yeah, exactly, exactly. Megiddo and all that jazz. But let's move on. Come on, a couple more tombs and we had a talk about them just before we started recording. KV35, if I got that right, come on, what about this tomb? Yeah, sorry, again, a little bit of a tangent here, but one thing I love about

this is that Fertmose III is KV34, it may be the first tomb, it's very beautifully decorated, it's got a really lovely complete book of amduart decorating the walls of the cartouche shaped burial chambers a staggering thing and hotep the second is the owner of kv 35 the next one in the numbering sequence and that reflects the fact that the french archaeologist victor lorre found these two tombs in very very quick succession at the beginning of the 1890s if i remember rightly and so he makes this one sensational discovery, the tomb of Thutmose III, and literally sort of, you know,

a matter of a couple of weeks later, he finds another very beautifully decorated tomb, in fact, of Thutmose III's direct successor, tomb of Amenhotep II. It follows a slightly more elaborate design in the architecture. It's also decorated in the burial chamber and around about with an amduart scenes. Amduart is the Egyptian for what is in the netherworld. So these

are scenes of the things that the king is going to encounter in his journey to the next life. Very, very beautifully decorated. The decoration is extremely finely preserved as well. It's like new. But yet in some ways, the discovery of the tomb itself is almost overshadowed by what perhaps is the greater significance of the tomb which is that towards the end of the new kingdom it came to be used as a cache for the burial of other kings in addition to Amenhotep II so it's very finely decorated it's the tomb of a king of a very great period 18th dynasty. Amenhotep II was found inside his own sarcophagus one of only two to have been discovered in place like that, Tutankhamen being the other one. But in fact we now know that he

had been placed in there originally, removed and then replaced at a time at the end of the New Kingdom when the priesthood were having to remove the mummies and some small parts of the burial equipment from the tombs of the kings and to squirrel them away in secret caches in order to prevent them from being robbed and the bodies from being desecrated. Also we now think, thanks to some brilliant detective work by my colleague Nicholas Reeves, also we think so that the authorities could reclaim some of the precious materials in those tombs which they needed because the economy was in real trouble. So this tomb, Amenhotep II, was found to contain

the mummy of Amenhotep II himself, the mummies of about half a dozen or so other New Kingdom pharaohs and then perhaps most famously of all in another side chamber three unwrapped mummies with no material around them to identify them. So all these other ferro bodies were all identifiable from inscriptions, coffins, mummy bandages, etc. These three unwrapped, no inscriptions with them, three all lying on the floor, two women either side of a young male individual we don't know who the young male is even to this day the two women one of them certainly identified the other one been lots of claims about one of them much older according to the anatomists at the point of death than the other hence the designations elder lady and younger lady the elder lady we can now be very confident was queen t

the wife of amenhotep the, the mother of Akhenaten, the grandmother of Tutankhamun. So very, very important. And we know from lots of other evidence, a very important, very prominent great royal wife, one of the most prominent in Egyptian history. The younger lady it's sometimes claimed is Nefertiti. My view is that it's probably not. And I think that is is the consensus view but lots of claims have been made about the younger lady and there's lots and lots of speculation. So the tomb as I say would have been a great find even if it were simply as it were the tomb of Amenhotep II but the fact that it contains this cache of mummies as well makes it extra important. And Queen T in her own right that's an extraordinary to actually have her

remains there too as you say that link to Akhenaten which we will now go on to because you mentioned near the start of our chat and we would go back to this brief hiatus in the usage of the valley of the kings this is very much related to the figure of akhenaten yes absolutely right yeah so akhenaten who is the son and successor of amenhotep iii who himself was buried in another side branch of the valley of the kings what we refer to as the Western Valley, we sometimes call it the Valley of the Monkeys. Shall I explain that? Does that need explaining? I think so, I think so. Okay, so Valley of the Monkeys, because it's a side wadi, but actually some way distant from the main branch of the valley, so it kind of has its own special designation. It was the site of a number

of tombs, half a dozen or so, including the tomb of Amon Hosea III himself, also the tomb of Tutankhamun's successor, Ai, this high-ranking political figure who comes to the throne as a commoner, probably late in his life. That tomb, the tomb of Ai, which might in fact have originally been intended to be the tomb of Tutankhamun, it could well be that it was never used for Tutankhamun because he died young and unexpectedly and it wasn't finished. In any case, Ai, his successor, comes to be buried there and in the burial chamber part of the decoration on the walls is a grid with a series of images of baboons, about 12 baboons. It's a part, it's a tiny part of the first hour of the Amduat, so it's absolutely a part of this kind of decoration you'd expect. But you know, whether or not you understand that

aspect of Egyptian religious belief, it's just very striking to have a wall full of images of monkeys, hence the Valley of the Monkeys. So winding back to Akhenaten, thank you Tristan. Amenhotep III succeeded by Akhenaten, who was crown thank you Tristan Amenhotep III succeeded by Akhenaten who was crowned in fact as Amenhotep what was his

birth name Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten which means effective for the Aten the Aten is

a very particular form of the sun god a sun disc and Akhenaten essentially decides that the Aten the sun, is now the only god and the worship of all other gods and goddesses in the Egyptian pantheon is proscribed. There are

some sort of exceptions to this but that is the essence of it is that there's now just one god with Akhenaten and his great royal wife Nefertiti generally shown in the iconography as being the recipients of the life-giving force of the sun. So they generally shown in the iconography as being the recipients of the life-giving force of the sun. So they elevate themselves in the iconography to the status of gods along with the Aten. And as part of a very wide-ranging program of turning everything in Egypt on its head, Akhenaten decides to create a new capital city on a virgin site in middle Egypt, where he's going to build his new city which he calls the horizon of the Aten, Akhet Aten, in a place we now refer to as Tel el-Amanah. And because he is uprooting

what we think is probably around 30,000 to 50,000 people and all of the building and administrative aspects of running an empire like Egypt, He also of course has to create a new cemetery at the site as well including a new royal cemetery. So Akhet-Aten itself is built on this virgin site, very spectacular place actually, with to the east, this is one of those exceptions to the idea of cemeteries being on the west of the river, to the east a wadi which leads from a break in the cliffs, very spectacular arc of cliffs running around the east of the site. To the east, a wadi, which leads from a break in the cliffs, very spectacular arc of cliffs running around the east of the site where he built his city. There's a break, which is a wadi, and about five kilometres up that wadi, Akhenaten built effectively a new kind of Valley of the Kings, a tomb for himself, his wife, his royal family members, etc. There are

a number of tombs there. So because of of this there is suddenly the value of the kings forth out of use but actually it turns out akhenaten's new way of doing things only lasts for a decade maybe two decades at the very very most following that all of the old ways are restored the worship of the old gods etc etc and there is a return to the value of the kings so there is this brief hiatus but as part of the kind of putting things back it seems likely that the burial of one or more members of the royal family, burials that had been made in this new Valley of the Kings in Achenarton's new city, the material, the bodies and burial equipment was when that city was abandoned was removed from there and brought back to the Valley of the Kings for re-burial, as it were.

And luckily enough for us, tomb number 55, KV55, just across on the other side of the main branch of the valley, was found to contain the burial equipment of two individuals who clearly were a part of Akhenaten's Amarna heresy. Amarna, as I mentioned, being the modern name for his ancient city Akhenaten. So two individuals of that sort of era. And there is a third individual represented in the tomb, and that is Tutankhamun himself, whose name appears in the form of seal impressions. So we think actually that these are not part of anybody's burial, clearly not part of Tutankhamun's burial. We know that he was buried across the way there in another tomb. We think that these seals reflect the fact that this material was brought into KV55 on Tutankhamun's watch. So these are

administrative seals saying, you know, we deposit these things here, year whatever, reign of Tutankhamun, on the authority of Tutankhamun. So that tomb probably, well I'm sure in fact it's fair to say that tomb has generated more discussion among Egyptologists and enthusiasts for ancient Egypt and the period of Akhenaten's reign in particular than any other archaeological site in Egypt. Because it's such a strange situation, it seems that this material was certainly only reburied here. The other very exciting aspect about it is that there was a mummy found in there, inside a coffin. The coffin is stripped of the name of the individual. The cartouche is blank, the name having been chiselled away, so we can't rely on that to identify the individual

it's a body of a male and clearly the coffin is intended to receive the body of a king and there are only really therefore two candidates who are the two drum roll please it can't be two duncan moon who is caught up in this whole akhenaten period because we know that his body turned up across the way we think it can't be amanhotep the know that his body turned up across the way. We think it can't be Amenhotep III because his mummy turned up in a cache. So that leaves us with Akhenaten himself and then a mysterious enigmatic pharaoh called Smenkhare. Ah, the mysterious Smenkhare. Yeah, who's very difficult to place, not very much evidence for him there are people who believe that Smenkaray in fact was female for those people who believe Smenkaray was female

this really only leaves Akhenaten it must be Akhenaten's body the problem with this is that according to the anatomists who have examined the body the individual cannot have been older than approximately 20 years old at the time of death. Akhenaten reigned for around 16, 17 years. So if he was 20 at death, then he came to the throne around age four. And it's not impossible for kings to have come to the throne at that time, but it's very difficult to imagine a four-year-old king immediately setting about a programme of revolutionising Egyptian religious beliefs, architecture, art, etc.

Also given how many children he had as well. Yeah, that's right, exactly. Akhenaten, there's just far too much that happened in Akhenaten's life for him to have come to the throne at age four. In which case, it can't be him. And quite honestly, we can't at the moment, there is no way out of this discussion. It's kind of

deadlock i should also add that although that name is not present on the coffin that name is followed by a series of epithets which are epithets that we only know to have been held by akhenaten so it makes it look very much like the name that has been chiseled away is the name of akhenaten in which case you think that the body would be been chiseled away is the name of Akhenaten, in which case you'd think that the body would be his, and this is how we identify most of these mummies, of course. There were also some what we call magical bricks placed around the coffin, and those are inscribed and they have Akhenaten's names on them. So from that point of view, purely based on the inscriptions, it does look very much as though this is Akhenaten.

It's just, as I say, the anatomists say it can't be and um i recently corresponded with a university of cambridge anatomist on this there are specialists who say well actually you could interpret the human remains in more than one way and perhaps actually this idea that the body can't have belonged to an individual of more than 20 years old actually maybe that's not right and maybe you could be older in which case that allows for the possibility of the second one if that's right and i'm not an anatomist if that's right then i would say look all the other evidence says it's him there is not a scrap of evidence to say that it's smen kare but i had as i say some correspondence with a specialist from cambridge a colleague from cambridge who insisted that there is no way that it can be somebody who is older

than 20 in which case we're only left with Smenkaray and like I say I for me we can't resolve this at the moment which means that it's endlessly discussed it's one of these things that really grips people it's such a great story isn't it yes and I love also that idea potentially if Smenkaray is Tut's older brother who dies young and this mysterious name and then you know Tut takes the throne and it's quite interesting how we haven't really talked about Tut's tomb but I don't think we really need to because I mean it's just one tomb of the Valley of the Kings this discovery is amazing but when you do see Tut's tomb compared to the others it's quite puny compared looking at it now compared to the size of the others do you think

that says something about Tut's position or was this a hastily made burial do you think? It's certainly worth interrogating this because it is odd the tomb is odd in lots of ways it is very small and uncomplicated so if you look at the tombs of his immediate predecessors we've talked about the tomb of Amenhotep II, Thutmose IV is not very far away in the valley, Amenhotep III around in the Western Valley. Those are all much, much larger, more complicated tombs. Even the tomb of Akhenaten in Akhetaten, in his new capital city, is far larger and more elaborate. It's probably not finished, and even then it's larger and more elaborate.

So Tutsi is really very, very small. Even then it's larger and more elaborate. So Tutts is really very, very small. Entrance corridor, antechamber, which you enter and which then opens out a little way to the left but seems to sort of take you off towards the right. And the short way beyond the antechamber is the burial chamber. And there are side chambers leading from the antechamber. There's one which Carter called the annex,

and then there's another one leading from the burial chamber, which Carter called the treasury. It's just not complicated enough. You would expect more chambers. The other thing is there is only decoration in the burial chamber. The decoration is Amana style, but again, there's not very much to it. The figures are not, even by Amana standards, the figures are not very sort to it. The figures are not, even by Amana standards, the figures are not

very sort of elegantly painted. They're not terrible. It just looks odd. The closest parallel, I think, actually is the Tomb of Ai in the Western Valley, which is, you know, larger, more complex, but the decoration follows a very similar pattern to that in the Tomb of Tutankhamun. It's just that with more space to work in, there's more of it and it's more complicated. It's a little bit as though that is a more fully realised version of the same tomb and it seems very likely actually that that is what happened. So I think that the suggestion that what became the tomb of Ai was originally intended for Tutankhamun and that it couldn't be used for Tutankhamun because he died young and unexpectedly and that it couldn't be used for Tutankhamun because he died young and unexpectedly.

And therefore Tutankhamun had to be buried somewhere else in a tomb that could be made ready to receive a burial within a very short space of time. Kings died unexpectedly, we've got to put him somewhere. What can we use? So then you're into speculation about what this monument was, whether it was just a tomb that was unfinished, whether it was a tomb of a non-royal or lesser royal. Another aspect of this which has been much discussed in the last few years is that the tomb seems to, it takes a kind of a right angle turn to the right. So you enter via the entrance passageway, the antechamber leads you off to the right, the burial chamber is to be found to the right, and a right-angle turn at a certain point is a feature of earlier Valley of the Kings tombs. But in the case of the Tombs of Kings,

that turn is always to the left. Whereas in the Tombs of some queens, you can see the architecture is taking a turn to the right. So this has been brought into the discussion by people who want to argue that, therefore, Tutankhamun's tomb was perhaps originally the tomb of a female member of the royal family. And that debate rages as well. But in any case, you know, if nothing else, it is much too small for a king's tomb. Well, I'm learning so much about this small tut mini-series that we're doing, the amount of debate there is surrounding this area.

It's so interesting as well. I found all of this so fascinating. You could talk about the Valley of the Kings for hours and there's so many incredible tombs. We've only really focused on a few of them, but some really interesting ones. I must also ask though, before we completely wrap up,

and if there are any other tombs that you find particularly fascinating, your favourites, feel free to say them now as well. I've also got to ask, podcast probably in its own right at a later date, Valley of the Queens. We've talked about the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Monkeys, but there is a Valley of the Queens we've talked about the Valley

of the Kings and Valley of the Monkeys but there is a Valley of the Queens too isn't there? There is yeah I should maybe have said earlier that the Valley of the Kings is perhaps not perfectly named in that it does house the tombs of the kings of the period but also other people as well so there were a number of other members of the royal family, not kings, buried in the same wadi and there were in one or two cases also non-royal individuals buried there. The best known tomb of that kind probably is the tomb of Queen T's parents Yuya and Tuya which was found largely intact in modern times in the very early 20th century. And the Valley of the Queens is another wadi to the south of the Valley of the Kings, not really in the high desert, but in the kind of low desert,

sort of low foothills, just a little way beyond the edge of the cultivated land. And this was another cemetery that was in use for members of the royal family. This was another cemetery that was in use for members of the royal family. In fact, mostly, however, sons of Pharaoh. But it contains the burials of the best known is the tomb of Ramesses II's great royal wife, Nevatari, which is particularly now that it's been very extensively restored by the Getty Institute, it is one of the most finely decorated tombs from any period, from anywhere. It's a real, it's almost a shock when you go in there to see how incredibly beautiful it is. And I think it's probably because of that tomb in particular that the area gets its

name, Valley of the Queens. But both those labels, Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, are subject kind of exceptions to the description, if you see i mean well there we go well chris as mentioned could ask so many more questions but gotta wrap it up i'm feeling sorry for my editors as well because of the length of it but this has been absolutely great no shame whatsoever always a pleasure to have you on the show buddy so it just goes for me to say thank you so much for coming back on to talk all about this delighted anytime anytime you want to go rabbiting on for hours and hours about all things Egypt, I'm happy to do it. Well, there you go. The third and penultimate episode

of our Tut Thursdays mini-series this November. Get that hashtag trending, hashtag Tut Thursdays, because you know you want to. But it was wonderful to have this episode all about the Valley of the Kings. A lovely episode with the one and only Dr. Chris

Norton. I love having Chris on the show. He's always great fun and we always get good podcast episodes with him and this one is no exception. So once again I hope you enjoyed the episode. Now last things from me. You know what I'm going to say. If you'd be kind enough to leave us a lovely rating on Apple Podcasts or on Spotifyify wherever you get your podcast from then we'd greatly appreciate

it at the ancient seek helps us continue our mission our main soul infinite mission to continue to share these incredible stories from our distant past with you long it shall continue now that's enough from me and I will see you in the next episode.