Valley Of Kings

Deep in the Western desert across the Nile from Luxor one finds the most famous concentration of royal tombs in Ancient Egypt, the Valley of the Kings. The site was too sacred and too secret to bear a formal name. To the workmen who constructed the tombs and the few privileged officials who were actively involved, it was "The August Place". Its modern Egyptian name is Biban el-Moluk.

Disappointed by the failure of the pyramids to protect their royal owners fro robbery and desecration, the kings of the New Kingdom decided to adopt a more secure mode of burial. Instead of the prominent, imposing structure of a pyramid, they opted for deep, rock-cut galleries and halls.Instead of the traditional burial sites near Memphis, whose sUsceptibility to foreign occupation had been painfully evidenced during the Hyksos Period, they preferred the security of Luxor in the south. The popularity and accessibility of the traditional royal necropolis were sacrificed here in favor of the privacy of a remote wadi in the desert, where nobody could venture unnoticed, nor survive long enough to damage to the tombs.

It was believed that these precautions would guarantee an eternally undisturbed afterlife to the dead monarchs. That assumption was wrong, however, for the robbers ultimately proved to be more cunning and more resourceful than the royal authorities. Most of the burials were violated in antiquity. Nonetheless, the famous tomb of King Tutankhamon remained almost intact, only to be discovered by modern archaeologists. With it, a few other non-royal tombs in the Valley escaped desecration.