The Valley of the Kings

A Site Management Handbook

Kent R. Weeks, Nigel J. Hetherington

• Publisher: The American University in Cairo Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781617975721
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Egyptian Ancient History
• Index: History

During the New Kingdom (c. 1570-1070 BCE), the Valley of the Kings was the burial place of Egypt's pharaohs, including such powerful and famous rulers as Amenhotep III, Rameses II, and Tutankhamen. They were buried here in large and beautifully decorated tombs that have become among the country's most visited archaeological sites. The tourists contribute millions of badly needed dollars to Egypt's economy. But because of inadequate planning, these same visitors are destroying the very tombs they come to see. Crowding, pollution, changes in the tombs' air quality, ever-growing tourist infrastructure-all pose serious threats to the Valley's survival.This volume, the result of twenty-five years of work by the Theban Mapping Project at the American University in Cairo, traces the history of the Valley of the Kings and offers specific proposals to manage the site and protect its fragile contents. At the same time, it recognizes the need to provide a positive experience for the thousands of visitors who flock here daily. This is the first major management plan developed for any Egyptian archaeological site, and as its proposals are implemented, they offer a replicable model for archaeologists, conservators, and site managers throughout Egypt and the region.Published in both English and Arabic editions and supported by the World Monuments Fund, this critical study will help to ensure the survival of Egypt's patrimony in a manner compatible with the country's heavy reliance on tourism income.

1	Introduction to the Site

Site Definition

Thebes and Modern Luxor

Thebes is one of the largest, richest, and best-known archaeological sites in the world. It lies about 900 km (560 miles) south of Cairo on the banks of the River Nile. On the East Bank, beneath the modern city of Luxor (fig. 1), lie the remains of an ancient town that from about 1500 to 1000 BC was one of the most spectacular in Egypt, with a population of perhaps fifty thousand. Even in the Middle Kingdom, four centuries earlier, Thebes had earned a reputation as one of the ancient world’s greatest cities. Within it, the Egyptians had built huge temple complexes at Karnak and Luxor. These are two of the largest religious structures ever constructed, the homes of priesthoods of great wealth and power. On the West Bank lies the Theban Necropolis—covering about 10 km²—in which archaeologists have found thousands of tombs, scores of temples, and a multitude of houses, villages, shrines, monasteries, and work stations.

Thebes has been inhabited continuously for the last 250,000 years. The first evidence of the Paleolithic in Africa was found there. However, the most important period in its history was the five-century-long New Kingdom, when what the ancient Egyptians called this ‘model for every city’ achieved unrivaled religious, political, and architectural stature. Every New Kingdom pharaoh—there were thirty-two of them—and many before and after that date added to the site’s huge architectural inventory. The monuments erected during Dynasties 18, 19, and 20 have ensured that even today, thirty centuries later, Thebes is one of the world’s foremost archaeological sites. Not surprisingly, it was one of the first sites listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site (in 1979).

Fig. 1. West Bank Luxor. © Theban Mapping Project

The name ‘Thebes’ was given to the town by early Greek travelers. Some historians believe the Greeks misheard the local name for an area around Medinet Habu, ‘Jeme’; others think that it came from ‘Tapé,’ or tp, meaning ‘head’ in ancient Egyptian. In the Bible, Thebes was called No, from the ancient Egyptian word niw, meaning ‘city.’ The Egyptians also called it Waset, the name of the nome (administrative district) in which it lay, or niwt ‘Imn, ‘city of Amun,’ which the Greeks rendered as ‘Diospolis,’ ‘city of Zeus’ (the god with whom the Greeks equated Amun). The Egyptians had many epithets for Thebes: “City Victorious,” “The Mysterious City,” “City of the Lord of Eternity,” “Mistress of Temples,” “Mistress of Might,” and others. The more recent name for Thebes, Luxor, derives from the Arabic ‘al-Uqsur,’ meaning ‘the castles,’ which in turn may derive from the Latin word castrum, meaning a military garrison.

Between the river and the desert edge, the Nile Valley floodplain consists of a thick layer of nutrient-rich silt deposited by millennia of annual Nile floods. Today, perennial irrigation waters fields of sugar cane, clover, wheat, and vegetables, and makes possible two crops annually. Before the completion of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s, which ended the annual Nile flood in Egypt, the river rose every year in June, and for the following four months covered the floodplain with 30–50 cm of water. It filled shallow, natural ‘basins’ that were a product of uneven silt deposition across the floodplain. About six such basins lay on the Theban West Bank, each covering several square kilometers. After the floodwaters receded, these now water-saturated basins were planted and their crops harvested in late autumn and winter. In dynastic times, farmers grew wheat, barley, sorghum, pulses, onions, garlic, and melons. These were vegetables of such quantity and quality, grown with such ease, that European visitors constantly remarked about the wondrous Egyptian soil. Some believed that life generated spontaneously in this rich Nile mud and that simply drinking Nile water could cause a woman to become pregnant. The valley’s fabled richness became for Europeans proof of the special place Egypt occupied in the hearts of the gods. Nowhere but in Egypt were the silts so rich, crops so plentiful, fields so easily tended. Even today, the Theban area has a great reputation for agricultural excellence, and tourists who come to admire its monuments often leave equally impressed by its landscape. Azure skies, green fields, blue river, golden hills, crimson sunsets, and fluorescent afterglow give Thebes the appearance of an over-imagined painting. Europeans were certain that here lay the landscape in which God had created the Garden of Eden.

New Kingdom Pharaohs

Eighteenth Dynasty

Ahmose I 1539 BC–1514 BC

Amenhotep I 1514 BC–1493 BC

Thutmose I 1493 BC–1482 BC

Thutmose II 1482 BC–1479 BC

Thutmose III 1479 BC–1426 BC

Hatshepsut 1479 BC–1458 BC

Amenhotep II 1426 BC–1400 BC

Thutmose IV 1400 BC–1390 BC

Amenhotep III 1390 BC–1353 BC

Akhenaten 1353 BC–1336 BC

Smenkhkare 1336 BC–1333 BC

Tutankhamun 1333 BC–1323 BC

Ay 1323 BC–1319 BC

Horemheb 1319 BC–1292 BC

Nineteenth Dynasty

Ramesses I 1292 BC–1290 BC

Seti I 1290 BC–1279 BC

Ramesses II 1279 BC–1213 BC

Merenptah 1213 BC–1203 BC

Seti II 1203 BC–1196 BC

Amenmesse 1196 BC–1190 BC

Siptah 1196 BC–1190 BC

Tawosret 1190 BC–1188 BC

Twentieth Dynasty

Setnakht 1188 BC–1186 BC

Ramesses III 1186 BC–1155 BC

Ramesses IV 1155 BC–1148 BC

Ramesses V 1148 BC–1143 BC

Ramesses VI 1143 BC–1135 BC

Ramesses VII 1135 BC–1129 BC

Ramesses VIII 1129 BC–1127 BC

Ramesses IX 1127 BC–1108 BC

Ramesses X 1108 BC–1104 BC

Ramesses XI 1104 BC–1075 BC

Table 1. Kings of the New Kingdom

Fig. 2. Location map, Luxor. © Theban Mapping Project

The close proximity of limestone for building and plentiful agricultural land helped maintain the wealth and prestige of ancient Thebes. But the reasons that it grew from a sleepy Old Kingdom hamlet to a substantial Middle Kingdom town and a formidable New Kingdom city were political and religious. The reunification of Egypt after the defeat of the Herakleopolitans at the end of the First Intermediate Period was largely the work of Theban rulers, who appointed Theban officials to high government positions, thereby assuming control of the entire country. During the Second Intermediate Period, Theban rulers again achieved prominence. With the expulsion of the Hyksos in the Seventeenth Dynasty, they again governed Egypt.

But Thebes was inconveniently located too far south to rule a country becoming, in the New Kingdom, increasingly tied economically and politically to western Asia. The town of Pi-Ramese was built in the Nile Delta to ease problems of international communications, and it assumed importance as Egypt’s diplomatic and military center. Memphis, at the apex of the Nile Delta, served as the headquarters of Egypt’s internal bureaucracy. Inconvenient location notwithstanding, Thebes prospered and was revered. In part, this was due to the religious, political, and economic power wielded by Amun, the principal god of Thebes. Credited with having freed Egypt from its enemies, making it the wealthiest and most powerful country in the ancient world, establishi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. Introduction to the Site
• 2. Current Risk Factors
• 3. Tourism and the Valley of the Kings
• 4. Stakeholder Surveys
• 5. Valley of the Kings Condition Survey
• 6. Valley of the Kings Infrastructure
• 7. Visitor Management in the Valley of the Kings
• 8. Site Management at the Valley of the Kings
• Notes
• References