Valley of the Kings, also known as "Valley of Biban of the Kings", is a valley in Egypt that was used for 500 years during the period between the sixteenth and eleventh centuries BC for the construction of tombs for the pharaohs and nobles of the modern state extending during the ages of the eighteenth to the twentieth dynasty in ancient Egypt. The valley is on the west bank of the Nile, facing Thebes (currently Luxor), in the heart of the ancient funerary city of Thebes. The Valley of the Kings is divided into two valleys; The eastern valley (where most of the royal tombs are located) and the western valley. With the discovery of the last burial chamber in 2006 known as (Tomb 63), in addition to the discovery of two other entrances to the same chamber during 2008, the number of tombs discovered so far has reached 63 cemeteries of varying sizes, ranging from a small pit in the ground to a complex cemetery containing more than 120 burial chamber in it. All these tombs were used to bury the kings and princes of the modern state in ancient Egypt, in addition to some nobles and those who were related to the ruling family at that time. The royal tombs are distinguished by their inscriptions and drawings from ancient Egyptian mythology illustrating the religious beliefs and memorial ceremonies of that time. And all the tombs discovered had been opened and looted in ancient times, and despite that remained irrefutable evidence of the strength and prosperity of the kings of that time. This area has been a center of scouting excavations for the study of archeology and Egyptology since the end of the eighteenth century, as its tombs arouse the interest of scholars for the expansion of such studies and archaeological excavations. The valley became famous in the modern era after the discovery of the complete tomb of Tutankhamun and the gossip around it regarding the curse of the pharaohs. Excavations, excavations and restoration are still underway in the Valley of the Kings, and a tourist center has recently been opened there.
The soil of the area in which the Valley of the Kings is located consists of dense layers of limestone and other sedimentary rocks (constituting the cliffs scattered in the valley and the nearby Deir al-Bahari temple area), in addition to thin layers of marl clay. The history of these sedimentary rocks dates back to more than 35 to 56 million years ago. It was deposited in this area at a time when the Mediterranean Sea occupied a vast area much larger than that which it occupies now. The valley formed during the Pleistocene era (or the Pleistocene era) by continuous rainfall on this spot that led to the drilling of water courses that contacted each other over time to form the valley Present. Studies indicate that this part of the Egyptian lands is subjected to continuous and slight rainfall throughout the year. The region is also frequently exposed to sudden floods that leave impurities attached to open tombs. The rocks in the Valley of the Kings are distinguished by their different nature, between fine, smooth rocks and even large, hard rocks, and this last type is not suitable for building or construction, in addition to shale, whose layers cover separate areas of the valley, which made it more difficult to build tombs or preserve corpses. The inappropriateness of the surrounding environment, where the shale child expands in the presence of water, which leads to the spacing of the surrounding rocks, causing cracks in the walls and floors of the tombs, which in turn leads to the leakage of water inside the cemetery, causing great damage, whether in the building itself or the mummy preserved inside it, and it is believed that the quality of the rocks This is the reason for the changes in the shape and size of some of the discovered tombs. The Egyptian builders took advantage of the geological differences in the valley, as some tombs were constructed by directly digging in the cracks between the limestone layers, while others were built behind gravel slopes and the rubble of rockfalls or on the edges of rocky outcrops resulting from ancient flood courses. In order to find out the difficulty of constructing these tombs, it is worth looking at the tombs of Ramses III and his father, Set Nakht, where Set Nakht began digging (Tomb 11), but work in it was stopped after the excavation work led to the penetration of the tomb of Amon Muso, and then Set Nakht found no escape other than the rape. (Tomb 14) of Queen Twosret. When Ramses III took power, he completed the tomb that his father had previously begun to excavate. As for the tomb of Ramses II, it was built in the style of the arched axis, which is the first method of building royal tombs. The reason for this is due to the quality of the rocks used in the construction of the tomb, which are often the rocks resulting from the rock collapse that occurred in the city of Esna.
The Taiba Hills, in which the Valley of the Kings is located, are located in one of the areas prone to severe thunderstorms. Recent studies have confirmed that at least seven active flood paths flow into the heart of the valley, an area that reports indicate that it was subjected to flooding at the end of the eighteenth dynasty, which caused This led to the extinction of many tombs under the sediments of the flood, which was confirmed by excavations and excavations during the discovery of tomb 63, tomb 62 and tomb 55, which were discovered in the actual rocky floor of the valley that was covered by the flood sediments. More than five meters below its level now. In the wake of the eighteenth dynasty, the pharaohs worked to settle the land of the valley, and then the flood sediments gathered away from the area of the tombs, and then those tombs remained preserved until they were discovered in the late twentieth century. Radar surveys of the area and the presence of many differences under the surface of the earth, it was later proven that one of these structural differences is the recently discovered tomb 63.
The ancient Egyptian man began inhabiting the Valley of the Kings since the Middle Stone Age. The top of the century is topped by all the good hills, which the ancient Egyptians knew as Ta Dehnt (meaning the summit in hieroglyphics), which appears pyramidal when viewed from the entrance to the valley in an appearance similar to the pyramids of the ancient state that were used as tombs thousands of years before the establishment of the first royal cemetery in the valley, and some Egyptologists have pointed out that the pyramidal shape of the summit is one of the reasons for choosing this spot for the construction of the tombs of the kings, just as the pyramids were used to bury kings in the era of the Old Kingdom. ) to protect the entire funeral city. It was believed for a long time that pyramid-shaped buildings, especially the Giza pyramids, are the traditional model for royal tombs in ancient Egypt throughout its various eras, but most royal tombs were completely carved from rock. They were built by cutting from the ground level, but in Egypt there are many royal tombs completely carved from the rock (similar to the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings) dating back to the era of the Old Kingdom. After the defeat of the Hyksos and the reunification of Egypt under the leadership of Ahmose I, the kings of Thebes worked to construct lofty tombs for them that would be evidence of their rising power. Despite that, some studies indicate that the tombs of Ahmose I and his son Amenhotep I are located in the funerary city of the seventeenth dynasty in the area of Dra Abu al-Naga West of Luxor, (although the locations of the two tombs have not been definitively disclosed yet), but other studies confirm that the first royal tombs built in the valley are the tombs of Amenhotep I (which have not been identified), and Thutmose I, whose walls appear to be the advice of his chief advisor Enini, who advised the king to choose this spot for the construction of his tomb (and studies are continuing so far to definitively determine the tomb of Thutmose I, as the dispute revolves around the two tombs, tomb 20 and tomb 38). Valley of the Kings I thought on my own to carve His Majesty's tomb in the rocks here, and there is no hearing and no seeing. Valley of the Kings The valley began to be used for the burial of kings for the first time around 1539 BC. And the burial of the kings of the modern state continued until 1075 BC. It contains at least 63 tombs, starting with the tomb of Thutmose I (and perhaps even before that date, specifically during the era of Amenhotep I) and ending with the reign of Ramses X or Ramses XI, but burials continued for individuals who were not related to the ruling families in tombs usurped after this. Date. Despite the name, the Valley of the Kings does not only include tombs for kings; Rather, it includes tombs for nobles close to the kings, in addition to tombs that include the wives and children of kings, as well as the wives and children of nobles. Therefore, the actual tombs that contain the remains of kings, nobles, and members of the ruling families do not exceed twenty, while the graves whose owners have not been identified, as well as the mummified mummies buried in hollows. The ground rest of the tombs and burial chambers that have been revealed. With the beginning of the reign of Ramses I (around 1301 BC), work began separately on the construction of the Valley of the Queens, close to the Valley of the Kings.
<Tourism Most tombs are not available to visitors, there are only eighteen tombs that tourists can visit and they are rarely available to visit at the same time, and officials close the tombs that are subject to repair and restoration operations, and the large number of visitors to Tutankhamun's tomb has imposed fees There is an additional fee to enter the cemetery, and there is only one cemetery in the Western Valley that is open for visiting, which is Ai Cemetery, and other fees are charged to visit it. Tour guides have also been prevented from accompanying tourists inside the cemetery and organizing workshops to explain the internal features of it, and tourists are required to proceed quietly and in one row, all of this In order to reduce the time visitors spend inside the cemetery and prevent crowding from causing any damage to the inscriptions on the walls of the tombs, it was also forbidden to take photographs inside. In November 1997, tourist convoys near Deir el-Bahari were subjected to an armed attack by activists of the Islamic Group, which killed 58 tourists of different nationalities, in addition to four Egyptians, which negatively affected tourism in this region. The number of visitors to the East Valley ranges daily between four and five thousand and up to nine thousand on the days when Nile cruises come to Luxor, and the Ministry of Tourism in Egypt is working to raise these rates to twenty-five thousand tourists per day by 2015, and these numbers differ greatly from their counterparts in the valley Al Gharbia, which has only one cemetery, is open to visitors
The Valley of the Kings has always been a source of inspiration for international film producers because of its relics and secrets about ancient Egypt that attract the attention of foreign viewers seeking to learn more about the Pharaonic civilization and see archaeological sites that he could not visit before, and American cinema has produced two adventure films with the same name The Valley, the first of which was the movie “The Valley of Kings” produced in 1954, while the other was produced ten years after this date, and the Valley of the Kings was the scene of the events of the American movie “The Awakening” produced. In 1980, as well as many short TV series, whether American or French. This is in addition to many documentaries that talked about the tombs of the Valley of the Kings, including those who talked only about the tomb of the young king Tutankhamun, where the first documentaries were filmed and produced in 1938, an American film entitled “Ancient Egypt” and spoke About the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb and its duration was only nine minutes, then continued filming documentaries in the Valley of the Kings by international companies, the last of which was in 2004 under the title Seven Wonders of Ancient Egypt, meaning "The Seven Wonders of Ancient Egypt". Egyptian and Arab filmmakers were not far from that area, which was the scene of the events of the Egyptian film Gram in Karnak, which was produced in 1965 and its cameras moved between the Valley of the Kings, Deir el-Bahari and Abu Simbel, and an Egyptian TV series of the same name (Valley of the Kings) is currently being filmed with a budget Huge more than eighty million Egyptian pounds.