The tomb of Tutankhamun, also known by its tomb number, KV62, is the burial place of Tutankhamun, a pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of ancient Egypt, in the Valley of the Kings. The tomb consists of four chambers and an entrance staircase and corridor. It is smaller and less extensively decorated than other Egyptian royal tombs of its time, and it probably originated as a tomb for a non-royal individual that was adapted for Tutankhamun's use after his premature death. Like other pharaohs, Tutankhamun was buried with a wide variety of funerary objects and personal possessions, such as coffins, furniture, clothing and jewelry, though in the unusually limited space these goods had to be densely packed. Robbers entered the tomb twice in the years immediately following the burial, but Tutankhamun's mummy and most of the burial goods remained intact. The tomb's low position, dug into the floor of the valley, allowed its entrance to be hidden by debris deposited by flooding and tomb construction. Thus, unlike other tombs in the valley, it was not stripped of its valuables during the Third Intermediate Period.
Tomb KV60 is an ancient Egyptian tomb in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt. It was discovered by Howard Carter in 1903, and re-excavated by Donald P. Ryan in 1989. It is one of the more perplexing tombs of the Theban Necropolis, due to the uncertainty over the identity of one female mummy found there (KV60A). She is identified by some, such as Egyptologist Elizabeth Thomas, to be that of the Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh Hatshepsut; this identification is advocated for by Zahi Hawass.
Tomb WV22, also known as KV22, was the burial place of the Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh Amenhotep III. Located in the Western arm of the Valley of the Kings, the tomb is unique in that it has two subsidiary burial chambers for the pharaoh's wives Tiye and Sitamen. It was officially discovered by Prosper Jollois and Édouard de Villiers du Terrage, engineers with Napoleon's expedition to Egypt in August 1799, but had probably been open for some time. The tomb was first excavated by Theodore M. Davis, the details of which are lost. The first documented clearance was carried out by Howard Carter in 1915. Since 1989, a Japanese team from Waseda University led by Sakuji Yoshimura and Jiro Kondo has excavated and conserved the tomb. The sarcophagus is missing from the tomb. The tomb's layout and decoration follow the tombs of the king's predecessors, Amenhotep II (KV35) and Thutmose IV (KV43); however, the decoration is much finer in quality. Several images of the pharaoh's head have been cut out and can be seen today in the Louvre.
Tomb KV42 is an ancient Egyptian tomb located in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. It was constructed for Hatshepsut-Meryetre, the wife of Thutmose III, but she was not buried in the tomb. It was reused by Sennefer, a mayor of Thebes during the reign of Amenhotep II, and by several members of his family. The tomb has a cartouche-shaped burial chamber, like other early Eighteenth Dynasty tombs.
Tomb WV25 is an unfinished and undecorated tomb in the West Valley of the Valley of the Kings, Egypt. It is clearly the beginning of a royal tomb, and is thought to be the start of Akhenaten's Theban tomb. It was discovered by Giovanni Battista Belzoni in 1817; he found eight Third Intermediate Period mummies inside. The tomb was excavated in 1972 by the University of Minnesota's Egyptian Expedition (UMEE) led by Otto Schaden. The project uncovered pieces of the eight mummies, along with artefacts from a late Eighteenth Dynasty royal burial.
KV20 is a tomb in the Valley of the Kings (Egypt). It was probably the first royal tomb to be constructed in the valley. KV20 was the original burial place of Thutmose I and later was adapted by his daughter Hatshepsut to accommodate her and her father. The tomb was known to the Napoleonic expedition in 1799 and had been visited by several explorers between 1799 and 1903. A full clearance of the tomb was undertaken by Howard Carter in 1903–1904. KV20 is distinguishable from other tombs in the valley, both in its general layout and because of the atypical clockwise curvature of its corridors.
The Royal Cache, technically known as TT320, is an Ancient Egyptian tomb located next to Deir el-Bahri, in the Theban Necropolis, opposite the modern city of Luxor.
Tomb KV19, located in a side branch of Egypt's Valley of the Kings, was intended as the burial place of Prince Ramesses Sethherkhepshef, better known as Pharaoh Ramesses VIII, but was later used for the burial of Prince Mentuherkhepshef instead, the son of Ramesses IX, who predeceased his father. Though incomplete and used "as is," the decoration is considered to be of the highest quality.
KV4 is a tomb in the Valley of the Kings (Egypt). The tomb was initiated for the burial of Ramesses XI but it is likely that its construction was abandoned and it was not used for Ramesses's interment. It also seems likely that Pinedjem I intended to usurp this tomb for his own burial, but that he too abandoned the plan. KV4 is notable for being the last royal tomb that was quarried in the Valley and because it has been interpreted as being a workshop used during the official dismantling of the royal necropolis in the early Third Intermediate Period.
Tomb KV45 is an ancient Egyptian tomb located in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. It was originally used for the burial of the noble Userhet of the Eighteenth Dynasty and was reused by Merenkhons and an unknown woman in the Twenty-second Dynasty. The tomb was discovered and excavated by Howard Carter in 1902, in his role as Chief Inspector of Antiquities, on behalf of Theodore M. Davis. The tomb was later re-investigated by Donald P. Ryan of the Pacific Lutheran University Valley of the Kings Project in 1991 and 2005.
Tomb KV26 is an ancient Egyptian tomb of the Eighteenth Dynasty located in Egypt's Valley of the Kings. It is located in a side valley leading to the tomb of Thutmose III (KV34). It was visited by the early Egyptologist James Burton in the 1820s or 1830s, and by Victor Loret in 1898. It was mapped in the 1980s by the Theban Mapping Project. The first documented excavation of the tomb was carried out in 2009 by the University of Basel's Kings' Valley Project. The tomb contained evidence of at least one burial and fragmented pottery and stone vessels of mid-Eighteenth Dynasty date but nothing is known about its occupant(s).
Tomb KV28 is an ancient Egyptian tomb located in the Valley of the Kings in the Theban Necropolis in Upper Egypt. It consists of a short staft leading to a single rectangular chamber. It has been known since the 1830s as it is mentioned by John Gardiner Wilkinson. It 1889 Eugène Lefébure said it contained parts of mummies and their bandaging. The tomb was excavated in the 1990s by Donald P. Ryan who found the bones of three individuals, fragments of a limestone canopic jar, numerous wooden fragments, and early to mid Eighteenth Dynasty pottery. The occupants were possibly nobles, given the tomb's proximity to the tomb of Thutmose IV.
Tomb KV30 is an ancient Egyptian tomb located in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. It likely dates to the mid-Eighteenth Dynasty and was used for the burial of an unknown individual. It may have been discovered by Giovanni Belzoni in 1817, working on a commission from the Second Earl Belmore. It was excavated in 2009-2010 by the University of Basel's Kings' Valley Project.
Tomb KV40 is located in the Valley of the Kings, in Egypt. Artifacts from the tomb attribute it to 18th Dynasty royal family members, though human remains from the later 22nd Dynasty were interred. Although the tomb was excavated by Victor Loret in 1899, no report was published.
Tomb KV21 is an ancient Egyptian tomb located in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. It was discovered in 1817 by Giovanni Belzoni and later re-excavated by Donald P. Ryan in 1989. It contains the mummies of two women, thought to be Eighteenth Dynasty queens. In 2010, a team headed by Zahi Hawass used DNA evidence to tentatively identify one mummy, KV21A, as the biological mother of the two fetuses preserved in the tomb of King Tutankhamun.
Tomb KV27 is located in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. This tomb was visited by John Wilkinson, but was not fully explored until the 1990s, by Donald P. Ryan of Pacific Lutheran University. The tomb consists of four rooms and is undecorated; nothing is known about its occupant.
The Valley of the Kings, also known as the Valley of the Gates of the Kings, is a valley in Egypt where, for a period of nearly 500 years from the 16th to 11th century BC, rock-cut tombs were excavated for the pharaohs and powerful nobles of the New Kingdom.
KV64 is the tomb of an unknown Eighteenth Dynasty individual in the Valley of the Kings, near Luxor, Egypt that was re-used in the Twenty-second Dynasty for the burial of the priestess Nehmes Bastet, who held the office of "chantress" at the temple of Karnak. The tomb is located on the pathway to KV34 in the main Valley of the Kings. KV64 was discovered in 2011 and excavated in 2012 by Susanne Bickel and Elina Paulin-Grothe of the University of Basel.
Donald P. Ryan is an American archaeologist, Egyptologist, writer and a member of the Division of Humanities at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. His areas of research interest include Egyptian archaeology, Polynesian archaeology, the history of archaeology, the history of exploration, ancient languages and scripts and experimental archaeology. He is best known for his research in Egypt including excavations in the Valley of the Kings where he investigated the long-neglected undecorated tombs in the royal cemetery. His work there resulted in the rediscovery of the lost and controversial tomb KV60, the re-opening of the long-buried KV21 with its two female and likely royal occupants, and tombs KV27, KV28, KV44, KV45 and KV48. In 2017, he rediscovered three small tombs in the Valley of the Kings which when first encountered in 1906 contained the mummies of animals including a dog and monkeys.
The majority of the 65 numbered tombs in the Valley of the Kings can be considered minor tombs, either because at present they have yielded little information or because the results of their investigation was only poorly recorded by their explorers, while some have received very little attention or were only cursorily noted. Most of these tombs are small, often only consisting of a single burial chamber accessed by means of a shaft or a staircase with a corridor or a series of corridors leading to the chamber, but some are larger, multiple chambered tombs. These minor tombs served various purposes, some were intended for burials of lesser royalty or for private burials, some contained animal burials and others apparently never received a primary burial. In many cases these tombs also served secondary functions and later intrusive material has been found related to these secondary activities. While some of these tombs have been open since antiquity, the majority were discovered in the 19th and early 20th centuries during the height of exploration in the valley.
