KV21, Valley of the Kings

Listen for a moment. Underfoot, loose limestone chips crunch and shift with every step. The cliffs throw back the heat, and the light is so bright that the shadows look almost blue. Somewhere close by, a guard calls out to a colleague, and the sound carries a long way in the still air. You are standing in the Valley of the Kings, on the west bank of the Nile across from Luxor. Among the famous royal tombs here is a much quieter one, known simply as KV21.

That name is a label, not a title. KV stands for Kings' Valley, and the number shows the order in which tombs were catalogued. Tomb number twenty-one has no painted walls and no golden treasure. No king's name has been found inside. And yet this small, plain tomb holds one of the most interesting puzzles in the valley — the question of who was buried here, and why it matters.

The story of its modern discovery begins in 1817. The Italian explorer Giovanni Belzoni was working in the valley. He was a former circus strongman turned excavator, and he had a remarkable eye for finding tombs. Belzoni entered KV21 and found the remains of two women. He also described large jars and other items scattered inside. He did not find inscriptions to tell him who these women were. So the tomb entered the record as a minor find, and for a long time it was largely ignored.

The tomb itself follows a simple plan, typical of the period. A steep entrance leads down into the rock. A corridor descends to a burial chamber, with a smaller side room beyond. The walls were cut from the pale local limestone and never decorated. Look at the bare rock faces in tombs like this, and you can still see the marks of copper tools. Each mark records a single blow by a worker more than three thousand years ago.

Why is the tomb so plain? One answer is that not every burial here belonged to a reigning pharaoh. The valley also held tombs for queens, princesses, nobles and favoured officials. Many of these tombs were never decorated, either by design or because work stopped early. Plain does not mean unimportant. In ancient Egypt, the location of a tomb said a lot. A place in this valley, close to the kings, was itself a mark of high status.

After Belzoni, the tomb had a hard time. Visitors and treasure hunters came and went over the following decades. Flash floods are rare here, but when they come they are powerful. Over the years, rainwater carried mud and rock debris down into the tomb. The two women Belzoni saw were damaged, and their remains were broken apart. By the twentieth century, KV21 was partly filled with debris and almost forgotten.

Then, in 1989, an American archaeologist named Donald Ryan began work here. His project focused on small, undecorated tombs that earlier excavators had neglected. Ryan and his team cleared the debris from KV21 by hand. Among the rubble, they found pottery fragments and the remains of the two female mummies, now badly damaged. This was patient, unglamorous work. But it gave the tomb a second life in the scientific record.

Here is a detail many visitors never hear. The two women had been buried with one arm bent across the chest and the hand closed. Many Egyptologists link this pose with royal women of the Eighteenth Dynasty — the era of rulers such as Akhenaten and Tutankhamun. So the women of KV21 may have been queens or princesses. Their names were lost, but the position of their arms still carried a clue about their rank.

The second surprise came much later. In 2010, a team of Egyptian and international scientists published a genetic study of royal mummies from this period. They included the women from KV21. The results suggested that one of them may be the mother of two stillborn babies found in the tomb of Tutankhamun. If that is correct, she could be Ankhesenamun, the young king's wife. Many researchers treat this identification with caution, and the debate continues.

Think about what that possibility means. Tutankhamun's tomb lies only a short walk from here. It became the most famous archaeological discovery of the twentieth century, full of gold and treasure. Meanwhile, the woman who may have been his queen lay nearby in a plain, flooded tomb. For almost two hundred years after Belzoni, no one connected the two. The valley keeps its secrets well, and sometimes it keeps them close together.

KV21 is not usually among the tombs open to visitors. The decorated royal tombs attract most of the crowds, and the small tombs are often closed for protection. But you can still learn a lot from standing nearby. Look at the shape of the valley floor and the channels left by old floodwater. Notice how the tomb entrances sit low in the rock. You can understand why rain was such a danger to these burials.

Look up, too. Above the valley rises a peak that many people call al-Qurn, which means the Horn in Arabic. Its shape looks somewhat like a natural pyramid. Many scholars believe this was one reason the pharaohs chose this valley. The kings of this era stopped building pyramids, perhaps partly because pyramids attracted robbers. Here, a pyramid made by nature watched over tombs that were cut deep and hidden in the rock.

As you walk on, the sounds of the valley come back — footsteps on gravel, voices in many languages, the low hum of the electric carts. Most people here are on their way to painted corridors and famous names. Take a moment to remember the quieter tombs as well. KV21 shows that history is not only written in gold. Sometimes it survives in broken pottery, in a bent arm, and in a few strands of ancient DNA.

Before you go, look once more at the pale cliffs around you. They hold dozens of openings, some famous and some barely noticed. Each one began with workers cutting into this same limestone, in this same heat and light. Somewhere among them, two women of the royal family were laid to rest with care. Their names may never be known for certain. But you have stood where they were buried, and now you know their story.