KV64

Stand still for a moment and listen. In the Valley of the Kings, the loudest sound is often your own feet on the gravel. Loose limestone chips shift under every step with a dry, brittle crunch. The cliffs rise on all sides, pale and cracked, and the light bounces off them so strongly that even the shadows feel warm. Somewhere beneath this ground lies a small tomb with a plain name — KV64.

That name is simply an address. KV stands for Kings' Valley, and the number shows the order in which tombs here were catalogued. Sixty-two is the tomb of Tutankhamun, found in 1922. Sixty-three was found in the 2000s. Sixty-four came after that. For most of the twentieth century, many scholars believed the valley had given up all its secrets. These two late numbers proved that idea wrong.

Here is the first surprise. This tomb was not found by a lucky shovel. It was first detected as an anomaly in radar data. A team led by the British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves scanned the ground in the early 2000s, looking for hollow spaces under the rubble. The radar showed something that did not look like natural rock. For years, KV64 existed only as a shape on a screen and a lively debate among specialists.

The question stayed open until a team from the University of Basel, in Switzerland, excavated the spot. Their work was led by the Egyptologist Susanne Bickel, as part of a long-running project in the side valleys here. In 2012, the team announced what they had found. A vertical shaft cut down into the bedrock, and at its base, a small burial chamber. It was real. And it was not empty.

Inside lay a wooden coffin, painted and still in good condition, with a wooden stela standing nearby. A stela is an upright tablet, a little like a gravestone, painted with images and text. The inscriptions named the woman inside. Her name was Nehemes-Bastet. She served as a singer in the temple of Amun, the great god of Thebes, which was the ancient name for this part of Luxor. Experts date her burial to the Third Intermediate Period, a time of divided rule, roughly the early first millennium before Christ.

Now the second surprise. Nehemes-Bastet was not the original owner of this tomb. The shaft and chamber were cut much earlier, during the Eighteenth Dynasty — the age of the great New Kingdom pharaohs. Several centuries later, the tomb was reopened and reused for her. So KV64 holds two stories in one space. There is the person who first commissioned it, and the singer who came to rest here long afterwards.

That reuse tells you something about this valley. We often picture it as a sealed royal cemetery, closed forever after each funeral. The reality was more practical. Over time, royal power moved away from Thebes, and the valley's guardians changed. Old tombs were robbed, cleared, recorded, and sometimes given to new occupants. Priests and temple staff, like Nehemes-Bastet, were sometimes buried in spaces that once belonged to the elite of an earlier age.

Her title matters too. A singer of Amun was not an entertainer in the modern sense. She had a role in temple ritual, performing hymns and music as part of daily worship. Women from respected priestly families often held this kind of position. Across the river, at the great temple complex of Karnak, voices like hers once filled the courtyards. It is worth imagining that sound as you look across the valley floor towards the east.

What about the original owner from the Eighteenth Dynasty? That part of the story is far less clear. Excavators found traces of the earlier burial, but the identity of that first occupant has not been firmly established in public reports I can confirm. So treat any confident claim you hear on site with caution. Some guides may connect this tomb to famous royal names. That remains speculation, not established fact.

An honest note for your visit. KV64 is not one of the tombs open to the public. There is no painted corridor to walk down and no doorway with a ticket inspector. Like many small shaft tombs here, it was recorded, studied, and then closed again for protection. What you can see is the landscape around it — the same rock, the same light, and the same tight network of paths that ancient workers knew.

So use your eyes on the ground itself. Notice how the valley floor is made of rubble, not smooth bedrock. Much of it is debris from ancient tomb cutting, flash floods, and later excavations. This is exactly why a tomb like KV64 could hide so long. A shaft entrance only a few metres wide can disappear under a layer of chips and silt. Look around, and ask yourself how many more spaces might still be waiting below.

Lift your gaze to the skyline. Above the valley rises a natural peak shaped a little like a pyramid. Today it is called al-Qurn, which means the horn. Many scholars think its shape helped make this valley feel sacred, a natural pyramid over royal graves. The cliffs also kept tomb entrances in deep shade for much of the day. Feel the change in temperature as you step from sunlight into shadow — the ancient workers felt it too.

As you walk on towards the open tombs, carry this small story with you. A shape on a radar screen. A shaft in the rock. A painted coffin, and the name of a woman who sang for her god. KV64 is a reminder that this place is still being studied, still changing what we know. Listen again to the gravel under your feet. Somewhere beneath it, there may be another number waiting to be written.