Tomb of Amenhotep II

The air changes as you go down. Outside, the Valley of the Kings is all white light and pale limestone, hot enough to make the cliffs shimmer. A few steps into this tomb, the light turns amber. The temperature drops. The sound of voices outside fades behind you. Wooden walkways creak underfoot, and the stairs keep going down, steeply, into the hillside. This is one of the deepest descents in the valley, and that depth is part of the story you are about to walk into.

This is the tomb of Amenhotep the Second, known to archaeologists as KV35. KV stands for Kings' Valley, and the number shows the order in which tombs here were catalogued. Amenhotep was a pharaoh of Egypt's Eighteenth Dynasty, the royal family that ruled during the height of the New Kingdom, in the fifteenth century before Christ. He was the son of Thutmose the Third, one of Egypt's great warrior kings, and he inherited an empire that stretched far beyond the Nile.

Amenhotep wanted the world to see him as a man of extraordinary strength. Royal inscriptions from his reign describe him rowing harder than his crew and shooting arrows clean through thick metal targets from a speeding chariot. Historians treat these claims as royal propaganda rather than sports reports. Every pharaoh was expected to look superhuman. Still, the image matters here. The man buried at the bottom of these stairs presented himself as an athlete, a horseman, and an archer without equal.

As you descend, notice the plan of the tomb. It does not run in a straight line. The corridors drop, then turn sharply, a design typical of royal tombs from this early period. Partway down, you cross a deep shaft cut into the floor. Egyptologists still debate its purpose. It may have caught rare flash floods that pour through the valley. It may also have been a barrier against robbers, or a symbolic entrance to the underworld. Possibly all three.

Now — the burial chamber. After the bare corridors, it opens around you like a painted cave. Six square pillars hold up the roof. The ceiling is deep blue, covered with small yellow stars. This was the night sky, painted over the dead king so that he lay beneath the heavens. Look at how the stars are spaced, row after row. Each one was painted by hand, by craftsmen working in lamplight and smoke, far below the surface.

The walls are the real surprise. They are covered with the Amduat, a sacred text whose name means roughly "what is in the underworld". It describes the sun god's journey through twelve hours of night, from sunset to rebirth at dawn. The king hoped to join that journey. But the style here is not the bold, colourful painting you may have seen in later tombs. The figures are thin, simple, almost like sketches in black and red ink.

There is a reason for that. The walls were painted to look like a giant papyrus scroll, unrolled across the stone. The pale yellow background imitates the colour of old papyrus. The small figures and dense columns of writing copy the look of a funeral book. In effect, you are standing inside an open book. Walk slowly along the walls and you can follow the boats, the gods, the serpents, and the hours of the night, one register after another.

The pillars tell a different story. On their faces, the king stands with the gods, shown in a fuller, more colourful style. Gods such as Osiris, Anubis and Hathor greet him, hold out symbols of life, and welcome him into eternity. These scenes are the king's introduction to the divine world. Compare them with the sketch-like walls behind. Two styles of painting share one room, each with a different job.

At the far end, the floor drops into a sunken area. Here lies the king's stone sarcophagus, carved from hard reddish quartzite. When the French archaeologist Victor Loret entered this tomb in 1898, he found something extremely rare. The mummy of Amenhotep the Second was still lying inside his own sarcophagus. Most royal mummies in this valley had been moved, hidden, or destroyed in ancient times. This king was found where he had been laid to rest.

The second surprise was even bigger. In a side chamber off the burial hall, Loret found more mummies. Many of them turned out to be kings — rulers such as Thutmose the Fourth, Amenhotep the Third, Merneptah, Seti the Second, and several pharaohs named Ramesses. Priests in a much later period had gathered these royal bodies from robbed tombs across the valley. They hid them here, in this one deep tomb, to protect them. It worked for close to three thousand years.

Another small chamber held three unwrapped mummies lying side by side. For a long time they had no names. In recent decades, scientific studies, including DNA analysis, identified one of them as Queen Tiye, the powerful wife of Amenhotep the Third and grandmother of Tutankhamun. Another, known as the Younger Lady, is thought to be closely related to Tutankhamun. The tomb of one king became, in the end, a family archive for an entire dynasty.

The story did not end quietly. After the discovery, most of the mummies were taken to Cairo, but Amenhotep's body stayed here for some years. In the early twentieth century, robbers broke in and damaged the wrappings in search of valuables. The young inspector who investigated the theft was Howard Carter. Two decades later, Carter would become famous for finding Tutankhamun's tomb, only a short walk from where you are standing. Today, Amenhotep's mummy rests in a museum in Cairo.

Before you climb back up, stand still for a moment beneath the painted stars. Listen to the hum of the ventilation and the soft footsteps of other visitors. The thin black figures on the walls have been sailing through the night for about three and a half thousand years. When you step out again, the light will feel almost white. Look up at the cliffs above the entrance... and remember how far below them this painted sky is hidden.