Valley of the Queens

Listen to the ground under your shoes. It crunches. This is loose limestone chip, pale and dry, and it covers the whole valley floor. The cliffs around you hold the heat, so the air feels still and close. On a quiet morning you may hear only footsteps, a guard calling to a colleague, and the wind moving across the rock. You are standing on the west bank of Luxor, in a narrow desert valley where ancient Egypt buried its royal women and children.

The ancient Egyptians called this place Ta-Set-Neferu. Scholars usually translate it as the Place of Beauty. Some read it differently, as the Place of the Royal Children. Both meanings fit. In the earliest phase of its use, during the dynasty that ruled in the middle of the second millennium before Christ, the valley held burials of princes, princesses, and high court officials. Many of those early tombs are simple shafts, with little or no decoration.

The valley changed in the age of the Ramesside kings, in the thirteenth and twelfth centuries before Christ. At that time it became the main burial ground for the Great Royal Wives, the senior queens. The kings themselves were buried a short distance away, in the Valley of the Kings, over the mountain to the north. So there is a kind of family geography here. Husbands in one valley, wives and many children in another, with a mountain between them.

Archaeologists have recorded more than ninety tombs in this valley. Most are closed to visitors, and many are badly damaged. Some were reused in later centuries for ordinary burials. Others were stripped by robbers long ago. Only a small number open to the public at any one time, and the selection rotates for conservation. That is worth knowing before you set out. The tomb you read about at home may be closed today, and another may be open in its place.

Now, look back down the road toward the village of Deir el-Medina. The people who cut and painted these tombs lived there. They were a skilled community of stonecutters, plasterers, scribes, and painters. They worked for the crown, and they passed their skills from father to son. Their village is one of the best documented communities in the ancient world. Thousands of written fragments survive from it, including work records, letters, and complaints. So the hands that decorated these walls belong to people we know unusually well.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. The rock of this valley is poor for carving. It is a crumbly limestone, full of cracks and flint. The workers could not cut fine reliefs straight into the stone, as they often did elsewhere. Instead, they covered the walls with layers of plaster. Then they carved shallow relief into the plaster and painted over it. This technique produced beautiful results. But it also made the decoration fragile, because the plaster can lift away from the rock beneath.

The most famous tomb here belongs to Nefertari, the Great Royal Wife of Ramesses the Second. She is the same queen honoured at the smaller temple at Abu Simbel, far to the south. Her tomb was found in 1904 by an Italian expedition led by Ernesto Schiaparelli. The burial had been robbed in antiquity. Only fragments of her funerary equipment remained. But the painted walls had survived, and they are among the finest paintings left from ancient Egypt.

Those paintings came close to being lost. Salt in the rock had pushed through the plaster, and flakes of paint were falling away. In the late twentieth century, the Getty Conservation Institute worked with the Egyptian antiquities authorities on a long conservation project. Specialists cleaned and secured the painted plaster, inch by inch. They chose not to repaint missing areas. So what you see is ancient colour, held in place. Entry to this tomb needs a separate ticket, and time inside is strictly limited to protect the walls.

If you go inside, notice the ceiling first. It is painted deep blue and covered with small yellow stars. This was the night sky, a common motif in Egyptian tombs. On the walls, Nefertari appears again and again, slender and elegant, in a fine white linen dress. In one scene she sits alone and plays senet, a board game. For the Egyptians, the game carried a deeper meaning. It linked to the journey of the soul through the dangers of the underworld.

Other tombs here tell sadder, more personal stories. Several belong to young sons of Ramesses the Third, who ruled in the twelfth century before Christ. Two well-known examples belong to the princes Amenherkhepeshef and Khaemwaset. In their wall paintings, the boy prince follows his father. The king leads him before the gods and introduces him, one by one. Look for the side-lock of hair on the prince's head. In Egyptian art, this single curl marks a child.

The colours in these princes' tombs are often very bright. You will see strong blues, warm yellows, and a deep reddish brown for the skin of the men. The women are usually painted with lighter skin. This was an artistic convention, not a portrait. The painters followed strict rules for proportion and pose. Even so, if you look closely at faces and hands, you can sometimes sense the confidence of one particular artist, working by lamplight underground.

Before you leave, walk toward the far end of the valley and look up at the cliffs. At the head of the valley there is a deep cleft in the rock. On the rare occasions when heavy rain falls, water runs down through it like a short-lived waterfall. Many scholars think the ancient Egyptians saw this place as sacred, perhaps connected to ideas of birth and renewal. That may help explain why they chose this valley for royal women and children.

Now stand still for a moment, out in the open light. The tombs are below your feet and inside the hills, quiet and dark. Above, the sky is wide and pale. The same sun crossed this valley when the workmen of Deir el-Medina walked here with their tools. As you walk back toward the road, listen again to the limestone chips under your shoes. Some of those chips were cut from these tombs, more than three thousand years ago.