WV22, Tomb of Amenhotep III

The road into the Western Valley is quiet. The tour buses turn the other way, toward the main Valley of the Kings, and here the only sounds are your own footsteps on loose limestone chips and perhaps a hawk somewhere overhead. The cliffs rise pale and close on both sides. The air holds the dry, mineral smell of rock that has been baking in the sun for thousands of years. You have come to one of the quietest corners of the Theban necropolis, the great burial ground on the west bank of Luxor.

Ahead of you, cut into the base of the cliff, is the tomb known as WV22. The letters stand for West Valley, and the number comes from a catalogue that archaeologists use for the royal tombs here. This is the burial place of Amenhotep the Third, a pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty. He ruled Egypt in the fourteenth century before Christ, during one of the wealthiest and most peaceful periods the country ever knew.

It helps to picture the Egypt of his reign. Gold arrived from Nubia, to the south. Diplomatic letters travelled between Egypt and the great kingdoms of the Near East. Amenhotep built on an enormous scale. Much of Luxor Temple, on the east bank, carries his name. If you crossed the river this morning, you may already have passed his most famous monuments without knowing it. The two seated giants beside the road, the Colossi of Memnon, once guarded the entrance to his mortuary temple.

So why is this king buried out here, away from the other pharaohs? Nobody can say for certain. The Western Valley is a side branch of the main royal valley, wider and emptier. One idea is that the king wanted a setting that matched the scale of his ambitions. Another is simply that suitable rock was available. What we do know is that very few royal tombs were cut here, and that this one belongs to one of the most powerful rulers in Egyptian history.

Here is the first surprise. This tomb was not found by an Egyptologist at all. In 1799, during Napoleon's military expedition to Egypt, two young French engineers wandered into this valley. They were mapping and recording the ancient sites for a vast scholarly project. They came upon the open tomb and noted it. That is why, in some older books, you will see this valley called the Valley of the Monkeys, or linked with the name of that French expedition.

When those engineers arrived, the tomb was already empty. It had been robbed in antiquity, like nearly every royal tomb in Egypt. But the king's body did survive. Priests of a later age gathered many royal mummies together to protect them from thieves. In 1898, the French archaeologist Victor Loret found a hidden cache of these mummies in another tomb in the main valley. Among them was Amenhotep the Third. So the king lies far from the chamber that was carved for him.

Now look at the shape of the tomb itself. Like other royal tombs of this dynasty, it runs deep into the rock through a sequence of corridors and stairways. Partway in, there is a deep shaft. Archaeologists still debate its purpose. Some see it as a trap for robbers or a barrier against flash floods. Others think it carried a religious meaning, a symbolic entrance to the underworld. Possibly it was both.

The walls once carried painted scenes on a creamy plaster background. In the room above the shaft, and in the burial chamber, the king appears before the gods. He stands with deities such as Hathor, the goddess of love and music, and Osiris, ruler of the dead. The burial chamber also carried texts from the Amduat. This is a funerary book that describes the sun's journey through the twelve hours of the night, and the king's hope to travel with it and be reborn at dawn.

Here is the second surprise, and it is a sad one. Some of these paintings are not here anymore. In the nineteenth century, collectors and visitors cut pieces of decorated plaster from the walls and carried them away. A number of these fragments ended up in European museums. Elsewhere in the tomb, damp, floods and time did the rest. What you see today is the result of careful conservation work on what survived.

That conservation has a long story of its own. Beginning in the late twentieth century, a Japanese team from Waseda University in Tokyo worked here for many seasons. They cleared debris, stabilised the walls, and recorded every surviving trace of colour. Earlier, in the early twentieth century, Howard Carter, the man who later found Tutankhamun, also excavated near this tomb. This quiet valley has drawn some of the most patient work in Egyptian archaeology.

There is one more detail worth knowing. The tomb includes side rooms off the burial chamber. Many scholars believe these were meant for royal women, perhaps the great queen Tiye, the king's wife, and possibly a daughter. Tiye was a remarkable figure in her own right. She appears in diplomatic letters, and foreign rulers wrote to her directly. Whether she was ever buried here is still an open question.

As you move through the corridors, notice the changes in the rock and the light. Near the entrance, the daylight is sharp and white. Deeper in, the air grows still and warmer, and the sound of the valley fades away. Look for places where the plaster has fallen and the raw limestone shows through, with chisel marks still visible. These marks are the work of the quarrymen who cut this tomb more than three thousand years ago.

When you step back outside, take a moment before you leave. Turn and look at the cliffs that surround the entrance. They have not changed much since the workers walked away from this place. The silence here is part of the experience. Listen to the gravel under your feet as you walk back toward the road. Somewhere across the river, the temples of this same king are filling with visitors. Here, for a little while longer, you have him almost to yourself.