" We came to a part that is wider ", says Richard
Pococke, the early Eastern traveler, writing in 1743 of his visit to the Valley
of the Tombs of the Kings ( KV ), " being a round opening like an
amphitheatre, and ascended by a narrow step passage about ten feet high, which
seems to have been broken down thro' the rock … By this passage we came to
Biban el-Meluke, or Bab el-Meluke, that is, the gate or court of the kings,
being the sepulchers of the Kings of Thebes " .
This is the first modern mention of the most famous
gathering of royal tombs in the world, though in Greek and Roman days the
valley used to be quite a favourite resort of tourists, some of whom, like
their successors of today, came from quite a distance to see its marvels . Like
some of their successors, also, they have left their scribbled comments on what
they saw, with their undistinguished names, for the benefit of posterity . Two
tourists who thus gained a kind of bastard immortality, Dionysios and
Poseidonax, came from distant Marseilles ; Januarius, a Roman official, came
with his daughter Januaria, and having " seen and marveled ", made
his parting bow to the royal ghosts of the valley with the cheery words :
" Farewell, all of you ! " .
The main approach to the valley is still by the way
which Pococke followed with his " Sheik ", that is to say it proceeds
north-westwards past the temple of Seti I at El-Qurna, and then sweeps round
westwards among the hills and finally dips south-westward to the actual
resting-place of the Pharaohs . Another way leads from El-Deir el-Bahari over
the hill to the valley, and this is often used in the reverse direction by
visitors, who approach the valley by the main route, and leave it by the
bridle-path, which brings them conveniently down to beside El-Deir el-Bahari . Two
other foot-paths from El-Deir el-Bahari to the valley are not to be recommended
; and the length of the hill-track from Deir el-Madina rules it out, so that
there is practically only the one convenient way of approach . The valley
itself is naturally one of the most desolate places imaginable . " Although
only screened from the teeming life of the Nile valley by a wall of cliffs, it
seemed to be infinitely remote and unearthly, a sterile, echoing region of the
underworld or a hollow in the mountains of the moon " .
It was, however, precisely this loneliness and
comparative inaccessibility which recommended the valley to the Pharaohs of the
early 18th Dynasty as the ideal place for the carrying out of the
experiment in a new method of concealment for the royal burials . We have
already seen the reasons which induced them to make the sacrifice of
convenience to necessity, and to separate the royal tomb from the royal
funerary temple because only so could the tomb be hidden and unknown . The
thing was a regrettable necessity ; but, since it was a necessity, no more
suitable spot than this desolate valley could be found for the purpose of
hiding the royal tombs . It was near to Thebes, and yet it was almost as much
out of the way, and as unattractive as heart could desire . Nobody in Thebes would
dream of going to the valley unless he was obliged ; what better hiding-place
could be found for the tomb of a Pharaoh who had seen all the most elaborate
contrivances for safeguarding the tombs of his ancestors fail precisely because
the tomb advertised its splendour, and invited attack .
The earlier Theban Pharaohs of the Middle Kingdom had
been buried in various localities . We have seen that Mentuhotpe II of the 11th
Dynasty had his tomb at El-Deir el-Bahari in close connexion with his mortuary
temple . The 12th Dynasty Pharaohs had their resting-places at
Lisht, at Hawara, at Dahshur, and at El-Lahun, all near the centre of gravity
of the re-united kingdom . In the troubled Second Intermediate Period the
" Princes of the Southern City ", as the Theban kings were known to
their Hyksos overlords, had their tombs once more in the neighbourhood of
Thebes, at " Diraa Abu el Naga " . But with the beginning of the 18th
Dynasty came a desire for change, and Amenhotep I made an attempt to break with
the old tradition by having his tomb at Diraa Abu el-Naga at some distance from
his funerary temple, whose scanty remains lie south of the east end of this
part of the Theban necropolis, though Arthur Weigall believes that both tomb
and temple of Amenhotep I are farther south, the tomb behind Deir el-Medina,
and the temple the oldest part of the smaller temple at Medinet Habu .
It was Tuthmosis I, however, who first took the bold
step of putting his tomb right away up in the deepest recesses of the Valley of
the Kings, in spite of the inconvenience which this arrangement would entail
upon his spirit . Fortunately we have the actual record of the tomb in the
tomb-inscription of Ineni ( Anena ), who was a high official and clerk of works
during the reigns of Amenhotep I, Tuthmosis I, Tuthmosis II, Hatshepsut and
Tuthmosis III . Ineni says : " I attended to the excavation of the
cliff-tomb of His Majesty [ Tuthmosis I ] alone, no one seeing, no one hearing
", and then he goes on to tell us how diligent he was over such work, and
how he tried experiments with different kinds of plaster, so as to secure the
best results in the decoration of the tombs . " It was a job such as the
ancestors had not done ", he remarks, " which I was obliged to do
there " . And he adds : " I shall be praised for my wisdom in after years,
by those who shall imitate that which I have done " . The point which
excites one's curiosity about the old clerk of works bragging is : How did he
secure the silence of his workmen ? Such a job as the excavation of even the
very humble cliff-tomb of Tuthmosis I must have needed the services of at least
some scores of labourers, to say nothing of a few skilled workmen ; how did he shut
the mouths of all these ? One simple solution suggests itself ; but it seems
hard to charge a worthy man like Ineni, who tells us that he never swore in his
life, with the wholesale slaughter that it involves . Besides, if he slew his
labourers, who were probably foreign slaves, what did he do with the skilled
workmen who were almost certainly native Egyptians ? . The tomb of which Ineni
was so proud ( No. 38 ) is a very modest specimen of a royal hypogeum ; and,
indeed, though his forecast was justified, and the kings of after years did
imitate what he had done .
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