Thutmose I

Thutmose I expanded Egyptian power and contributed major buildings at Karnak. His family background and the precise circumstances of his accession are not securely established.

He is closely associated with the early development of royal burial in the Valley of the Kings. The sequence of his burials and reburials is debated, so identifying one tomb as his original burial requires care.

He campaigned into Nubia in his second year and again later, and northward through Syria to the Euphrates, where the army crossed and set up a boundary stela — the point Thutmose III would go back to look for two generations later. At home he began the transformation of Karnak from a modest Middle Kingdom temple into a monumental one: the Fourth and Fifth Pylons (a monumental gateway formed by two massive towers), a pillared hall between them, a court lined with standing statues of the king in mummy form, and a pair of red granite obelisks in front.

The work was directed by an official called Ineni, whose own tomb inscription describes supervising the cutting of a royal tomb “alone, no one seeing and no one hearing”. That sentence is the single most quoted piece of evidence for the move to a hidden valley, and it does not name the valley.

At Karnak: the Fourth and Fifth Pylons, the court between them with its Osiride statues, and two red granite obelisks in front of the Fourth Pylon, one of which is still standing. In the Valley of the Kings, two tombs are connected with him — KV20 and KV38 — and which of them was cut for him is argued about.

At Karnak, look for the obelisk and structures associated with his reign. For the Valley of the Kings, use the tomb histories to distinguish original construction from later burial and reuse.