- Time needed
- About 1 hour
- Heat exposure
- High
- Shade
- Low
- Stairs
- Each tomb is entered down a stair; the tombs are short compared with the Valley of the Kings, but the descent is unavoidable
The cemetery contains different tomb plans. Early shaft tombs contrast with the multi-room royal tombs of the Ramesside period. In decorated tombs such as Nefertari’s, plaster provided a surface for painting over the rock. Compare the plan and surviving decoration of the tombs actually open during your visit.
- 1Paint on plaster, not paint on stone
Inside any of the decorated tombs — most obviously in the tomb of Nefertari
- 2A king leading a boy by the hand
The tombs of the sons of Ramesses III, when they are open
- 3The valley is a closed dead end
Look up the wadi from among the tombs, towards its head
1Paint on plaster, not paint on stone
Get close to a wall and look at the surface rather than the picture. You are looking at a skin of gypsum plaster laid over rough, crumbling rock, with the painting on top of it, and in places you can see where the plaster was built out to level a bad patch.
2A king leading a boy by the hand
Scene after scene of the king walking a young man forward and presenting him to a god — the boy shown with the side-lock of youth, the father doing the introducing.
Fact — the scenes and who they show. Interpretation — reading them as an expression of grief rather than as royal protocol.
3The valley is a closed dead end
A narrow valley shut off at the top by a cliff face, with a water-worn chute cut down it and a grotto at the head — dry almost all the time, and briefly a waterfall when it rains.
Fact — the valley’s shape, the chute and the grotto. Interpretation — that their sacred associations determined the choice of burial ground.
A broad, gently rising valley floor of compacted grit and stone, level enough but loose and dusty underfoot Each tomb is entered down a stair; the tombs are short compared with the Valley of the Kings, but the descent is unavoidable
Visit mode keeps the sequence, the details and the facilities. The history, the figures and the related reading are in plan mode.