The Valley of the Kings
Pharaohs abandon pyramids for hidden rock-cut tombs — and are robbed anyway.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 464 years
- Known to
- ± 30 years
- Era
- Bronze Age, Holocene
From around 1539 BCE New Kingdom rulers are buried in tombs cut deep into a remote valley on the west bank at Thebes, guarded by a dedicated village of workmen at Deir el-Medina. The change is a response to two thousand years of pyramid robbery. It did not work: nearly every tomb was emptied in antiquity, most of them within a few generations, and priests later gathered the surviving royal mummies into two caches to hide them.