The Valley of the Kings by Liam Scully (best books to read all time TXT) 📖

were buried in his tomb. However, when Tutankhamun died suddenly, his tomb was not yet ready. So, he was buried in a makeshift tomb or "stole" a tomb from a lowly scribe. This could be told by the paintings in the tomb.


It was November 4, 1920, when Howard Carter, a fallen archaeologist who was on the brink of quiting, while working under the tomb builders' huts, found steps that lead to a sealed door. When inspecting the seal, he found seals of old officials. The seal of King Tutankhamun was in fact, there, however, it was so faded, that they did not find it until later. He covered the hole and sent a telegram to his lord, Lord Carnarvon, and alerted him of the find. Within 20 days, Lord Carnarvon was by his side and the workers uncovered the steps and the sealed unknown. When they went right up to the sealed wall, Caranrvon noticed Tutankhamun's sealed name on the wall. Now, they had found his tomb.
On November 26, 1920, Carnarvon and Carter pried a few stone blocks from the sealed entrance. Carter then stuck his hand into the hole, and holding a candle, saw the lost world of Tutankhamun. For several moments, he looked, then Carnarvon, anxious about what was inside, asked:
"Can you see anything?"
And Carter replied:
"Yes, wonderful things."
As they scrambled into the tomb, the first things that they saw were the glittering eyes of six gigantic heads. These were the ends of three couches, inlaid in gold. Underneath, over, and on top of them was everything else. After clearing the first part of the tomb, Carter and his team saw what seemed like a wall of gold. In fact, it was one side of a huge golden shrine. The shrines double doors were bolted, but the stamped cord which should have sealed them was gone. The thieves had gotten here too. However, Carter's dismay ended when he saw that the second shrine inside was intact. The inner shrine that covered the sarcophagus was made from a single block of quartz, which barely fit the shrine. When the lid was raised, the most amazing sight appeared: three magnificent, golden coffins, one inside the other, protecting the mummy of King Tutankhamun.
In February of 1924, the sarcophagus lid was raised and all present stared at its magnificence. It was mummy shaped with the face of Tutankhamun and his crown. The cobra and the vulture of Lower and Upper Egypt, was garlanded with olive leaves and cornflowers. The mummy itself had a crumpled face and the nose was squashed from the pressure of the linen. Then, on his face, was a deep gash on the left cheek, however, no one will ever know if was caused by the embalmers, or if the boy king was murdered. However, scientists speculated Tut was weakened by a broken leg possibly from a fall. That and a malaria infection led to his death, they believe.
The Curse of the Mummy began when many terrible events occurred after the discovery of King Tut's tomb. Legend has it that anyone who dared to open the tomb would suffer the wrath of the mummy.
The scare began when Lord Carnarvon died shortly after the discovery. The path to his death began in the spring of 1923 when he was bitten on the cheek by a mosquito. During his morning shaving routines, he further infected the mosquito bite. Soon, Lord Carnarvon found himself ill. He suffered a high fever and chills. A doctor was sent to examine him but medical attention arrived too late and Lord Carnarvon died. At that exact moment the lights in Cairo mysteriously went out.
Once Carnarvon died, the media went wild with stories of his death. They claimed King Tut wanted revenge and said that the mummy's curse was targeted on those who had entered the tomb. Not only did the death of Carnarvon get all the people in an uproar but other stories began to surface as well. Of the stories that surfaced, two remain prominent. One of the stories was that Howard Carver's pet canary was eaten by a cobra after the discovery of King Tut's tomb. The other story is that Lord Carnarvon's dog howled and dropped dead at two in the morning when Carnarvon died, all the way in England.
What is interesting is that Howard Carter lived a decade after this major discovery. So what happened to Howard Carter during the scare? Howard Carter spent his last years logging and recording every artifact found in the tomb. Why didn't he suffer the curse of the mummy? He was, after all, the first to enter the tomb.
Did the boy king really unleash a curse? New findings are showing that bacteria on the wall of the tomb might have been the cause of the curse. The bacteria would release spores into the air allowing it to be breathed. This in turn caused people who came into contact with these spores to become ill. However, there could be a different solution, I mean, after all, Carnarvon was not in the best of health.


Seti I
King Seti I was king for 13 years, from 1291 B.C. to 1278 B.C.. However, he is also remembered for his military campaigns and for his magnificent tomb, which was completed before his death. After ascending to the throne, he launched major building projects and started foreign policies abroad. Afterward, he stayed home, building monuments for the gods and his deceased father. Seti I was born to Ramses I and his wife, Sitre in the year 1323 B.C.. Seti married Tuya, who was a daughter of one of his charioteer lieutenants. They had one son, who died. However, they had another son, Ramses II. He also had Tia and another daughter, Henutmire, who will later become a minor queen of Ramses II. Then he launched military campaigns against the Libyans in the west and crushed the Nubians in the south. The Hittites were also dealt with in the east. However, they were not conquered until Ramses II came along, at the battle of Kadesh.


The tomb was discovered by Giovanni Belzoni, a Italian "treasure thief." In the summer of 1817, he and an English archaeologist came upon a sight of a tomb in the valley. When inspecting the find, they came upon a well. They bridged the well and they were able to cross it into a large chamber. In this tomb, unlike many of the other tombs, it was obvious that it was completed before the death of the king. On the walls of the chamber were many "figures", which Belzoni called the hieroglyphics.
However, while inspecting the chamber and the chambers adjacent to it, Belzoni noticed that the left-hand side of a hall was disturbed; the large blocks of stone to make the floor level with the sea level were displaced. And to top it all off, there was a depression in the rubble and rock. Belzoni put his men to work there, and before long, they uncovered another flight of steps leading down to a doorway. When Belzoni clambered through the wreckage, he came upon many more corridors and chambers. At the end was a chamber which was twenty feet high and its walls were covered with fine, smooth, white plaster. In the middle of the room, probably his most famous discovery then, was a fine alabaster coffin. Belzoni found a beautiful and fine example of Egyptian art. It was here that Belzoni coined the term "sarcophagus" which means "flesh-eater". However, when the lid was opened, the body was gone. However, Seti I showed up in the 1881 cache tomb find.
Shortly after finding the tomb, Belzoni had to stop work for several different reasons.By then had run out of money and was having a hard time finding more. The stone where the most penetration had been made was almost spongy and was in danger of collapse. Air in the tomb was already bad; and when you are more than 650 below the entrance of the tomb, it is really bad to breathe. No one did try again until the 1960's when a expedition extended Belzoni's original clearance by one hundred more feet. Legends say that Seti's tomb will go through the valley and stop at the temple of Hatshepsut. (Romer, 2003; Weeks, 2000 )


Ramses II (a.k.a Ramses the Great)
Ramses II was the son of Seti I. He was one of the longest living pharaohs of Ancient Egypt. Ramses reigned 67 years from 1290 BC to 1224 BC. He lived to be more than 80 years old, which was very rare in those days.
As well as being a great warrior and architect, Ramses was also a charmer of women. He had five or six wives, his favorite being Nefertiti. With his wives and concubines, he had more than 100 children. He outlived many of his children, and when he died, his 13th son became the new pharaoh.
During his reign, he fought the Hittites, defeating them at the battle at Kadesh. He made an alliance with them by marrying a Hittite princess. He also built many monuments in his name.


He built his tomb into his dad's tomb (Seti I), however when it was dicovered, his tomb was full of flood debris. Nearly 50 years later, the Cache tomb of Deri-el-Medina in 1881 was found by Harry Burton. Ramses, his brother and father were discovered there with 36 other royal and noble mummies. He is now currently at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Present Day

Current Digs
KV 63
Four years ago, Dr. Otto Schaden, an American archaeologist working in the Valley, found a shaft nearly 45 feet away from Tutankhamun. In the chamber following the shaft were seven coffins, with most of them damaged. Around the coffins were 26 ceramic pots. To get to the coffins, he and his team would need to clear away the pots. Seeing the coffins and all, he thought that they had found another cache tomb of royal mummies. His team set up a field lab in a nearby tomb and began to excavate the pots. At first, the team found old mummification utensils. Then, they found a wooden cobra head and gold leaf among the utensils. Then another discovery. Inside one of the jars, they found a key element to the mystery. Human flesh.
Meanwhile, in the chamber, the team photographer found yet another amazing discovery. Between the two adult coffins in the back, nudged in, was the coffin of a baby. Then, when they excavated the back coffins, the baby coffin was crushed. However, nothing was inside. When they reached the second to last coffin, nicknamed the "Princess" because of its beauty, they