Dynastic History | Valley of the Kings — The Year the State Audited Its Own Tombs

Royal tombs were cut into this valley for roughly five hundred years, from the sixteenth to the eleventh century BCE; sixty-five tombs and chambers are catalogued in it. It was worked, guarded and administered by the same establishment that lived at Deir el-Medina, in the next valley south. By the late Twentieth Dynasty both the guarding and the administration were failing.

In year 16 of Ramesses IX, conventionally around 1110 BCE, a commission went out to inspect the tombs of western Thebes. The document that records it is the papyrus bought by Henry Abbott and now in the British Museum as EA 10221. Over four days in the third month of Inundation the inspectors examined ten royal tombs, four tombs of chantresses of the estate of the Divine Adoratrice, and a number of private tombs. They reported one royal tomb violated, that of Sobekemsaf II; two of the four chantresses' tombs; and the private tombs, as a category, robbed.

The report is not a neutral instrument. It was drawn up from the side of Pawero, mayor of the west bank, whose administration was responsible for the necropolis, and it was produced against accusations laid by Paser, mayor of the east bank. An audit conducted by the department under suspicion is a particular kind of document, and this one reads like one. Trials of robbers are recorded in years nine and sixteen of the same reign.

Within a few generations the priesthood of Amun had opened most of the royal tombs and moved the burials into a small number of hiding places, where they stayed until the nineteenth century. The valley is a ticketed site today with a visitor centre at the mouth; a rotating handful of tombs is open at any one time.

📸 Cover: The Valley of the Kings from the Theban hills, with the modern path and rest house on the valley floor, Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons