Dig days: Treasure without an end IV (Valley of the Kings) By Zahi Hawass Although I have spent most of my life working around the Pyramids, at the beginning of my career as an archaeologist in 1973 (right after the war) I worked in the Valley of the Kings. At that time, for security reasons, foreign expeditions were only allowed to work in Luxor, Aswan or Saqqara. I was sent with about 15 other Egyptian archaeologists to accompany foreign expeditions working on the West and East banks in Luxor. I left my post at Abu Simbel and joined the Yale-Pennsylvania mission working at Malqatta on the West Bank of Thebes. While I was there I met two great Egyptologists who have contributed to the field with their excellent work, David O'Conner and Barry Kemp. In the afternoons we used to gather at the Marsham Hotel. Sheikh Ali Abdel-Rassoul was the owner of the hotel, and more importantly he was the last member of his family to know the secrets of the valley. It was this family that found the cache of royal mummies in 1871, and they even helped Victor Loret find the other cache in the Valley of the Kings known as KV 35. Also, everyone believes that the water bearer who found the entrance of the tomb of golden- boy Tutankhamun was a member of the Abdel-Rassoul family. At that time, two things bothered me. The first thing that plagued my mind was something I had seen on a television film which featured the young -- at that time -- American Egyptologist Kent Weeks. In one scene the foreign film director showed Weeks entering the tomb of Nefertari. The tomb had been opened by the chief inspector of the West Bank, who held a lamp in his hand to make the scene more dramatic. Weeks was explaining the tomb to the chief inspector, who was holding the lamp and listening with his mouth open. He did not say a word! The second thing that bothered me was that I noticed there were more than 20 foreign expeditions working in Thebes, excavating, documenting and publishing, but that not a single Egyptian expedition was working independently. The young Egyptian archaeologists were working with the foreign missions. This made me mad! I wondered why we could not do our own work. Later, I found out that we needed an excellent education. Education in all aspects of Egyptology is extremely important. For example, it is essential to know the best excavation techniques so as to carry out the best excavations and produce good publications. This is what encouraged me to leave Egypt and study for seven years on a Fulbright fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. The result of education is clear, because for the first time the leaders of Egypt's antiquities are Egyptian. Egyptians are now on an equal playing field with our foreign colleagues and we all work together for the benefit of the monuments. Two important things happened to me in the Valley of the Kings. The first was that Sheikh Ali showed me, in the tomb of Seti I, a shaft 100m deep. He said that he and his family believed that at the end of this shaft was the burial chamber of Seti I. He said that previously he had permission to excavate it, but this was rescinded. He added that perhaps one day I could help him. Later I discovered that Giovanni Belzoni had found this tomb on 17 October 1817 and had discovered an alabaster sarcophagus, a mummy of an ox, shabti (servant) figurines and wooden statues. The treasure of the tomb, however, has never been found and there is a possibility that the secret chamber is still hidden at the end of the shaft. To be continued...
