Preface

The tombs of the kings of Egypt include some of the most iconic sepulchres of all time, and very many books – of distinctly variable quality – have been published on various groupings or aspects of them. Indeed, the present writer has issued a volume on the pyramids and another on the tombs that followed them. However, none ever seems to have attempted to provide coverage of all such monuments, from the earliest times down to the end of paganism, including both native rulers, buried in Egypt, and those of foreign monarchs, buried abroad. The present volume is an attempt to fill this gap, and as such includes descriptions, images, discussions and references for not only such tombs as the pyramids and those in the Valley of the Kings, but also the funerary monuments of the kings of Persia (who formed the Twenty-seventh and Thirty-first Egyptian Dynasties) and the mausolea of the Roman emperors, who continued to claim pharaonic dignity down to the end of the third century AD. It also provides data on the tombs of the families of the kings as Egypt, an aspect of the Egyptian funerary world that is rarely covered, with the exception of a few ‘star’ tombs, for example that of Nefertiry, wife of Rameses II.

Aside from providing the full story of the Egyptian royal tomb, the opportunity has been taken to include the results of the very latest fieldwork in Egypt, which has revealed a whole hitherto-unsuspected royal cemetery at Abydos, a tomb full of members of the royal family in the Valley of the Kings, and the tombs of more family members in a remote valley at Western Thebes. As very much work-in-progress, it is possible that some of the initial conclusions reported here (some from the excavators’ oral presentations at conferences, in particular the 2015 annual meeting of the American Research Centre in Egypt in Houston and the ‘Abusir and Saqqara in the Year 2015’ conference in Prague) may change from the position when the manuscript for the present book was submitted in the autumn of 2015.

In writing a book such as this, one inevitably falls into the debt of many people; in particular, I would like to thank Felix Arnold, Andrew Chugg, Caterin Johansson, Piers Litherland, Dawn McCormack, Alireza Moftakhori, Leire Olabarria, Hourig Sourouzian, Joe Wegner, Kent Weeks and Magdy Abu-Hamid Ali for all their help, as well as others who have allowed me to visit their work, discussed finds, provided images or assisted in a wide range of ways. In doing so, I must pay tribute to Edwin Brock and Otto Schaden, two of my oldest friends in Egyptology, who died shortly after the manuscript was completed and to whom this book is dedicated. Much of their careers were devoted to the Valley of the Kings, Ted in particular for his work on the study and reconstruction of the royal sarcophagi, Otto to the clearance and study of the tombs of Ay and Amenmeses, also finding the first ‘new’ tomb there since Tutankhamun’s – KV63, perhaps the embalming cache of that tomb. Also taken from us during the same fatal autumn was Nabil Swelim, another old friend, in this case in the study of pyramids, among whose distinctions was the rediscovery of the Brick Pyramid at Abu Rowash, ‘hidden in plain sight’ for many decades.

I would also like to thank my principal partners in tomb and temple visiting over the years, my wife Dyan Hilton and my dear friend Salima Ikram, for their company and insights. I am also indebted to Martin Davies and Reg Clark for proofreading the manuscript (and providing photographs!), but all surviving errors of typography, fact and/or judgement remain, of course, my own responsibility.

Department of Archaeology & Anthropology
March 2016
University of Bristol