 Despite the centuries of digging, from an archaeological point of view the Valley of the Kings remains remarkably little known. Its tombs may be planned and documented to varying degrees of completeness, but it is a fact that scant context exists for understanding the processes of their siting, planning, quarrying, stocking, concealment, robbery and subsequent dismantling. Landscape and stratigraphical studies of the burial ground are likewise in their infancy.
It was to investigate these poorly understood and now threatened aspects of the Valley of the Kings that the Amarna Royal Tombs Project (ARTP) was set up by Nicholas Reeves in 1998. An expedition of Durham University Oriental Museum, for administrative purposes the project was in 2000 affiliated to the newly established, not-for-profit Valley of the Kings Foundation through which it would be run until 2002.
ARTP was able to complete four extremely productive seasons of work - winter 1998, winter 1999, winter 2000 and spring 2002. These four short periods of controlled stratigraphic excavation in the Valley of the Kings would transform our understanding of the site`s sub-surface topography, with a ground-penetrating radar (GPR) survey undertaken in 2000 in addition pointing decisively towards the existence of several important new features. The first of these features was excavated by ARTP in 2002: a natural rock barrier with protective shrine situated between the tombs of Horemheb (KV57) and Ramesses III (KV11) - conceivably one of the previously mysterious `five walls of the Valley` serving to demarcate areas within the site for purposes of security during ancient times.
Another sub-surface feature observed by ARTP in 2000 within its concession was physically stumbled upon in the spring of 2005, during ARTP`s absence, by Otto Schaden of the University of Memphis; it was investigated by the Memphis team the following year. This find proved on excavation to be a burial shaft now assigned the identification reference KV63 - the first tomb-chamber to be uncovered in the Valley of the Kings since the discovery of Tutankhamun in 1922.
The Memphis team found KV63 to be intact, and to contain a quantity of surplus coffins and other funerary clutter though, curiously, no human remains.
The location of a second promising anomaly, "KV64", was also established by Reeves` team in 2000, and would be publicly announced on the Valley of the Kings Foundation website on 28 and 31 July 2006. This features is now scheduled for investigation by Dr Zahi Hawass.
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In a site which has for many years been written-off as archaeologically exhausted, for the Amarna Royal Tombs Project to have discovered in the Valley of the Kings in the space of a single season two features of such significance was no mean achievement. In fact, KV63 and "KV64" were but the tip of a veritable iceberg of archaeological potential - two of several possible new tombs located during ARTP`s 2000 GPR survey. Full details of these additional radar anomalies will be published on this website in due course.
Given the extraordinary achievements of the Amarna Royal Tombs Project, why is it no longer digging?
Sadly, archaeological politics. In 2002 a damaging rumour was circulated by third parties to suggest that Reeves had knowingly advised dealers who were involved in antiquities trafficking. Although the allegation was untrue, ARTP`s excavations were suspended by Zahi Hawass. Three years later, following meticulous investigation and a meeting of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Cairo on 7 August 2005, Reeves` name was officially cleared of any wrongdoing. While there is now no objection to him applying to conduct archaeological work elsewhere in Egypt, permission for ARTP to resume its work in the Valley of the Kings is denied - this denial preventing crucial further investigation of Valley stratigraphy and the project`s unique GPR data, and essential study-access to finds from the 1998-2002 seasons.
Inevitably, under such circumstances, the reports to be posted here on ARTP`s four seasons of work will fall rather short of the data`s actual potential. It is hoped, however, that those deficiencies which exist may be made good at some future date as circumstances change.
For brief, popular summaries of aspects of the Amarna Royal Tombs Project`s work 1998-2002 see the Valley of the Kings Foundation Newsletter 1, Bulletin 1 and Bulletin 2.
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