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limestone. Tombs remain packed with debris and surfaces – decorated walls, ceilings and pillars – are left wet, stained and abraded. Shale expansion and salt migration then cause further damage as the walls dry out. The statistics are sobering: all but ten of the Valley tombs have been invaded by floods; in the last 150 years, a third of all the known tombs have been re-buried under rubble and sand; two-thirds of the tombs still include flood debris. 8
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    2. Cross section of the Valley of the Kings, showing the late 18th Dynasty flood layer covering both KV 62 and KV 55.

    The ancient Egyptians, all too aware of the dangers of flash flooding in the Valley, attempted to protect their dead kings by digging a large drainage channel and by erecting diversionary walls near individual tombs. But all the lower-lying tombs have suffered the effects of repeated floods. Tutankhamen’s tomb, cut directly into the Valley bedrock, would always be vulnerable. This vulnerability continues today as tourist paths and modern excavations have altered the Valley landscape and raised the floodwater paths. Tutankhamen’s tomb occasionally admits floodwater either via its entrance or, causing more damage, through its roof.

    Recent work has confirmed that the Valley experienced a devastating flood at the end of the 18th Dynasty. This flood deposited a thick sediment that concealed and protected the entrance to Tutankhamen’s tomb. 9 The vanished tomb was quickly forgotten. The 20th Dynasty builders who worked on the tomb of Ramesses VI almost two centuries after Tutankhamen’s death were certainly unaware of its existence, as they allowed debris from their excavations to accumulate over the entrance to his tomb, then built a series of workmen’s huts on top of the mound.

    Necropolis security worked well enough while the pharaohs retained their authority. The evidence from Tutankhamen’s tomb suggests that there must have been many robberies and attempted robberies – that was inevitable – but that these were relatively minor affairs, easily detected and superficially put right. We must wonder how many of these breaches in necropolis security were reported to the authorities. The 19th Dynasty kings certainly thought that all was well; they abandoned all thought of hiding their tombs, and allowed their hitherto discreet doorways to become obvious, decorative features. But then, towards the end of the 19th Dynasty, the unthinkable slowly but surely started to happen. Unpredictable Nile levels led to high inflation and food shortages, and Thebes suffered occasional raids by Libyan nomads. As the increasingly corrupt civil service failed to pay the Deir el-Medina workmen there were strikes and, inevitably, a sharp increase in crime. By the late 20th Dynasty the situation had deteriorated badly, and the royal tombs were facing a serious and sustained threat from well-organised and well-informed gangs who all too often had the tacit backing of the officials responsible for guarding the tombs. Corruption now extended to the highest levels.
    The reign of Ramesses XI saw Thebes in a state of civil war. The Valley had become irredeemably insecure and, on the desert edge, the
memorial temples had been vandalised and stripped of their valuables. Abandoning his incomplete tomb (KV 4), Ramesses fled north. Here, denied access to his ancestral burial ground, we may reasonably assume he ordered the construction of a new, secure tomb. This tomb has yet to be discovered but, given Ramesses’ obvious devotion to the god Ptah, patron deity of Memphis, it seems likely that he was buried somewhere near to Ptah’s Memphite temple. Succeeding kings would follow this precedent and build tombs within the precincts of their northern temples; here the priests could guard their graves night and day.
    Smendes, founder of the 21st Dynasty, ruled northern Egypt from the Delta city of Tanis, while the Theban general and High