Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
of interest. All of the royal gravesites discovered previously had been robbed of their treas-
ures within a few hundred years of the burial, but Tutankhamun's tomb was virtually intact.
It took eight years for a team led by the archaeologist Howard Carter to excavate the burial
place thoroughly and remove all of its precious objects. The deaths of several people connec-
ted with the excavation (including the Earl of Carnarvon, who had commissioned it) promp-
ted rumours that the tomb had been cursed to deter grave robbers. Such speculation seems
to have fuelled, rather than detracted from, 'Tutmania' - a craze for incorporating Egyptian
elements into architecture, decorative art and fashion that strongly influenced the evolution
of Art Deco style.
Tutankhamun reigned between about 1332 and 1323 BC, during the New Kingdom period
which marked the zenith of Egyptian wealth and power. The favoured method of royal burial
at this time was to construct hidden tombs by cutting deep into the rocks. The royal necro-
polis was laid out on the western side of the River Nile, opposite the city of Waset, or Thebes
(on the site of modern Luxor), which was the pharaohs' capital for most of this era. This map
shows the Valley of the Kings, which includes the burial places of Tutankhamun (number
62), Ramesses the Great (7), and the female pharaoh Hatshepsut (20). The brown contour
lines, set two metres apart, reveal the steepness of the landscape.
The map is one of a set of twenty sheets published by the country's official mapmaking or-
ganisation, the Survey of Egypt, in co-operation with the Antiquities Department. It was pro-
duced in 1926, while the excavation of Tutankhamun's tomb was still underway. Although
a formal British protectorate over Egypt had nominally ended four years earlier, the United
Kingdom still exerted a strong influence over the Egyptian government, and the Survey was
still staffed by a mixture of British and Egyptian personnel. Our copy of the map comes from
the Colonial Office's map collection. Its presence there reflects the prominence of archae-
ology and antiquities in Egypt's relations with the United Kingdom at this time. Now that the
British government's original need for the map is over, it has entered its own afterlife, pre-
served here in the archives as an historical record.
