Message #136312

[Bianca]

To the ancient Egyptian, Carter explained, it was a matter of vital importance that his body should rest inviolate in the place constructed for it. It was also essential to a mummy's well-being that it should be fully provisioned for every need. But the very magnificence of the monuments and outfits with which the kings provided themselves for their "after life" were their undoing, and within a few generations at most the mummies were disturbed and their treasures stolen.


The early pharaohs tried hard to thwart tomb robbers; they built huge mountains of stone over their tombs to protect them, plugged the entrances with huge granite monoliths, constructed false passages and contrived secret doors. But in every case the tomb robbers surmounted the difficulties set to baffle them, and by the beginning of the 18th dynasty there was hardly a pharaoh's tomb in the whole of Egypt that had not been rifled.


The pharaohs then decided to place all royal tombs within a very restricted area where maximum security could be provided; 30 kings of the 18th and 19th dynasties were buried in a desolate, steep-sided canyon on the west bank of the Nile opposite Luxor, once the ancient pharaonic capital of Thebes.


For a time the mummies remained relatively secure, but then under the feeble monarchs of the 20th dynasty, cemetery guardians became lax and corrupt, and again wholesale looting of the tombs took place.


Throughout those troubled times, however, there was no mention of Tutankhamen and his tomb - which was why Carter believed that not only was it still there, but, more important, was still intact. "Strange sights The Valley must have seen, and desperate the ventures that took place in it," wrote Carter. "One can image the plotting for days beforehand, the secret rendezvous on the cliff by night, the bribing or drugging of the cemetery guards, and then the desperate burrowing in the dark, the scramble through a small hole into the burial-chamber, the hectic search by a glimmering light for treasure that was portable, and the return home at dawn laden with booty"