Tomb KV11 is the tomb of ancient Egyptian Ramesses III. Located in the central valley of the Kings, the tomb was initially started by Setnakhte but abandoned when it broke into the earlier tomb of Amenmesse (KV10). The tomb KV11 was restarted and extended on a different axis for Ramesses III. Setnakhte was buried in KV14.
The tomb has been open since antiquity and has been known variously as “Bruce’s Tomb” (named after James Bruce, who entered the burial in 1768) and the “Harper’s Tomb” (due to paintings of two blind harpers in the tomb).
Decoration
The 188 m (617 ft) long tomb is beautifully decorated.
The second corridor is decorated with the Litany of Re. This third corridor is decorated with the Book of Gates and the Book of Amduat and leads over a ritual shaft and into a four-pillared hall. This hall is again decorated with the Book of Gates. A fourth corridor decorated with scenes of the opening of the mouth ceremony leads into a vestibule, with scenes of the Book of the Dead, and then into the burial chamber proper. At the end of this corridor, the axis of the tomb shifts.
The burial chamber is an eight-pillared hall in which stood the red quartzite sarcophagus (the box is now in the Louvre, while its lid is in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge). This chamber is decorated with the Book of Gates, divine scenes and the Book of the Earth. Beyond this is a different set of annexes decorated with the Book of Gates. The outside of the sarcophagus features two scenes from the Amduat.
Study and documentation of the tomb
The tomb was first mentioned by an English traveller, Richard Pococke, in the 1730s, but James Bruce gave its first detailed description in 1768. Preliminary scientific studies were made by French scholars, who had come to Egypt with Napoleon, and then by, among others, J. F. Champollion, R. Lepsius, and, in the 19th century, G. Lefebure. In 1959, the Egyptian Department of Antiquities asked a Polish Egyptologist, Dr Tadeusz Andrzejewski, to document the tomb. He started work under the auspices of the Polish Centre of the Mediterranean Archaeology University of Warsaw but soon died.
Twenty years later, the task of completing the documentation was given to Dr Marek Marciniak. The introduction of martial law in Poland hindered the publication of the results of his study. Since 2017, a German expedition from Humboldt University and the Egyptian universities in Luxor and Qena has worked on the site. Apart from documenting the tomb, it also carries out conservation works.
