Tomb KV17, located in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings and also known by the names “Belzoni’s Tomb”, “the Tomb of Apis”, and “the Tomb of Psammis, son of Nechois”, is the tomb of Pharaoh Seti I of the Nineteenth Dynasty. It is one of the best decorated tombs in the valley. Giovanni Battista Belzoni discovered it in the modern era on 16 October 1817.
Design and decoration of Tomb KV17
Tomb KV17 is the longest tomb in the valley, at 137.19 meters (450.10 feet), and contains well-preserved reliefs in all but two of its eleven chambers and side rooms. One of the back chambers is decorated with the Opening of the mouth ceremony, which states that the mummy’s eating and drinking organs were adequately functioning. This was an essential ritual to believe in the need for these functions in the afterlife. A very long tunnel (corridor K) leads away deep into the mountainside from beneath where the sarcophagus stood in the burial chamber. Recently, the excavation of this corridor was completed. It turned out that there was no ‘secret burial chamber’ or any other kind of chamber at the end. Work on the hall was just abandoned upon the burial of Seti.
In 2008, a geological survey was carried out in the mysterious Tunnel K. After his in-situ investigation, the Austrian engineer Christoph Lehmann put forward the thesis that during the excavation of KV 17, a heavy flash flood occurred, whereby approximately 1300 cubic meters of debris material were flushed into the tomb, and filled up almost the whole structure of tunnel K. So the ancient builders were forced to abandon tunnel K and construct – shortened – the tomb in its present form.
Archaeology and Conservation
Giovanni Battista Belzoni first discovered it on 16 October 1817. When he first entered the tomb, he found the wall paintings in excellent condition, the paint on the walls still looking fresh, and some of the artists’ pigments and brushes still on the floor. The tomb became known as the “Apis tomb” because a mummified bull was found in a side room off the burial hall when Giovanni Belzoni found the burial.
The sarcophagus of Seti I removed on behalf of the British consul Henry Salt, has been in the Sir John Soane’s Museum in London since 1824. Jean-François Champollion, the translator of the Rosetta Stone, removed a wall panel of 2.26 x 1.05 m (7.41 x 3.44 ft) in a corridor with mirror-image scenes during his 1828–29 expedition. His companion Rossellini or Karl Richard Lepsius removed other elements in the German expedition of 1845. The scenes are now in the collections of the Louvre in Paris, the Egyptian Museum in Florence, and the Neues Museum in Berlin.
Several walls in the tomb have collapsed or cracked due to excavations in the late 1950s and early 1960s, causing significant changes in the moisture levels in the surrounding rocks.
Factum Foundation for Digital Technology in Conservation made the facsimiles of two rooms from the tomb, the Hall of Beauties and Pillared Hall J, in 2017.
Accessibility
It is one of the best-decorated tombs in the valley, but it was closed to the public for many years due to damage and the threats visitors posed to its conservation. It was reopened to the public in 2016. As of November 2017, holders of a 1200 EGP entry ticket or a Luxor Pass can visit this tomb.
