Royal Cache

The Luxor massacre was a terrorist attack that occurred on 17 November 1997 in Egypt. It was perpetrated by al-Jama'a al-Islamiyya and resulted in the deaths of 62 people, most of whom were tourists. It took place at Dayr al-Bahri, an archaeological site located across the Nile from the city of Luxor.

The mortuary temple of Hatshepsut (Egyptian: Ḏsr-ḏsrw meaning "Holy of Holies") is a mortuary temple built during the reign of Pharaoh Hatshepsut of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt. Located opposite the city of Luxor, it is considered to be a masterpiece of ancient architecture. Its three massive terraces rise above the desert floor and into the cliffs of Deir el-Bahari. Her tomb, KV20, lies inside the same massif capped by El Qurn, a pyramid for her mortuary complex. At the edge of the desert, 1 km (0.62 mi) east, connected to the complex by a causeway lies the accompanying valley temple. Across the river Nile, the whole structure points towards the monumental Eighth Pylon, Hatshepsut's most recognizable addition to the Temple of Karnak and the site from which the procession of the Beautiful Festival of the Valley departed. The temple's twin functions are identified by its axes: its main east-west axis served to receive the barque of Amun-Re at the climax of the festival, while its north-south axis represented the life cycle of the pharaoh from coronation to rebirth. Construction of the terraced temple took place between Hatshepsut's seventh and twentieth regnal year, during which building plans were repeatedly modified. In its design it was heavily influenced by the Temple of Mentuhotep II of the Eleventh Dynasty built six centuries earlier. In the arrangement of its chambers and sanctuaries, though, the temple is wholly unique. The main axis, normally reserved for the mortuary complex, is occupied instead by the sanctuary of the barque of Amun-Re, with the mortuary cult being displaced south to form the auxiliary axis with the solar cult complex to the north. Separated from the main sanctuary are shrines to Hathor and Anubis which lie on the middle terrace. The porticoes that front the terrace here host the most notable reliefs of the temple; those of the expedition to the Land of Punt and of the divine birth of Hatshepsut, the backbone of her case to rightfully occupy the throne as a member of the royal family and as godly progeny. Below, the lowest terrace leads to the causeway and out to the valley temple. The state of the temple has suffered over time. Two decades after Hatshepsut's death, under the direction of Thutmose III, references to her rule were erased, usurped or obliterated. The campaign was intense but brief, quelled after two years when Amenhotep II was enthroned. The reasons behind the proscription remain a mystery. A personal grudge appears unlikely as Thutmose III had waited twenty years to act. Perhaps the concept of a female king was anathema to ancient Egyptian society or a dynastic dispute between the Ahmosid and Thutmosid lineages needed resolving. In the Amarna Period the temple was incurred upon again when Akhenaten ordered the images of Egyptian gods, particularly those of Amun, to be erased. These damages were repaired subsequently under Tutankhamun, Horemheb and Ramesses II. An earthquake in the Third Intermediate Period caused further harm. During the Ptolemaic period the sanctuary of Amun was restructured and a new portico built at its entrance. A Coptic monastery of Saint Phoibammon was built between the 6th and 8th centuries AD and images of Christ were painted over original reliefs. The latest graffito left is dated to c. 1223. The temple resurfaces in the records of the modern era in 1737 with Richard Pococke, a British traveller, who visited the site. Several visitations followed, though serious excavation was not conducted until the 1850s and 60s under Auguste Mariette. The temple was fully excavated between 1893 and 1906 during an expedition of the Egypt Exploration Fund (EEF) directed by Édouard Naville. Further efforts were carried out by Herbert E. Winlock and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA) from 1911 to 1936, and by Émile Baraize and the Egyptian Antiquities Service (now the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA)) from 1925 to 1952. Since 1961, the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology (PCMA) has carried out extensive consolidation and restoration works throughout the temple and it was opened to the public in March 2023.

Deir el-Bahari or Dayr al-Bahri (Arabic: الدير البحري, romanized: al-Dayr al-Baḥrī, lit. 'the Monastery of the North', Coptic: ⲡⲧⲟⲡⲟⲥ ⲛⲁⲡⲁ ⲫⲟⲓⲃⲁⲙⲙⲱⲛ, lit. 'the monastery of Apa Phoibammon', Ancient Egyptian: djeser-djeseru) is a complex of mortuary temples and tombs located on the west bank of the Nile, opposite the city of Luxor, Egypt. This is a part of the Theban Necropolis. The first monument built at the site was the mortuary temple of Mentuhotep II of the Eleventh Dynasty. It was constructed during the 21st century BC. During the Eighteenth Dynasty, Amenhotep I and Hatshepsut also built extensively at the site.

Tomb KV43 is the tomb of Pharaoh Thutmose IV in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, Egypt. It has a dog-leg shape, typical of the layout of early 18th Dynasty tombs. KV43 was rediscovered in 1903 by Howard Carter, excavating on behalf of Theodore M. Davis.

KV20 is a tomb in the Valley of the Kings (Egypt). It was probably the first royal tomb to be constructed in the valley. KV20 was the original burial place of Thutmose I (who was later re-interred in KV38) and later was adapted by his daughter Hatshepsut to accommodate her and her father. The tomb was known to Napoleon Bonaparte's expedition in 1799 and had been visited by several explorers between 1799 and 1903. A full clearance of the tomb was undertaken by Howard Carter in 1903–1904. KV20 is distinguishable from other tombs in the valley, both in its general layout and because of the atypical clockwise curvature of its corridors.

Tomb KV19, located in a side branch of Egypt's Valley of the Kings, was intended as the burial place of Prince Ramesses Sethherkhepshef, better known as Pharaoh Ramesses VIII, but was later used for the burial of Prince Mentuherkhepshef instead, the son of Ramesses IX, who predeceased his father. Though incomplete and used "as is," the decoration is considered to be of the highest quality.

The Theban Tomb TT319 is located in Deir el-Bahari, part of the Theban Necropolis, on the west bank of the Nile, opposite to Luxor. The tomb belongs to the king's wife Neferu II, wife of the ancient Egyptian king Mentuhotep II (around 2000 BC). Neferu was the daughter of Queen Iah and Intef III.The tomb of Neferu consisted of a chapel paved with slabs of limestone and carved into the rocks of Thebes. This chapel was decorated with scenes in sunken and raised relief. They show the queen with hairdressers, servants and religious scenes. However, today the scenes are only badly preserved. The stones of the chapel were already in ancient times used as quarry. These fragments are now in many museums around the world.Behind the chapel there was a corridor leading to the burial chamber, which was also decorated. On the walls are painted friezes of burial goods and long funerary texts. In the burial chamber there also stood the sarcophagus of the queen. The chamber was found disturbed, when excavated.The tomb is located just to the north of the mortuary temple of Mentuhotep II, and is currently under the temple of Hatshepsut. An entrance was left open in this later construction

Tomb KV60 is an ancient Egyptian tomb in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt. It was discovered by Howard Carter in 1903, and re-excavated by Donald P. Ryan in 1989. It is one of the more perplexing tombs of the Theban Necropolis, due to the uncertainty over the identity of one female mummy found there (KV60A). She is identified by some, such as Egyptologist Elizabeth Thomas, to be that of the Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh Hatshepsut; this identification is advocated for by Zahi Hawass.

Tomb KV21 is an ancient Egyptian tomb located in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. It was discovered in 1817 by Giovanni Belzoni and later re-excavated by Donald P. Ryan in 1989. It contains the mummies of two women, thought to be Eighteenth Dynasty queens. In 2010, a team headed by Zahi Hawass used DNA evidence to tentatively identify one mummy, KV21A, as the biological mother of the two fetuses preserved in the tomb of King Tutankhamun.

Tomb KV27 is located in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. This tomb was visited by John Wilkinson, but was not fully explored until the 1990s, by Donald P. Ryan of Pacific Lutheran University. The tomb consists of four rooms and is undecorated; nothing is known about its occupant.

Tomb KV28 is an ancient Egyptian tomb located in the Valley of the Kings in the Theban Necropolis in Upper Egypt. It consists of a short shaft leading to a single rectangular chamber. It has been known since the 1830s as it is mentioned by John Gardiner Wilkinson. In 1889 Eugène Lefébure said it contained parts of mummies and their bandaging. The tomb was excavated in the 1990s by Donald P. Ryan who found the bones of three individuals, fragments of a limestone canopic jar, numerous wooden fragments, and early to mid Eighteenth Dynasty pottery. The occupants were possibly nobles, given the tomb's proximity to the tomb of Thutmose IV.

Bab el-Gasus (Egyptian Arabic: باب الجسس, romanized: bāb el-gasus, lit. 'Gate of the Priests [Spies]'), also known as the Priestly Cache and the Second Cache, was a cache of ancient 21st dynasty (c. 1070–945 BCE) Egyptian mummies found at Deir el-Bahari in 1891. It was excavated by French Egyptologists Eugène Grebaut and Georges Daressy, with Urbain Bouriant and Ahmed Kamal, on the direction of Mohamed Ahmed Abd al‑Rassul, who had also revealed the location of the Royal Cache in 1881. The tomb entrance was located on the flat area just outside the precinct wall in front of the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut. The find was significant for Egyptology, particularly in respect of religion, mummification, and coffin studies. It is the largest intact tomb ever found in Egypt. Today, the contents of the tomb are spread between 30 museums worldwide.In 1893, Khedive Abbas II of Egypt presented groups of artefacts from the tomb to 16 countries, as gifts celebrating the Khedive's accession to the throne. As a result of this dispersion, the artefacts have received limited focus by scholars.It contained 254 richly decorated coffins (101 double sets) giving 153 coffin sets in total, as well as 110 shabti boxes, 77 Osirian wooden statuettes (mostly hollow and containing a papyrus), 8 wooden steles, 2 large wooden statues (Isis and Nephthys), 16 canopic reed baskets, 5 round baskets made of woven reed. The coffins were made almost exclusively with wood from the native fig tree, the Ficus sycomorus.On the 125th anniversary of the find, the Centro de Estudos Clássicos e Humanísticos of the University of Coimbra launched the "Gate of the Priests" project, with the University of Leiden, the National Museum of Antiquities of Leiden, the Vatican Museums and UCLA, in order to reconstruct the original collection of Bab el-Gasus. A new display of the Bab el-Gasus artefacts was opened at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo in 2021 following the moving of the Royal Cache.Although one of the Theban tombs, the tomb never received a serial number.