The tomb of Pharaoh Amenhotep III, one of the largest in the Valley of Kings, in Haute Egypt, unveiled its renovated wall frescoes on Saturday after many years of closing and complex catering.
It took more than two decades of “incredibly delicate work” to renovate the dug dug more than 3000 years ago, due to the “serious deterioration” suffered over the centuries, said Mohamed Ismail Khaled, the chief of the supreme antiquities council, during the official opening.
Wooden walkways
New stairs and wooden pontoons allow you to visit the immense tomb entirely decorated with ancient frescoes on a blue background, where only the solid cover of the Amenhotep granite sarcophagus remains, engraved with hieroglyphs, too heavy to be moved.
The tomb, listed by French archaeologists in 1799 during the Napoleon campaign, was renovated thanks to aid from the Japanese government and UNESCO.
The cellar dug in a hill on the western shore of the Nile, opposite the city of Luxor, conceals “the most exquisite murals among the tombs inherited from the 18th dynasty”, according to the UNESCO site.
Dispersed funeral figurines
Arrived as a teenager on the throne, Amenhotep III, also called Amenophis III, died in -1349 at the age of 50, after forty years of reign marked by prosperity, stability and artistic greatness.
His grave is located in the necropolis of Thebes, where the pharaohs, queens, priests and royal scribes were buried between the 16th and 11th century before the start of the Christian calendar.
After the excavations carried out in 1799 and 1915 by French and British archaeologists, most of the funeral figures found in the tomb were dispersed, partly at the Louvre museum in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum in New York or at the Château de Highclere, in Great Britain, according to a study by the Japanese University of Waseda.
However, his mummy and sarcophagus are at the Cairo Civilization Museum, while the Egyptian Museum in Place Tahrir and the new great Museum of Egyptology in the capital, the GEM, are home to colossal statues from the Pharaoh seated with his wife.
AFP/JUMA
