WV22
Sign in to saveTomb WV22, also known as KV22, was the burial place of Amenhotep III, a pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty, in the western arm of the Valley of the Kings. The tomb is unique in that it has two subsidiary burial chambers for the pharaoh's wives Tiye and Sitamen (who was also his daughter). It was officially discovered in August 1799 by Prosper Jollois and Édouard de Villiers du Terrage, engineers with Napoleon's expedition to Egypt but had probably been open for some time. The tomb was first excavated in the early 1900s by Theodore M. Davis; the details of this are lost. The first documented cle
Key facts
- Egyptian tomb.name
- WV22
- Egyptian tomb.owner
- Amenhotep III
- Egyptian tomb.image
- WV22 Amenhotep III.jpg
- Egyptian tomb.caption
- Schematic of WV22
- Egyptian tomb.location
- West Valley of the Kings
- Egyptian tomb.date
- before 1799
- Egyptian tomb.excavated
- Theodore M. DavisHoward Carter (1915)Waseda University (1989–present)
- Egyptian tomb.decoration
- Amduat
- Egyptian tomb.layout
- Bent-axis
- Egyptian tomb.prev
- KV21
- Egyptian tomb.next
- WV23
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Article
10 sectionsContents
- Location and discovery
- Architecture
- Excavations
- Re-clearance
- Contents
- Decoration
- Graffito
- Gallery
- References
- External links
Tomb WV22, also known as KV22, was the burial place of Amenhotep III, a pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty, in the western arm of the Valley of the Kings. The tomb is unique in that it has two subsidiary burial chambers for the pharaoh's wives Tiye and Sitamen (who was also his daughter). It was officially discovered in August 1799 by Prosper Jollois and Édouard de Villiers du Terrage, engineers with Napoleon's expedition to Egypt but had probably been open for some time. The tomb was first excavated in the early 1900s by Theodore M. Davis; the details of this are lost. The first documented clearance was carried out by Howard Carter in 1915. Since 1989, a Japanese team from Waseda University led by Sakuji Yoshimura and Jiro Kondo has excavated and conserved the tomb. The sarcophagus trough is missing from the tomb, but the lid was reconstructed from shattered fragments. The tomb's layout and decoration follow the tombs of the king's predecessors, Amenhotep II (KV35) and Thutmose IV (KV43); however, the decoration is much finer in quality. Several images of the pharaoh's head were cut out in 1828 and can be seen today in the Louvre. The tomb was opened to visitors on October 4, 2025, having previously been closed for restoration.
==Location and discovery== The tomb is situated in a bay on the east side of the wadi, from the entrance to the Western Valley. Unlike earlier tombs, it is not cut into the solid rock at the cliff base but in the talus slope away from it. south of the tomb is WVA which, based on jar sealings and the types of pottery found there, likely functioned as a storeroom for overflow from WV22.