Theban Tombs Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

ABSTRACT: The Valley of the Kings contains many royal and private burials from the New Kingdom, with continuing discoveries of new tombs, caches, huts, walling systems, and other features. This necropolis is inextricably linked to a broader ritual and secular landscape in West Thebes, from which we have a patchwork of earlier and later occupation, desert routes, other royal tombs, memorial and cult temples, processional routes, palaces and villas, harbor basins and waterways, private cemeteries, and a main town and a workmen’s village serving the production, maintenance, and security of both royal and private tombs. Remote sensing includes diverse space-, aerial-, and ground-based technologies (e.g., WorldView; ASTER; LiDAR; Thermography; GPR; Electrical Resistivity), which are improving continuously and offer a cost-effective and efficient means of detecting surface, sub-surface, and buried sites, structures, and features in this region. This remote sensing study has located a huge, sub-surface structure at Qurnet Murai that is suggestive of a Coptic monastic complex, and hut clusters elsewhere. UPDATE: This penultimate draft copy excludes the latest minor additions, including a brief statement confirming the presence of visible surface/subsurface architecture at Qurnet Murai, which was observed during the authors' brief trip to Deir el-Medineh in late December 2014. Published in late December 2015 / early January 2016.