Tomb of Horemheb (KV57)

Tomb KV57 is the royal tomb of Horemheb, the last pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty and is located in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt.

The tomb was located by Edward Ayrton in February 1908 for Theodore Davis. Due to its location in the valley floor, the tomb was filled with debris that had washed down during occasional flash-flooding. The tomb is markedly different from previous Eighteenth Dynasty royal tombs as it has a straightened axis, and has painted reliefs instead of murals; the Book of Gates also appears for the first time. The king's red granite sarcophagus was found with its lid broken, though otherwise intact. The tomb contained the remains of several burials, none of them conclusively belonging to Horemheb.

Layout

The tomb consists of a descending entrance stair, a sloping passageway leading to another descending stair, and another passageway that ends in a well shaft. Beyond the well chamber is the first pillared hall. Cut into the floor on the left side of the pillared hall is a staircase, originally sealed, leading to another descending passage and, via another flight of steps, the antechamber. Beyond this room is the pillared burial chamber, surrounded by storerooms. The floor at the far end of the burial chamber is lowered to create a crypt.

The layout is transitional in form between the 'dog-leg' style of earlier Eighteenth Dynasty tombs and the straight axis tombs of the Nineteenth Dynasty; more precisely this layout is known as a jogged axis. The steep descent of the earlier style is combined with the large straight corridors prevalent in the later style. The pillared hall is more square than previous iterations, as it would continue to be in future royal tombs. However, some novel features occur in this tomb that are not seen again, such as the ramp at the top of the stairs leading to the crypt around the sarcophagus, the second set of stairs in this area, and the burial below the floor in one of the storerooms.