Amenhotep III tomb in Luxor reopens after twenty-year restoration
Looted since 1799, the 3,000-year-old tomb now shows restored 18th dynasty murals, new lighting, and safer stairs, thanks to UNESCO and Japanese experts.
By Jerusalem Post Staff, October 5, 2025
https://www.jpost.com/archaeology/article-869439
Egypt unveiled the renovated tomb of King Amenhotep III in Luxor on Saturday, completing a restoration that began in 2004 under a Japanese-led team supported by UNESCO and the Japanese government, according to DW.
The royal monument, catalogued as WV 22 in the Valley of the Kings, welcomed its first public visitors 226 years after French engineers documented the site during Napoleon’s campaign. New wooden stairs and walkways lead through a 36-meter passage to a chamber with six columns and two side rooms carved for Queens Tiye and Sitamun. Engineers installed a lighting system designed to protect and reveal mural paintings whose blue and yellow tones have lasted more than 3,000 years.
Amenhotep III, also called Amenhotep the Great, ruled from 1387 BCE to 1349 BCE during an era of peace, prosperity and artistic grandeur, DW added. His damaged mummy now rests in the National Museum of Egyptian Civilizations in Cairo beside 16 other royal mummies.
Tourism and Antiquities Minister Ahmed Issa led the inauguration with senior officials Sherif Fathy, Mohamed Ismail Khaled and Hisham Abu Zeid. “The opening of King Amenhotep III’s tomb will be a global event that reflects Egypt’s effort to preserve and promote its heritage,” said Issa, according to Sozcu.
Khaled, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, called WV 22 “one of the most important and prominent” tombs in the valley and explained that two decades of restoration involved delicate work because the structure was near collapse from weathering, bat colonies and salt deposits. Teams rehabilitated walls, sealed cracks in columns, cleaned ceiling stars and reassembled more than 200 fragments of the red-granite sarcophagus lid, now displayed on a metal base beside the empty frame of the stolen coffin.
UNESCO regional director Nuria Sanz said the project met “the super highest level of international standards for integrated conservation.” More than 260 specialists took part, according to the organization.
The reopened burial chamber contains scenes from the Book of the Dead and passages from the Imi-Duat meant to guide the king through the underworld. UNESCO noted that the paintings rank among the best preserved of the Eighteenth Dynasty.
Amenhotep III ordered extensive building campaigns, including sections of Luxor Temple and additions to Karnak. The granite Colossi of Memnon still stand near his mortuary temple at Kom el-Hitan.
Looters entered WV 22 soon after Prosper Jollois and Édouard de Villiers du Terrage documented it in 1799. Howard Carter excavated further in 1915, after which many funerary figurines were dispersed to museums in Paris, New York and Britain. Visitors today see the immovable granite lid of the sarcophagus engraved with hieroglyphs naming the king.
Restorer Mohamed Mahmoud, who worked on the project from the beginning, said, “My happiness is indescribable on this historic day,” according to Al-Masry Al-Youm.
Fathy praised the effort as “an exceptional achievement without equal” and thanked Egyptian and Japanese specialists for returning the tomb “to its original splendor.” Authorities hope the reopening will boost tourism, a major source of foreign currency after the downturn that followed the 2011 uprising, NOS reported.
Written with the help of a news-analysis system.
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