Plan to protect Valley of the Kings against adverse factors

The Valley of the kings is the New Kingdom's royal necropolis located on the west bank of the Nile, about 5 km to the west of Luxor. The valley is one of the great landmarks of Luxor that includes a total of about 62 rock-cut tombs, the most famous of which is that of Tutankhamon.

The valley as such represents a main tourist attraction that always needs to be developed and maintained. A joint team of Egyptian and American archaeologists are now working on a comprehensive survey of the area to pinpoint the present situation of the tombs and accordingly suggest means of protecting them.

The plan, which was approved this week by the Standing Antiquities Committee, involves the installation of state-of-the-art devices within the tombs opened for public visits to measure temperatures, rate of humidity and to determine fissures appearing on the walls.

The plan is to be implemented by means of a US grant of LE 5 million.

The committee also approved in its recent meeting the restoration of Al-Raml Fortress at the Alexandria suburb of Abu-Qir to be carried out by a team from the Italian University of Turion.

An archaeological survey of the site will moreover take place in order to decide the possibility of finding monuments. The Italian team intends to devise a scheme to protect the site from random urban expansion.

Also on the committee agenda was a topic related to the import of a fully-equipped unit to treat injuries of Egyptian foreign divers working underwater in the Mediterranean.

The unit will be provided by the Institute of Maritime Antiquities for the benefit of the Supreme Council for Antiquities.