Abu-l-Negga, which was doubtless now too near the capital city and not
in a sufficiently dignified position of aloofness from the common herd,
but at the end of the long valley of the Wadiyên, behind the cliff-hill
above Dêr el-Bahari. Hence the new temple was oriented in the direction
of his tomb. Immediately behind the temple, on the other side of the
hill, is the tomb which was discovered by Lepsius and cleared in 1904
for Mr. Theodore N. Davis by Mr. Howard Carter, then chief inspector of
antiquities at Thebes. Its gallery is of very small dimensions, and it
winds about in the hill in corkscrew fashion like the tomb of Aahmes at
Aby-dos. Owing to its extraordinary length, the heat and foul air in the
depths of the tomb were almost insupportable and caused great difficulty
to the excavators. When the sarcophagus-chamber was at length reached,
it was found to contain the empty sarcophagi of Thothmes I and of
Hatshepsu. The bodies had been removed for safe-keeping in the time of
the XXIst Dynasty, that of Thothmes I having been found with those
of Set! I and Ramses II in the famous pit at Dêr el-Bahari, which was
discovered by M. Maspero in 1881. Thothmes I seems to have had another
and more elaborate tomb (No. 38) in the Valley of the Tombs of the
Kings, which was discovered by M. Loret in 1898. Its frescoes had been
destroyed by the infiltration of water.

The fashion of royal burial in the great valley behind Dêr el-Bahari
was followed during the XVIIIth, XIXth, and XXth Dynasties. Here in the
eastern branch of the Wadiyên, now called the _Bibân el-Mulûk_, "the
Tombs of the Kings," the greater number of the mightiest Theban Pharaohs
were buried. In the western valley rested two of the kings of the
XVIIIth Dynasty, who desired even more remote burial-places, Amenhetep
III and Ai. The former chose for his last home a most kingly site.
Ancient kings had raised great pyramids of artificial stone over their
graves. Amenhetep, perhaps the greatest and most powerful Pharaoh of