KV1

Tomb KV1, in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, was used for the burial of Pharaoh Ramesses VII of the Twentieth Dynasty. It lies on Luxor's West Bank and is a single corridor tomb, small in comparison to other tombs of the Twentieth Dynasty. Although it has been open since antiquity, it was only properly investigated and cleared by Edwin Brock in 1984 and 1985.

Typical of tombs from this period, KV1 is laid out along a straight axis and consists of four major parts: the entrance, a passageway, the burial chamber containing the sarcophagus, and a smaller room at the end. Ramesses VII was in the seventh year of his reign when he died. There is evidence that the burial chamber was expanded from its original design as a corridor, and work on the room at the end of the tomb was halted.

The passageway is decorated with illustrations from the Book of Gates, the Book of Caverns and the Book of the Earth, and the burial chamber walls carry extracts from the Book of the Earth. In style and themes it closely follows its immediate predecessor, Ramesses VI's KV9, though the ceiling of the burial chamber has a double image of the sky goddess Nut, a style used by pharaohs of the previous dynasty. In the chamber a depression has been cut into the rock, with an inverted stone box shaped roughly like a cartouche placed over it. This is the last known sarcophagus placed in a royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings, as all later burials were in deeper pits covered by a lid.

The tomb was robbed in antiquity and the mummy presumably lost, though four cups inscribed with the pharaoh's name were found in the royal cache in DB320 along with the remains of other pharaohs. It was one of at least eleven tombs open to early travelers, and 132 individual graffiti left by Ancient Greek and Roman visitors have been counted. Later, Coptic monks used it as a dwelling. Richard Pococke called it Tomb A in his Observations of Egypt, published in 1743, and the savants with Napoleon's campaign listed it as 1er Tombeau.

The tomb was cleared in the 1950s, though this is not documented. From 1983, funded by the Royal Ontario Museum, Edwin Brock excavated the burial chamber floor and, a decade later, the entrance. Findings included fragments of wood, calcite and faience shabtis, ostraca decorated with sketches presumably by the tomb's artists, a floral garland and numerous pottery shards. In 1994 the Supreme Council of Antiquities cleaned the walls and repaired cracks with plaster, covering over some ancient graffiti.

Typical of tombs from this period, KV1 is laid out along a straight axis. The successors of Ramesses III constructed tombs that had followed this pattern and were all decorated in much the same manner as each other. It consists of four major parts: the entrance, a passageway, the burial chamber containing the sarcophagus, and a smaller room at the end.

Ramesses VII was in the seventh year of his reign when he died. There is evidence that the burial chamber was expanded from its original design as a corridor, and work on a subsequent room at the end of the tomb was halted.

The decoration within the passageway of the tomb contains illustrations from the Book of Gates, the Book of Caverns as well as the Book of the Earth. The walls of the burial chamber are decorated with extracts from the Book of the Earth. In terms of style and themes it closely follows that of its immediate predecessor, Ramesses VI's KV9, though the ceiling within the burial chamber contains a double image of the sky goddess Nut, reflecting a style used in tomb paintings used by pharaohs of the previous dynasty.

Within the burial chamber a depression has been cut into the rock, with an inverted box of stone shaped roughly like a cartouche placed over it. This is the last known example of a sarcophagus placed in a royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings, all subsequent burials consisting of deeper pits which were covered by a lid. The tomb was robbed in antiquity, and the mummy presumably lost, though four cups inscribed with the pharaoh's name were found in the "royal cache" in DB320 along with the remains of other pharaohs.