WV22

The tomb is situated in a bay on the east side of the wadi, 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) from the entrance to the Western Valley. Unlike earlier tombs, it is not cut into the solid rock at the cliff base but into the talus slope away from it. Sixty metres (200 ft) to the south lies WVA, which, judging from jar sealings and the types of pottery found there, probably functioned as a storeroom for overflow from WV22.

The tomb is 85 metres (279 ft) long and generally follows the layout of KV43, the tomb of Amenhotep's father Thutmose IV, with some changes. Two descending corridors separated by stairs lead to a well chamber, the shaft of which is 7.5 metres (25 ft) deep. The well chamber opens to the west from the base of the shaft, and seems to have been expanded to the west because the chisel marks in this section differ from those elsewhere in the chamber. On the other side of the well chamber a pillared hall leads to another descending passageway and stair; uniquely, there is no doorway separating these elements. The square antechamber leads onto the pillared burial chamber with its sarcophagus emplacement, and a rectangular pit at the southern end of the chamber was likely for the king's canopic equipment.

Three small side rooms lead off the burial chamber, together with two larger chambers each with a single pillar and an additional side chamber. One of these suites seems always to have been intended for the burial of a queen, while the other seems to have been a fourth side chamber enlarged after the fact, judging from chisel marks and the position of the magical niches. The expansion is presumably due to Sitamun's elevation to Great Royal Wife late in Amenhotep III's reign. The burial chamber has eleven magical niches, five of which are cut into the walls and columns surrounding the sarcophagus emplacement.

The tomb was first noted in August 1799 by Édouard de Villiers du Terrage and Prosper Jollois, who mapped it and made drawings of some of the ushabti found there, published in Description de l'Egypte; it is possible that the traveller William George Browne knew it several years earlier. John Gordon visited in 1804 and carved his name at the entrance. Jean-François Champollion and L'Hôte visited in 1828 as part of the Franco-Tuscan Expedition of 1828-1829, and Champollion was the first to identify the owner of the tomb as Amenhotep III. Karl Richard Lepsius visited in 1849 and copied parts of the Amduat in the burial chamber. Countless tourists visited during the nineteenth century, many of whom carried off souvenirs.