If visiting Egypt is not currently in the cards, you can now console yourself with a virtual visit of one of the country’s most famous royal tombs from your home. Through a partnership between the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Ramses VI’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings can now be explored online, and you can walk along walls covered in hieroglyphics and carvings bearing intricate messages from the past.
Photo: Jakub Kyncl/Shutterstock
Walk Through an Ancient Egyptian Tomb From Your Home
The tomb consists of a single, nearly 400-foot-long hallway. Every inch tells a story, including extracts from the Book of Gates and the Book of Caverns, traditional funerary texts, in the first part of the corridor. Right before the burial chamber, you’ll see extracts from the Book of Amduat, which tell stories of the underworld.
Photo: Jakub Kyncl/Shutterstock
You’ll also walk by neatly preserved stone sarcophagi and see an impressive image of Nut, the goddess of the sky and heavens, that portrays the goddess swallowing the sun every evening so she can birth it in the morning in a never-ending cycle.
Scenes from the Book of the Day and Book of the Night adorn the burial chamber. The tomb was initially constructed by Ramses V, which is why his name and images still appear in the first half of the tomb followed by those of Ramses VI further inside.
None of the artifacts originally buried in the tomb are still there, as the Valley of the Kings was infamously robbed over the years. The mummies of both kings can be found at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. 