The Western Wadis of Thebes — Gharbi, Bariya & the Search for Herihor

The Western Wadis

The remote desert valleys behind the Qurn — where the tomb of Thutmose II turned up in 2022 and where the High Priest Herihor may still lie sealed.

The Valley of the Kings is the showpiece, but the New Kingdom royal necropolis kept expanding westwards long after the last pharaoh was carved into the Qurn. A network of side wadis — Gharbi, Bariya, el-Qurud (the Valley of the Monkeys), Sikket Taqet Zeid — fans out into the Theban hills, almost entirely closed to tourists and only systematically surveyed since the 1990s.

The wadis, end to end

The Western Wadis sit behind the cliff of Deir el-Bahari, on the far side of the Qurn. From the river they look like one wall of rock; from above they open into a fan of dry valleys. Zoom and pan to find each wadi, tap any marker for context and a link to the relevant tomb, temple, or research project.

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The four valleys to know

Gharbi Wadi · 'The Western Wadi'

Wadi el-Gharbi

The largest of the wadis cut into the Theban hills behind Deir el-Bahari, running roughly north-west from the back of the Qurn massif. Access is from a track that branches off the road between Medinet Habu and the Ptolemaic Isis temple at Deir el-Shelwit.

Bernard M. Adams (whose 'My Luxor' blog is one of the few personal records of the wadi) reached the floor of the wadi by motorbike. On his first visit he walked 1.86 km into the main wadi and branched left into a smaller side wadi with 'wonderful rock structures and towering cliffs with many cracks and ledges that could quite easily have hidden tombs or cliff tombs'. He saw no pottery shards washed out, which would normally signal a robbed tomb above.

On his second visit he was turned back at the entrance by an Inspectorate official and an archaeologist who told him the wadi was a working excavation site and required a permit. It has been worked, on and off, since the 1990s — first by John Romer's Theban Royal Tomb Project searching for the tomb of Amenhotep I, then by the New Kingdom Research Foundation under Piers Litherland.

The wadi is known to contain rock drawings (so far unpublished in detail) and small Coptic-era hermit cells reused from earlier tombs.

Access: Requires a permit. No shade, no water, no phone signal. Last buses back to the Nile leave at sunset.

Wadi el-Bariya · 'The Outer Wadi'

Bariya Wadi

Bariya is one of the most remote of the Western Wadis — a 14 km trip from the Medinet Habu–Shelwit road. The first 6 km, from the road to the wadi mouth, is flat enough for a motorbike; the next stretch into the wadi proper is loose sand where wheels bury easily.

Adams managed about 3 km in before turning back at 30°C, having dug his bike out of the sand three times. He passed the camp of an American mission that had been working a cluster of New Kingdom-era pit tombs cut into a low hill mid-wadi; on his 2015 visit the site had been completely back-filled and the access path deliberately erased, with no surface evidence at all that excavation had ever taken place.

The wadi mouth is wide and 'almost featureless'; the more interesting section — narrow gorges and cliff overhangs of the kind that hide intact New Kingdom royal burials in neighbouring wadis — lies further in, where Adams could not reach.

Access: Genuinely remote. Travel with a guide and at least two vehicles. Cellular dead zone the moment you leave the road.

Wadi el-Qurud · the West Valley of the Kings

Valley of the Monkeys

The signposted continuation of the Valley of the Kings, holding only two finished royal tombs: KV22 (Amenhotep III, the father of Akhenaten) and KV23 (Ay, Tutankhamun's successor). KV22 is occasionally opened to ticketed visitors; KV23 is permanently locked.

Named for the 12 baboon figures from the Book of the Amduat painted on the walls of KV22 — not for living monkeys.

Zahi Hawass's mission resumed survey work here in 2017 and announced a tentative 'KV65' in 2025; excavation is ongoing.

Access: Open as part of the KV ticket. Always empty — most tour groups skip it. The walk in from the main valley is 1.5 km of open desert.

'Hatshepsut's Cliff Tomb' wadi

Wadi Sikket Taqet Zeid

A narrow wadi south-west of Deir el-Bahari containing the unfinished cliff tomb cut for Hatshepsut while she was still Great Royal Wife (before her tomb in KV20). Howard Carter reached it in 1916 by being lowered on ropes from the cliff above — the sarcophagus is now in the Egyptian Museum (CG 47032).

The wadi system continues west, eventually joining the broader Gharbi system. Several New Kingdom-era graffiti and surveyor marks have been recorded along its walls.

Access: Climbing access only. The tomb itself is closed.

The High Priest who became a king — and disappeared

Painted relief of Herihor, High Priest of Amun, in royal regalia

Herihor was the High Priest of Amun at Karnak who, in the closing years of the 20th Dynasty, took the throne of Upper Egypt in everything but name. He is one of the last figures of New Kingdom Egypt — and one of the very few rulers of his rank whose tomb has never been identified.

c. 1080 BC

Herihor is appointed High Priest of Amun at Karnak by Rameses XI. By the end of the reign he is effectively king of Upper Egypt — he writes his name in a cartouche at the temple of Khonsu and is depicted in royal regalia. The 'Whom of Whom' (the Renaissance era, wehem mesut) begins under his de-facto rule.

c. 1070 BC

Herihor dies. He is not buried in the Valley of the Kings — by this date the royal tombs are already being systematically stripped by the priesthood itself to fund the state. The location of his burial is one of the great open questions of late New Kingdom archaeology.

1881 — the Deir el-Bahari Cache

Émile Brugsch enters the royal mummy cache (DB320 / TT320) above Deir el-Bahari. It contains the bodies of Seti I, Rameses II, Thutmose III and dozens of others — but NOT Herihor or any of his immediate family. The cache documents prove the 21st-Dynasty priest-kings moved the royal mummies for safekeeping; whoever did the moving knew where his own family was buried.

1898 — the second cache

Victor Loret finds KV35 (Amenhotep II) used as a second royal cache. Still no Herihor.

1978 — John Romer

John Romer, working in the cliffs above Deir el-Bahari for the Brooklyn Museum's Theban Royal Tomb Project, argues that Herihor's tomb is intact and somewhere in the Western Wadis — pointing to the survival of a wax seal of Herihor with the royal-cache mummies. Romer's view: 'There is a king's tomb up there that has never been touched.'

1998–present — Piers Litherland

The New Kingdom Research Foundation, directed by Piers Litherland, takes over systematic survey of the Western Wadis (Gharbi, Bariya, and several un-numbered side wadis). The team has located more than 50 small tombs and burial pits — including, in 2022, the tomb published in 2025 as belonging to Thutmose II (the first 'new' pharaoh's tomb found since Tutankhamun).

What's still missing

Litherland and Aidan Dodson both maintain that the family burials of Herihor, Pinedjem I, and the 21st-Dynasty high priests are still out there — somewhere in a side wadi, sealed and intact. The 2025 Thutmose II discovery makes it harder, not easier, to dismiss that view.

What you can — and can't — actually see

Open with a KV ticket

KV22 (Amenhotep III) in the Valley of the Monkeys — when the SCA opens it. Drive past KV9 and keep going west; the access road continues for another kilometre.

Needs special permission

Gharbi and the inner Bariya. Permits go through the Ministry of Tourism & Antiquities (West Bank office, Qurna) and are normally only granted to active research missions and accredited journalists.

Closed to everyone

The active excavation areas of the New Kingdom Research Foundation. Litherland's team works winter seasons; in summer the wadis are physically dangerous (50°C+ in shade).

Never enter a wadi alone. There is no shade, no water, no phone signal, and the wadi floors are the natural drainage paths for flash floods. Even Bernard Adams, who pioneered solo motorbike exploration of these valleys in 2013–15, eventually gave up Bariya for safety reasons.