KV20
| KV20 | |||
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| Burial site of Thutmose I and Hatshepsut | |||
 KV20
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| Coordinates | 25°44′20.7″N 32°36′12.4″E / 25.739083°N 32.603444°ECoordinates: 25°44′20.7″N 32°36′12.4″E / 25.739083°N 32.603444°E | ||
| Location | East Valley of the Kings | ||
| Discovered | before 1799 | ||
| Excavated by |
James Burton (1824) Howard Carter (1903-1904) |
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KV20 is a tomb in the Valley of the Kings (Egypt). It was probably the first royal tomb to be constructed in the valley. KV20 was the original burial place of Thutmose I (who was later re-interred in KV38) and later was adapted by his daughter Hatshepsut to accommodate both her and her father. The tomb was known to the Napoleonic Expedition in 1799, but a full clearance of the tomb only was undertaken by Howard Carter in 1903, although it had been visited by several explorers between 1799 and 1903. KV20 is distinguished from other tombs in the valley, both in its general layout and because of the atypical clockwise curvature of its corridors.
The location of KV20 was known to the French expedition of 1799 and to Belzoni, who worked in the area in 1817. A first attempt to excavate the tomb was undertaken by James Burton in 1824, who cleared it as far as the tomb's first chamber. Although Lepsius explored it in 1844 and 1845, no further attempts to excavate the tomb were undertaken until Carter started his clearance of the rock-hard fill in the corridor in the spring of 1903. This excavation was conducted by Carter as Inspector of the Antiquities Service, but the work was sponsored by Theodore M. Davis, who published a report of the work in 1906.
After Carter's work in the tomb, no further activities have been carried out. Since 1994 the burial chamber is inaccessible due to debris deposited by flooding.
KV20 is located in the easternmost branch of the valley near the later tombs KV19, KV43, and KV60. Its plan is of unusual shape, consisting of a series of five curving, descending corridors, two of which end in chambers. These corridors bend east-south-west in a clockwise fashion, which is a unique feature amongst the tombs in the valley. At the bottom of this descending passage is a suite of chambers, connected to each other by a further corridor. The burial chamber is a three-pillared room and it has three small side-rooms at its northern end. The tomb has a total length of 210 meters.
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