Salt Almost Destroyed Queen Nefertari’s Tomb
The most famous burial chamber in the Valley of the Queens belongs to Nefertari, the queen consort of Ramses II. Nefertari and Ramses married before he became pharaoh in 1279 BCE, and she remained his primary Great Royal Wife until her death around 1255 BCE, about twenty-five years into Ramses’ sixty-six-year reign. Nefertari dominated the royal court and played a diplomatic role, writing letters and exchanging gifts with Queen Pudukhepa, the wife of Hattusili III, the king of the Hittites with whom Egypt was often at war.
Even though he had other wives, Ramses was devoted to Nefertari, and he honored her in life and death. He built her temple next to his own at Abu Simbel, making her statues the same size as his, a rarity in ancient Egypt. Ramses constructed a massive funerary chamber for her equivalent in size to those reserved for pharaohs in the Valley of the Queens, and he instructed the artists working on her final resting place to inscribe a love poem to her that he wrote himself on the walls. Nefertari’s tomb is considered one of the most beautiful funerary chambers of ancient Egypt.
The vibrant and detailed paintings of scenes that depict Nefertari’s descent into the afterlife had no previous model in Egyptian art. The limestone and the plaster used to reinforce the walls contained a high amount of salt; over the centuries, the salt crystallized, peeling the paintings off of the walls. When archaeologists unsealed her tomb in the early twentieth century, the extra exposure to moisture, as well as frequent rainstorms and flooding in the valley, further deteriorated its condition. The Egyptian authorities closed it to the public in the 1950s to begin conservation efforts.
The crystallized salt further damaged the tomb’s walls with every passing year. In the 1980s, preservationists with The Getty Conservation Institute led a six-year restoration effort to prevent extended deterioration. Beginning in 1986, scientists assessed the damage, cleaned the walls, and restored the paintings. When the project concluded in 1992, the tomb remained closed to monitor the effects of the repair before allowing public access; after several closures and re-openings, Nefertari’s tomb was recently reopened for viewing in late 2016.