Had he lived for another few years he might have been famous as a conqueror as well as an administrator, though old age might retard and tired bones refuse their office.  As it is, however, his name is written sufficiently large in the book of the world’s great men; and when he died, about B.C. 1315, after a reign of some thirty-five years, he had done more for Egypt than had almost any other Pharaoh.  He found the country in the wildest disorder, and he left it the master of itself, and ready to become once more the master of the empire which Akhnaton’s doctrine of Peace and Goodwill had lost.  Under his direction the purged worship of the old gods, which for him meant but the maintenance of some time-proved customs, had gained the mastery over the chimerical worship of Aton; without force or violence he had substituted the practical for the visionary; and to Amon and Order his grateful subjects were able to cry, “The sun of him who knew thee not has set, but he who knows thee shines; the sanctuary of him who assailed thee is overwhelmed in darkness, but the whole earth is now in light.”

The tomb of this great Pharaoh was cut in the rocks on the west side of the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, not far from the resting-place of Amenhotep II.  In the days of the later Ramesside kings the tomb-plunderers entered the sepulchre, pulled the embalmed body of the king to pieces in the search for hidden jewels, scattered the bones of the three members of his family who were buried with him, and stole almost everything of value which they found.  There must have been other robberies after this, and finally the Government inspectors of about B.C. 1100 entered the tomb, and, seeing its condition, closed its mouth with a compact mass of stones.  The torrents of rain which sometimes fall in winter in Egypt percolated through this filling, and left it congealed and difficult to cut through; and on the top of this hard mass tons of rubbish were tossed from other excavations, thus completely hiding the entrance.

In this condition the tomb was found by Mr Davis in February 1908.  Mr Davis had been working on the side of the valley opposite to the tomb of Rameses III., where the accumulations of debris had entirely hidden the face of the rocks, and, as this was a central and likely spot for a “find,” it was hoped that when the skin of rubbish had been cleared away the entrance of at least one royal tomb would be exposed.  Of all the XVIIIth-Dynasty kings, the burial-places of only Thutmosis II., Tutankhamon, and Horemheb remained undiscovered, and the hopes of the excavators concentrated on these three Pharaohs.