Valley of the Kings (film) to Robert Taylor, who had successfully teamed with Parker in "Above and Beyond". Carlos Thompson played the second male lead. Charles Schnee was the supervising producer. MGM bought the rights to the archaeology text "Gods, Graves and Scholars" for "protection purposes", as it contained a chapter titled "Robbers in the Valley of the Kings", which might have been seen as having influenced the film's script. They paid a reported $25,000. Filming started in November 1953. The film was shot on location in Egypt over six weeks in Cairo, Luxor, Faiyum, Suez, the Western Desert and at the Pyramids of Giza.
Exploration of the Valley of the Kings original tomb owners. In tomb KV17, they removed wall decorations, which are now on display in the Louvre in Paris. In 1845-1846 the valley was explored by Karl Richard Lepsius's expedition; they explored and documented twenty-five in the main valley and four in the west. The second half of the century saw a more concerted effort to preserve rather than simply gathering antiquities. Auguste Mariette's Egyptian Antiquities Service started to explore the valley, first with Eugène Lefébure in 1883, then Jules Baillet and Georges Bénédite in early 1888, and finally Victor Loret in 1898 to 1899. Loret added a further