Exploration of the Valley of the Kings standing for King's Valley, (although the maps show 28 entrances, some of which were unexplored). These paintings and maps were later published in 'The Topography of Thebes and General Survey of Egypt', in 1830. At the same time James Burton explored the valley. His works included making KV17 safer from flooding, although, he is better known for entering KV5. Champollion himself visited the valley along with Ippolito Rosellini and Nestor L'Hôte, in the Franco-Tuscan Expedition of 1829. The expedition spent two months studying the open tombs, visiting about 16 of them in total. They copied the inscriptions and identified the
Valley of the Kings that there are at least seven active flood stream beds leading down into the central area of the valley. This central area appears to have been flooded at the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty, with several tombs buried under metres of debris. The tombs KV63, KV62, and KV55 are dug into the actual wadi bedrock rather than the debris, showing that the level of the valley was five meters below its present level. After this event later dynasties leveled the floor of the valley, making the floods deposit their load further down the valley, and the buried tombs were forgotten