In the Valley of the Kings This story presents a foreboding and terror-driven psychological horror about a man who awakens in a dissheveled and abandoned building complex located on the surface of a distant planet, suffering from total amnesia and not knowing who he is or where he comes from. The eponymous and longest section of the book (deemed a novella by the author), "In the Valley of the Kings" tells the story of an obsessive Egyptologist who has discovered the most massive underground structure ever built: a giant tomb for an unnameable God-king of ancient Egypt whose powers of immortality the researcher tries to unveil,
Exploration of the Valley of the Kings first modern map of the valley itself, in 1743. In 1799, Napoleon's expedition (especially Dominique Vivant) drew maps and plans of the known tombs, and for the first time, noted the Western Valley (where Prosper Jollois and Édouard de Villiers du Terrage located the tomb of Amenhotep III, WV22). The "Description de l'Égypte" contains two volumes (out a total of 24) on the area around Thebes. European exploration continued in the area around Thebes during the 19th century, boosted by Champollion's translation of hieroglyphs early in the century. Early in the century, the area was visited by Belzoni, working for