Belzoni has come back for his lamp, a hunt in Tomb of Seti I

A friendly ghost says hello.

Good evening, and welcome to the tomb of Seti I! The kind ghost on the stairs is Giovanni Battista Belzoni, a circus strongman from Padua who found this tomb in October 1817. Every night he drifts back for the things he left behind, and first he needs his light. Have a look along the painted wall beside the wooden stairs.

Down the long stairway.

Belzoni bows and floats off down the slope. The carved names on this wall belong to the king, cut into the rock to last forever, and this is the longest tomb in the whole Valley of the Kings. His rope slipped somewhere on the steep way down.

Stairs and handrails were added much later so visitors can walk the steep corridors safely.

Hall of painted pillars.

Now the walls burst into color, with the king and the gods painted on every pillar. Belzoni loved these rooms so much that he made wax impressions of the walls, and in 1821 he showed a copy of two of them at the Egyptian Hall in London. His notebook fell in the quiet side room where the walls are pale.

Something small went by.

Belzoni giggles and whispers that something with whiskers just ran past. This corridor slopes down to rooms full of square pillars under a ceiling of little stars. Head down toward where the corridor opens out.

The pillared hall at night.

These big square pillars show Seti with the gods, and the far wall carries a boat sailing through the night. The Egyptians believed the sun traveled through the underworld every night and rose again each morning. Belzoni likes to rest here, but he has mislaid his hat.

Under a painted sky.

This is the burial chamber, so look up at its vaulted ceiling painted with the stars and constellations of the night sky. Seti's coffin of white alabaster once lay here. Belzoni needs one last candle to light up this ceiling again, and it rolled back toward the pillared hall.