Geo-Environmental Monitoring and 3D Finite Elements Stability Analysis for site Investigation of Horemheb Tomb (Kv57), Luxor, Egypt
Authors: Hemeda Sayed 
Published: August 2020

The Valley of the Kings (KV) is a UNESCO world heritage site with more than thirty opened tombs. Recently, most of these tombs have been damaged and inundated after 1994 flood. The Pharaonic rock-cut tombs at the valley of kings at the west bank of Luxor, were excavated mainly in the lower member I of the Thebes Limestone Formations and Esna shale Formations. These underground structures show serve degrees of damage and disintegration of supporting rock pillars, sidewalls and ceilings. In order to understand the Geo-environmental impact mainly the past flash floods in particularly the 1994 flood due to the intensive rainfall storm on the valley of kings and the long-term rock mass behavior under geostatic stresses in selected Horemheb tomb (KV57) and its impact on past failures and current stability, Remote sensing, GIS, LIDAR, 3D finite element stability analysis and rock mass quality assessments had been carried out using advanced methods and codes. Geo-environmental monitoring and numerical analysis play an important role in the tunneling and underground works, especially for archaeological underground structures are subjected to large initial stresses and high overburden geostatic stresses. These conditions yield non-reversible deviatoric shear and creep strains that develop during time at constant stress and eventually increasing the rate of strain, namely the secondary and tertiary creep stages. Neglecting time effects may lead to incorrect evaluation of deformation, which may impact the criteria for selection of proper design. In order to describe the deformation in underground structures in the valley of kings, various approaches have been established based on analytical, empirical and numerical methods. It is clear that the tomb of Horemheb (KV57) is much more susceptible to surcharge geostatic loading from the overburden rock strata, rock bursting, and structural damage of support pillars and walls induced to the water and past/recent flash floods impacts caused by heavy rain in the Valley. Since some of this tomb also makes contact with the underlying shale layers, that have high activity and the potential for swelling and shrinkage under changing moisture conditions.Our work provides environmental satellite space views via landviewer EOS Platform with passive and active sensors which includes the NDVI, SAVI, ARVI, GCI, NBR, NDSI, LIDAR images, Terrain DEM Digital Elevation Models, 3D geological maps. In other hand experimental and Numerical geotechnical evaluations and modeling of the rock mass of these underground structures and their surroundings have been executed. We estimated the rock mass quality of the different members within the Thebes limestone and Esna shale formations using the mechanical testing and Rock Mass Rating (RMR), rock quality system (Q-system) and Geological Strength Index (GSI) systems.Our analyses show that the KV57 rock- cut tomb at Luxor has been cut into poor to very poor quality marl shale masses. Rock failures of ceilings and pillars were frequently facilitated by local, unfavorably oriented persistent discontinuities, such as tension cracks and faults. Other failures were related to the disintegration of the marl limestone and Esna shale Formations into individual nodules upon weathering. Our data suggest that, in ancient Egypt monumental tomb construction, low-strength rock masses rarely resulted in modifications of the planned tomb design in order to minimise the risk of rock falls and to prevent collapses. The current flood protection measures are not enough. For this two following measures are proposed 1- to rise the current wall by 50cm. 2- to fill the depression by reshaping bathymetry.