The cemetery occupies a group of desert wadis in the Theban necropolis, southwest of the Valley of the Kings. Its tombs are identified by QV numbers, a modern system used to catalogue the burials. The surrounding landscape matters as much as the entrances: paths connected burial places with the workmen's settlement of Deir el-Medina, while shrines and temporary working areas formed part of the wider funerary environment. Modern descriptions can give different totals because they count different areas. Getty's project described 91 tombs in the main valley, while its 2006-2009 assessment covered 111 tombs across the main and subsidiary valleys. Those figures are survey scopes, not evidence that a numbering system had suddenly passed one hundred through a series of new discoveries.

The earliest burials were not confined to queens. Officials and other members of the royal circle used the area before it developed into a principal burial place for royal wives and children. One important early burial is that of Princess Ahmose in QV47. Museo Egizio dates material from her burial to the late Seventeenth Dynasty, around 1540 BCE, placing it near the transition into the New Kingdom. Many Eighteenth Dynasty tombs were comparatively simple shafts and chambers rather than the extensive painted interiors familiar from later royal burials. This development should not be mistaken for a ranking of how much the dead were loved. Tomb form reflected changing practices, resources and social position, and the surviving remains are also shaped by robbery and reuse.

The Nineteenth Dynasty brought a more prominent role for the burials of royal wives. Sitre, the wife of Ramesses I, was associated with QV38, and members of the family of Ramesses II received tombs in the valley. Passages and chambers could be decorated with religious texts and scenes that placed their owners in the company of protective gods. These were not simply painted rooms intended to resemble a comfortable house. Their imagery served the burial's religious purpose, presenting the deceased as able to pass through danger and enter a transformed existence. The valley therefore offers a record of royal relationships alongside a record of funerary belief. Names, titles and scenes have to be read together rather than assuming that every numbered tomb belonged to a queen.

Nefertari's tomb, QV66, is the best-known example. Ernesto Schiaparelli's Italian mission discovered it in 1904, bringing its richly painted chambers to international attention. The surviving decoration shows the queen in a religious world of gods, offerings and the journey beyond death. Its importance does not depend on proving that she was Egypt's most beloved queen or that its paintings were gentler than those made for kings. The evidence is the monument itself: a carefully prepared royal tomb whose colour, inscriptions and compositions preserve a distinctive funerary programme. Its fame also creates a misleading impression of the whole cemetery, because many nearby tombs survive in a much more damaged or fragmentary condition.

The Twentieth Dynasty tombs make the presence of princes especially clear. QV55 belonged to Amenherkhepeshef, a son of Ramesses III, and its scenes show the king accompanying the prince before deities. Nearby QV44 belonged to another son, Khaemwaset, while QV43 was associated with Sethherkhepeshef. These tombs preserve religious programmes in which the royal father helps present his son to the divine world. The Khaemwaset of QV44 must not be confused with the earlier son of Ramesses II who inspired the Setne tales. The identity of a tomb owner depends on family, title and date as well as a familiar name. The accompanying king and prince make the family relationship part of the religious programme, joining royal parentage with the hope of protection beyond death.

Burial was not the final chapter. Tombs were robbed, reused and altered, and later activity left traces that belong to the site's history rather than standing outside it. Archaeologists reconstruct these changes from disturbed objects, architectural modifications and surviving inscriptions. Modern work has likewise involved more than opening sealed entrances. Schiaparelli's mission documented tombs and recovered material now preserved in museum collections, while later teams expanded the study of the valley and its surrounding wadis. The result is a record assembled from many kinds of evidence: a painted wall, a fragment of burial cloth, a photograph taken during excavation, or a plan showing how one space was entered from another. Each source preserves something different, and none alone supplies the complete history of a burial.

Conservation is essential to that record. The Egyptian Antiquities Organisation and the Getty Conservation Institute worked on Nefertari's tomb from 1986 to 1992, studying and treating its fragile wall paintings. The problems included the condition of the rock and plaster, salts and earlier damage; reducing the story to visitors' breath would miss much of the evidence. A later Getty project, conducted from 2006 to 2011, assessed the wider valley and developed conservation and management proposals addressing tomb conditions, flooding and visitor use. The preservation of the cemetery is therefore not one completed rescue but a continuing responsibility. Protecting an image means understanding the materials that carry it, the water and salts that threaten it, and the consequences of allowing people to enter the space.