고대 세계의 가장 큰 보안 실패: 왕들의 계곡에서 배우는 보안 교훈

마스터카드의 긴 연차 덕분에 (우리는 가지고 있습니다. 25 일!) I took a two week trip to Egypt earlier this month to visit a place I have always wanted to see: the burial tombs of the ancient pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings. As a security engineer, I could not help looking at these tombs as an ancient security program and as a case study on how defenses can fail over time.

Ancient Egypt left behind more artifacts than most other ancient cultures. One reason is that the Egyptians, especially their kings, were deeply focused on death and the afterlife with their physical bodies. They believed the body must be preserved (mummified) so the king could continue his journey after death and become a god! Because Egyptians invested so much in funerary goods and mummification, many objects survived at least until tomb raiders found some of them.

A brief look at the tomb of Tutankhamun (KV62) which was discovered in the early 20th century, shows what might have been placed in other royal tombs. It was one of the few royal tombs not fully looted in ancient times. It contained hundreds of kilograms of gold and many other treasures from over 3,300 years ago.

Golden Throne of Tutankhamun was found in his burial chamber by archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922

From obvious pyramids to hidden tombs

In the Old and Middle Kingdoms, kings built pyramids as burial placements. These monuments were easy to see, which also made them easy to target. Even though they used blocking stones and other tricks, many were robbed. Later, in the New Kingdom (about 3,500 years ago) pharaohs moved to a new model: security by obscurity. They saw what happened to the pyramids of their predecessors, so they chose a remote valley on the west bank of the Nile, near today’s Luxor, and dug hidden tombs into the rock. They built and isolated a workmen’s village, Deir el‑Medina, to keep the location and details secret. For about 500 years, this village produced the tombs of new pharaohs.

The Pyramid of Djoser is considered the first pyramid ever built approximately 4,700 years ago.

These tombs were essential. The dead needed their mummified body, objects, offerings, and guides like the Book of the Dead to reach Osiris and live in the afterlife. If a tomb was robbed, it was not only a material loss but it was a spiritual failure.

What I saw on my visit

I visited almost all tombs open to the public in the vally of the kings, valley of the queen, and deir-el Madinah. 흥미로운 관찰 중 하나는 서로 다른 왕들이 위험 선택을 다르게 할 수 있다는 점. 어떤 이들은 무덤을 더 접근하기 쉬운 위치에 배치했다, 내부 복잡성과 장식에 베팅했다. 다른 이들, 투트모세 3세처럼, 더 강경한 선택, 더 숨겨진 위치를 선택했다. 하지만 결국, 거의 모든 무덤은 동기 부여된 공격자들에 의해 이후 불안정 시기에 발견되어 약탈당했다. 이는 더 똑똑하고 위험을 회피하는 왕들조차도 보안 설계에 실패했다는 뜻이다. 방어가 왜 실패했는지, 그리고 어떻게 더 나아질 수 있었는지에 대한 내 견해.

내 배경에 있는 람세스의 세 번째 매장실.

왜 방어가 실패했는가

• 은밀함에 의한 보안이 주요 통제 수단이었음. 숨겨진 입구, 봉인된 문들, 그리고 외딴 계곡이 도움이 되었다, 하지만 수천 년이 걸릴 방어에는 부족했다.
• 시간이 공격자에게 유리하다 (나는 항상 고객에게 이 말을 한다!). 수세기에 걸친 것, 비밀 누출. 암석 이동. 정치적 위기는 왔다가 사라진다. 보물이 걸려 있을 때 동기는 높다.
• 뎁 있는 제한된 방어. 돌과 가짜 복도를 막는 것은 공격자를 늦추었지만 터널 파거나 내부자 우회를 막지는 못했다. 주요 방어는 은폐에 의한 보안과 추가 통제 없음.
• 내부 위협, 후기 신왕국 불안정, 인플레이션, 지연된 배급 (데이르 엘-메디나 파업) 도난과 뇌물 증가. 재판 기록에는 석공, 대장장이, 네크로폴리스 경찰, 강도에 연루된 하급 신부.
• 단일 실패 지점 신뢰받는 공동체와 함께. 너무 많은 지식과 접근성이 한 소규모에 앉아 있다, 신뢰받는 공동체. Once secrecy failed there, the whole system failed.
• No continuous monitoring or incident response was in place (very difficult to put it in place for thousands of years and more!). Painted snakes and divine guardians were symbolic, not real controls. (They had many of them on the walls and around coffins!) There were seals, but there was no sustained monitoring, patrols, or effective response over the long term.

Common security mistakes by the Pharaohs

• Controls did not match asset value. If you bury hundreds of kilograms of gold with the king, you invite extreme, persistent attacks. The defense did not match that high value.
• Over reliance on secrecy. Obscurity helped at first, but there were few layered controls after secrecy was gone.
• No least privilege! Many workers in Deir el‑Medina had broad knowledge of plans, maps, and layouts. This enabled later robberies.
  Weak access governance. Privileged access management did not exist in a modern sense. The same teams that built the tombs knew how to breach them.

How they could have improved

• Reduce attacker motivation (MOM framework: Success = motive + method + opportunity): They should not bury large amounts of gold with the body. Keep the body for the afterlife, but remove the main motive.
• If treasure must be buried, separate it from the mummy in independent, randomized chambers, far from the main burial, with anti‑tunneling features (rubble trenches, hard bedrock layers, decoy shafts).
• Add defense in depth: Multiple sealed compartments with different sealing methods and independent stone barriers.
• Physical anti‑tamper layers that make tunneling noisy, risky, and slow.
• Enforce least privilege of knowledge: Split design details so no single team knows the full layout. Rotate crews, compartmentalize tasks, and use need‑to‑know for locations of final burial chambers.
• Keep final chamber work to a very small, highly trusted team, then remove or relocate them.
• Deception: Multiple decoy chambers with convincing goods, placed early in the build so workers think the decoy is real. False burial events to create misleading oral history.