A letter from Saqqara. The latest archaeological discoveries.
Since 2015, Museo Egizio has gone back to excavate in Egypt, establishing a joint mission with the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden (Netherlands), at the important site of Saqqara, the necropolis of the ancient capital, Memphis.
Saqqara occupies a vast area and includes countless monuments and archaeological remains relating to tombs, royal burial complexes, burials of high court officials and members of the social elite from various historical periods. There are also sacred areas enclosed by high walls, necropolises of mummified animals or elaborate monastic structures. One of the site's most famous monuments is the Step Pyramid of Pharaoh Djoser (3rd Dynasty), the oldest structure of this type built in stone.
Going further south, the desert plateau rises slightly and it is here that during the New Kingdom, a necropolis developed that housed the monumental tombs and burial chapels of court officials and high-ranking figures. This is precisely the area being investigated by a mission from Cairo University and the joint Dutch-Italian mission, which just a few weeks ago, announced new archaeological discoveries.
Uncover more about the archaeological excavation in Saqqara with Paolo Del Vesco, a curator at Museo Egizio and the head of the excavation, and Nicola Dell'Aquila, a photographer at Museo Egizio and on the Saqqara mission.
The area explored by recent excavations by the Museo Egizio mission, located immediately north of the tomb of Maya. Visible in the distance, to the north, is the majestic Step Pyramid of Pharaoh Djoser.
Before we get to the story of the recent discovery, we need to take a few steps back...
The exploration of Museo Egizio and the Leiden Museum focuses on the area of the necropolis that developed around the tomb of Horemheb, general of Pharaoh Tutankhamun and later pharaoh himself, and that of Maya, head of the treasury at Tutankhamun's royal court.
These are monumental tombs, given the importance of the offices of their owners, and are up to 40 or 60 metres long. After the entrance, flanked by high mud-brick walls, these tombs develop into a succession of open courtyards, columned-arcaded courts, storehouses and chapels. All of these spaces were originally covered with limestone slabs decorated in relief, placed against the walls and painted with scenes of court life, banquets, and various productions of craft. The beauty and vividness of these scenes have (at least since the early 19th century) strongly attracted the interest and greed of “seekers of antiquity” and collectors. Finally, in the centre of the innermost courtyard there is the opening of the vertical shaft leading to the underground burial chambers.
Today, however, many of these tombs are anonymous and “silent” monuments. Precisely because of the activity of 19th century “seekers of antiquity”, almost all the tombs in this area have had numerous decorated slabs and their funerary stelae removed. These were sold on the antiquities market, and as early as the 1820’s, dispersed among numerous European collections; consequently very often leaving the tombs without any inscriptions that could help us reconstruct the names and titles of their owners.
In 2017, the mission decided to move to a place that had not yet been investigated: the area north of the large tomb of Maya. In this new area of the excavation, we found the remains of three funerary chapels with traces of decoration, datable to the Ramesside period (19th – 20th Dynasty, c. 1200–1100 BCE). Although at the moment it is difficult to attribute a person’s name to these structures (the corresponding burial shafts still need to be explored), they are very important for us to understand how the area surrounding the oldest major tombs was used at that time, and therefore to try to reconstruct the history and life of the necropolis.
Then, in 2018, an incredible discovery!
The entrance to a new monumental tomb emerged from the sand. Despite our curiosity about the new structure, in 2019, the need to conduct the excavation thoroughly, led us to “prepare” the area to explore the tomb by removing considerable amounts of deposit that surrounded it.
A snapshot of exploring the narrow spaces in the underground burial chambers, reachable through the vertical burial shaft in the centre of the courtyard of the tomb of Panehsy.
In 2020, we were finally ready to excavate the new tomb, to understand how it developed and especially, to search for the name of its owner. However, the outbreak of the pandemic, suspended all activities for a good two years.
In 2022, we were finally able to return to work on the tomb, and we unearthed a columned courtyard with a pavement made of limestone blocks, a burial shaft dug into the rock to a depth of about 15 metres, which gave access to two underground burial chambers, three chapels located on the western side of the tomb (with the central one, traces of paint can still be seen), and a splendid stela with relief decoration on several registers. One of the most important results was being able to attribute the name of the owner to the structure with certainty: Panehsy, a royal scribe and superintendent of the temple of Amun, who lived in the early Ramesside period. During the excavation of the upper layers, we found a fragment of limestone where there were still remnants of an inscription with the final part of the name, but the real excitement we felt was when we saw a limestone slab slowly emerge from the sand, which was still in its original position inside the tomb and had the owner's full name - even repeated three times in successive columns.
Discovering the limestone slab inscribed with the name of the tomb's owner, Panehsy, repeated three times.
Panehsy's name means “the Nubian”, but this is not necessarily an indication of his origins. On a beautiful stela found in the tomb, this person is depicted twice: worshipping the goddess Hathor, and while receiving funerary offerings, seated next to his wife, Baia, who has the title: Singer of Amun. The name Panehsy was relatively common at the time, but this specific person in charge of the Temple of Amun was unknown to scholars... until today.
To the east of the tomb, in the area of the smaller burial chapels, two more chapels were found and for one of them, it was possible to determine the name of the owner: Yuyu, a craftsman responsible for the production of gold leaf in the pharaoh's treasury. Yuyu's chapel measures only 1m by 1.15m, but the relief decorations on the two sidewalls, some of which still retain their original colours, are quite interesting. They depict four generations of Yuyu's family, the funeral procession and the Opening of the Mouth ritual, the peak moment of the funeral, as well as scenes of worshipping the goddess Hathor, in the form of a cow, and the boat of the local god, Sokar.
Another chapel in this area, still anonymous unfortunately, shows a rare representation of the tomb owner and his family. Carved in raised relief, almost as if the figures were about to detach themselves and come out from the limestone slab. This artistic style may have been influenced by the statues (which were perhaps still visible) of the nearby tomb of Maya.
Co-directors of the joint mission, Lara Weiss and Christian Greco at work inside the chapel of Yuyu, copying and translating the hieroglyphic inscriptions with the names and titles of the owner and his family members.
Today’s archaeology aims to reconstruct the entire biography of these objects and monuments; both their first ancient life and the role they played within the ancient society that produced them, and their more recent life, being their rediscovery or their “museum” life.
The discovery of the chapel of Yuyu is an example of this. By knowing the name and titles of the owner, it was possible to conduct further research into collections around the world, to find other inscribed blocks that were originally part of the same chapel, but had been removed in the 19th century. By doing so, we found two limestone jambs that were in the collection of the Museum of Amiens in France (Musée di Picardie). Now the pieces can finally be virtually placed back in the chapel to which they belonged and interpreted with the rest of the decoration.
Video made by Nicola Dell'Aquila showing the various stages of work during a day of excavations and the important contribution of local archaeologists and workers.