The Tomb of Aper-el (Featuring Dr. Alain Zivie)

What is Saqqara? It's a name for a huge, maybe one of the hugest of archaeological fields in the world. The real action was here and the capital was here. For me, the main discovery remains the tomb of Aper-el, his treasury, because it's a big part of all my story here. Many years of my life were devoted to this tomb, because it was so difficult to get into this room. This room was never plundered in the modern times, it was plundered only by the ancient Egyptians. These people were not looking for antiquities, which we were looking for. Antiquities, I mean, antiques. So we discovered the most ultimate, but in bad condition.

This is the goddess Nut. This is a wonderful thing, in two parts. And this is very unique: it's glass imitating the cornaline, lapis lazuli and topaz.

We discovered two cubits, what we call cubits. It's a 52 centimetres royal cubit, the 52 centimetres and 0.30. And it's a kind of object, wooden object with a lot of information, for example, the fractions: one finger, two fingers, three fingers – the division, it's a kind of size, measurement. But sometimes also the inscriptions, like this one with a lot of titles of vizier Aper-el. Like here, for example, we can see that he was – this is interesting – the irzien-nesu and jaraf. It means the two eyes of the king, messenger of the king.

In the first season or the second season we discovered in another tomb connected with the vizier's tomb, but but at that time it was not clear at all, some beautiful fragments of the New Kingdom including this spoon – a fish in ivory, ivory or bone, and painted. And it's a fantastic masterpiece of Amenhotep III – Amenhotep IV period.

This is a miracle. We discovered this head - one season later it would have disappeared because of the water, of the vestibules and everything was falling down like Niagara and everything was melted, but we discovered it in time. It's a masterpiece and I understand what it is and what it was. This head had a long neck so it was more or less like this support, and we can see some traces, it was the support of a wig, of a feminine wig. It miraculously has not been cracked, it is not cracked and is well preserved.

We are not looking for treasures, we are not looking for objects. Personally, I'm looking for history, for facts, for better understanding of this civilization, of this culture and this period. In Saqqara you can not only make discoveries of the beautiful monuments. People think it's our aim. It's a part of our aim. First aim is to discover but to preserve the heritage of Saqqara. And this is a very heavy duty. But the other most important thing for me is to make history.