Category: egypt

A History of Archaeology and Excavation at Saqqara

The cemetery at Saqqara is one of the most important archaeological sites in Egypt. Over six kilometres long, it boasts thousands of underground burial sites, as well as the six-step Djoser pyramid – Egypt’s oldest pyramid.

The ruins at Saqqara have long attracted the interest of explorers, grave-robbers and local people. Travellers first reported evidence of antiquities at Saqqara in the 16th century. The Djoser Pyramid and the smaller pyramids around it were hard to miss – but the size of the necropolis only became apparent with the advent of excavations in the 19th century.

It was not until Napoleon marched into Egypt in 1798 with his conquering forces that a scientific study of the area began. One of Napoleon’s aims in ‘liberating’ Egypt was to bring modern, scientific enquiry to the study of its monuments.

The general established the Institut de l’Égypte and despatched hundreds of scientists to document Egypt’s antiquities in depth. The resulting publication, the Description of Egypt, was a lavishly produced catalogue of Ancient Egyptian sites – including Saqqara.

Enter Karl Richard Lepsius

Napoleon’s short-lived expedition was followed by a wave of antiquities dealers and thieves, who bought, sold and transported artefacts all over the world. Archaeological techniques in the early days of Egyptology were at best rudimentary and at worst destructive. In the first half of the 19th century it was common for archaeologists to dismantle whole tombs and ship them abroad.

A new era of serious archaeology began with the arrival of German archaeologist Karl Richard Lepsius, one of the founding fathers of Egyptology, who explored Saqqara in 1842. Lepsius conducted the first in-depth survey of the New Kingdom cemetery at Saqqara. In common with his ground-breaking work in Giza and Dashur, Lepsius’s discoveries paved the way for all the archaeologists that followed him.

Lepsius and his team documented and drew numerous sites that have since deteriorated or been destroyed. His detailed surveys are still used today and his cartography expanded existing geographical knowledge of Egypt.

Discovery of the Serapeum

The mastaba of Ti, discovered by Auguste Mariette at Saqqara in 1856. Image by pyramidtextsonline

In 1851, Frenchman Auguste Mariette discovered the Serapeum, an underground tomb dating back to the reign of Amenhotep III (1391 – 1353 BC). The Serapeum was the final resting place of revered Apis bulls, which were embalmed and entombed in sarcophagi.

Mariette was sent to Egypt by the Louvre on a mission to purchase Coptic manuscripts. Having had little success, Mariette developed an interest in excavations. His big break came when he stumbled across the head of a sphinx in the sands at Saqqara. This proved to one statue on an avenue of over a hundred sphinxes leading to the Serapeum – a boulevard first described by the Greek writer Strabo in the 1st century AD.

In 1851, Mariette penetrated the sealed temple. Inside, he discovered a huge gallery where bulls were buried from the 26th Dynasty up to the Ptolemaic Period. The chamber contained 24 large granite sarcophagi alongside innumerable statues and treasures.

Mariette’s remarkable find shed much light on the Apis cult and on the ancient Egyptians’ attitudes toward animals. The bulls were believed to be living incarnations of the deity Ptah, the god of creation and of craftsmen, and were treated like royalty throughout their lives.

Monastery of Apa Jeremias

In 1905 the leading British Egyptologist James Edward Quibell was appointed chief inspector at Saqqara. His major find was the discovery of the Monastery of Apa Jeremias, founded in the 5th century AD.

Many of the building materials in the monastery had been recycled from Ancient Egyptian tombs, including valuable limestone reliefs. These were transferred to Cairo Museum for display.

Step Pyramid Complex

The entrance to the step pyramid complex. Image by a rancid amoeba

Quibell’s successor, Cecil Mallaby Firth, led excavations around the Djoser Pyramid in the 1910s and 20s. Undoubtedly the jewel of the Saqqara necropolis, the pyramid was the final resting place of King Djoser (2630 – 2611BC) and was the forerunner of all the pyramids followed.

The pyramid’s revolutionary design is attributed to Imhotep, master architect, doctor, vizier and scribe. Until the Djoser pyramid, Egypt’s rulers were buried inside mastabas – essentially large stone blocks. Imhotep’s innovation was to stack mastabas of decreasing size on top of each other to form a step pyramid. The Djoser pyramid consists of six mastabas piled to a height of 62m.

Firth’s other work included excavations around the semi-destroyed Teti Pyramid. His sudden death in 1931 cut short his tenure as Inspector of Antiquities at Saqqara.

In 1926, Firth was joined by Jean-Philippe Lauer, who assisted in the excavations of the Djoser Pyramid. Remarkably, Lauer spent the next 75 years working at Saqqara, focusing on the restoration of the Step Pyramid. He died in 2001 at the age of 99.

Walter Bryan Emery

In 1935, the excavations at Saqqara fell under the oversight of the Liverpool-born Egyptologist Walter Bryan Emery. Among his major discoveries at Saqqara was tomb S3357. The oldest tomb at Saqqara, S3357 is associated with King Aha, one of the first pharaohs – although researchers believe he may have been buried elsewhere.

The Second World War placed a temporary halt on all work in Egypt. After the war and a spell in the diplomatic service, Emery returned to Saqqara. In 1964, whilst searching for the tomb of Imhotep, he discovered a huge animal necropolis. This ‘mummified zoo’ consisted of thousands of preserved animals including ibis, hawks, baboons, dogs, cats and cows.

The Lost Pyramid of Sekhemkhet

In 1951, an Egyptian archaeologist by the name of Zakaria Goneim found the unfinished pyramid of Djoser’s successor, Sekhemkhet, to the southwest of the Djoser pyramid.

Only the first step of the pyramid – rising to around seven metres – was completed before the pharaoh’s death. Nonetheless, Goneim found evidence that the pyramid had been used as a burial chamber and had not been disturbed for over 4,000 years.

Experts believe that, if completed, the pyramid would have been a larger and more ambitious version of the Djoser Pyramid. The similarities in design to the early pyramid and graffiti found at the site indicate that Imhotep was also responsible for Sekhemkhet’s tomb.

HD Video: The Unfinished Step Pyramid of Sekhemkhet in Saqqara:

Modern Excavations

Hieroglyphs at Saqqara. Image by Charlie Phillips

Teams of international architects have been working at Saqqara for decades. French archaeologists under Jean-Philippe Lauer and Jean Leclant have continued to document and survey the pyramids at Saqqara. They have also dedicated themselves to studying and translating pyramid texts – funerary inscriptions found on the walls inside the Saqqara monuments.

Since 1980 Frenchman Alain Zivie has been exploring New Kingdom tombs at Saqqara. In 1996 he discovered the tomb of Netjerwymes, a trusted messenger and adviser to Rameses II. Ongoing work at the site has uncovered a beautifully preserved chapel containing prized reliefs and inscriptions.

In the 1980s, a team from Cairo University tapped a vein of New Kingdom tombs near the Monastery of Apa Jeremias. Between 1984 and 1988 Sayed Tewfik uncovered the tombs of 35 royal servants including viziers, treasurers and butlers. A more recent expedition has uncovered several significant tombs dating from the reign of Rameses II.

Another team from Macquarie University in Australia has been working at Saqqara in conjunction with the Supreme Council of Antiquities. Their excavations have focused on the Old Kingdom tombs around the Teti Pyramid.

In 1987, the Polish archaeologist Karol Myśliwiec dug three trial pits to the west of the Djoser Pyramid. This sand-blown area had previously been neglected by researchers at Saqqara. Myśliwiec’s work indicated that the western portion of the necropolis was equally rich in buried treasures. A joint Polish-Egyptian expedition with archaeologists from Warsaw University has been working at a concession in this area since 1996.

Dutch Excavations at Saqqara

Dutch archaeologists have been active in Saqqara since 1975. The team initially set out to find the tomb of Maya, treasurer and adviser to Tutankhamum, by following directions left by Lepsius over a century earlier.

Lepsisus’s descriptions proved somewhat inaccurate. However, the team struck gold with the discovery of the tomb built by General Horemheb when he was still military leader under Tutankhamun. After the boy king’s death, Horemheb became pharaoh and was buried in the Valley of Kings.

Maya’s burial chamber was eventually uncovered in 1986, but the Dutch team continued to excavate at Saqqara, focusing on the area around the tomb of Horemheb.

Recent Developments at Saqqara

Despite over 150 years of digging, Saqqara remains one of the most fertile grounds for archaeologists working in Egypt. Experts predict there could be hundreds, even thousands of tombs and burial chambers still to be uncovered. The Dutch expedition alone estimates it will need another 25 years to study its concession in depth.

Archaeologist Vassil Dobrev is currently scouring the necropolis searching for the lost tomb of the Pharoah Userkare.

ArchaeoVideo: The Hunt for the lost Pharao Userkare

Saqqara hit the headlines again in October 2009 with the news that the Supreme Council of Antiquities had banned the Louvre from conducting any further work at the necropolis. The dispute centres over five stolen artefacts allegedly sold to the museum in 1980. The Louvre agreed to return the disputed objects.

It is not the first time Egyptian authorities have attempted to assert their claim over objects removed illegally from the country. Egypt has suspended co-operation with the St Louis Art Museum in the United States after it refused to return the mask of Ka-Nefer-Nefer. The mask was discovered at Saqqara in 1952 and was apparently stolen in 1959. The hotly-disputed Bust of Nefertiti still remains in Berlin’s Neues Museum, despite pressure from Egypt to return it.

Two hundred years on from Napoleon’s expedition and the riches of Saqqara remain hotly contested. Archaeologists hope that the necropolis still has many more treasures to yield.

Exclusive Interview: Dr David O’Connor on the Abydos Expedition

On September 19, 2009, the American Research Center in Egypt, Pennsylvania Chapter (ARCE-PA) held its symposium on the joint Expedition to Abydos, Egypt, fielded by the University of Pennsylvania, Yale University, and New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. This long-term project based in Egypt’s most ancient royal burial grounds includes some of the most prominent Egyptologists in the field today—Dr. David O’Connor, Dr. Matthew Adams, Dr. Janet Richards, Dr. Josef Wegner, and Dr. Stephen Harvey.

I was able to reach Dr. O’Connor prior to the symposium for an exclusive interview. Dr. O’Connor offered his experience and insights on such subjects as the Cult of Osiris, royal mortuary chapels, and the role of human sacrifice in early royal burials.

HK: Dr. O’Connor, can you tell us a little bit about Abydos and the Pennsylvania-Yale-Institute of Fine Arts Expedition there?

DO: It was something that actually began, or was set up, in the late 60’s. In those days it was just Pennsylvania and Yale in combination. We focused on the site of Abydos because, although it had been explored by earlier archaeologists, there hadn’t been any work there since the 1930’s. The earlier excavations had kind of raised more problems and mysteries than they had solved. They discovered and revealed a lot but they didn’t really follow up on their discoveries.

We felt this was a major site that still had a great deal to offer, and a very rich variety of archaeological situations, from tombs to temples and towns to just about every kind of archaeological format you can imagine. So we initiated this project which has been active at Abydos ever since, and will probably continue to be into the future.

The Abydos project was joined by the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University in 1995, and in fact I teach at NYU now, but I’m still connected to Penn. Other institutions have also become involved in excavations at Abydos, linked up with our general project. University of Michigan, Brown University, and some others are also active there now. But loosely speaking, it’s a kind of unitary project divided up into many sections now.

The project has generated just a wonderful bunch of younger archaeologists who have developed projects of their own at Abydos under the mentoring of myself and my co-Director [Dr. William] Kelly Simpson who is at Yale. It’s generated an enormous range of activities and hugely productive new discoveries about the site.

HK: Long before there was Osiris, there was another god who was associated with Abydos— Khentimentiu. What can you tell us about the older god and the transition to Osiris?

The temple at Abydos. Image by Vyacheslav Argenberg

DO: Abydos is a very interesting place because it has been known for a long time, even amongst writers of the Greek and Roman period who wrote about Egypt, that Abydos was the major cult center for the god Osiris. Then, in the early years of the 20^th century, archaeologists discovered that Abydos’ history went back much earlier and that in the northern part of the site there is a burial ground that was intended for Egypt’s earliest kings.

Kings of the first and second dynasties were only buried at Abydos, not anywhere else. So this was a very exciting discovery. And we also know from inscriptional evidence that at that time, in the early period, the god of Abydos was not Osiris, but was this god Khentimentiu. And that continued throughout the Old Kingdom, the principal god was Khentimentiu. Osiris only became associated with Abydos about 2000 BC, and from that point on Osiris was the dominant god.

HK: What are the earliest burials you have found at Abydos?

DO: Well, there is a mixed answer to that. We are not specifically looking in the early royal burial ground. There is work being undertaken there by a German archaeological project, and they have discovered royal tombs that are even earlier than the First and Second Dynasties. That was a very exciting development.

Our project has been involved with similarly early monuments at Abydos because for each of the early kings who were buried at Abydos, far out in the desert close to the floodplain, very large enclosures were built, each one containing a chapel for a king’s mortuary cult. So they’re separate from the tombs, but they are still linked to the tombs. These [enclosures] were very poorly understood, and so our project has been discovering a great deal more about them over the last ten years as we’ve been excavating them.

The single most spectacular discovery was that, next to one of these enclosures, a whole fleet of early boats had been buried. Presumably they were intended to pass into the afterlife to serve the needs of the dead king to whom the enclosure was dedicated, but they literally are full-size wooden boats. In fact, they are the earliest complete boats ever discovered in the world, so they are really quite important from a number of different perspectives. That was a particularly spectacular discovery.

But in addition to [enclosures] that had been located by earlier excavators we’ve located a number of additional ones, which are much earlier ones and were not known of before. So we’ve added significantly to those enclosures.

HK: What can you tell us about the human sacrifices made during the mortuary rituals?

Pillars at the tomb of Seti I. Image by Vyacheslav Argenberg

DO: Well, the early royal tombs at Abydos, the tombs of the First Dynasty, they had arranged around them many, many small graves, sometimes hundreds of them. These seem to have been for individual courtiers and servants who were going to follow the dead king into the afterlife. And there were also similar graves around the royal enclosures that were built at the same time, but some distance away.

There has always been a debate as to whether these hundreds of people were killed at the time of the king’s burial and buried then, or whether they all died natural deaths and were buried at different points in time around the royal monument. We’ve discovered pretty good archaeological evidence related to the way in which these graves were roofed, you know, covered up. We discovered that they were all roofed at the same time, and so everyone must have died at the same time, which would be a good indication that they were actually ritually killed at the time of the king’s burial.

I don’t think, by the way, that this would have been seen as a horrible imposition, I think the Egyptians at that time would have considered it a privilege to have immediately followed the king into the afterlife.

HK: Is there any indication of when the practice ended?

DO: Yes, it seems to end pretty much at the end of the First Dynasty. After that we don’t have any evidence for that kind of a custom in Egypt at all.

HK: Is there any evidence as to why they may have ended the practice?

DO: No, we only know that it’s an archaeological fact. What we can see is that over the course of the First Dynasty the numbers of sacrificial burials went down quite a lot. So you start off with hundreds for each king early in the dynasty, and by the time you get to the end of the dynasty we’re talking about 20 or 30 sacrificial burials. So it was a declining practice, and then from the end of the First Dynasty it was no longer continued.

I think it’s going to continue to be one major discovery after another at Abydos for as long as work goes on.

HK: Any hints of what we might expect from the Abydos excavations in the near future?

DO: Lots and lots more. We have been talking about the early period discoveries, but I and the other excavators that are working Abydos have also made a lot of discoveries about later periods. You know, the Middle Kingdom, the New Kingdom, all kinds of important things that we’ll be talking about at this symposium. I think it’s going to continue to be one major discovery after another at Abydos for as long as work goes on.

HK: Is there anything you would like to tell us about your book, Abydos: Egypt’s First Pharaohs and the Cult of Osiris?

DO: Yes, run out and buy it, that’s what I want to tell you! The book is really quite important because it is really the first full-length book written about Abydos. There haven’t really been any books, even though the study of Abydos has been going on for 150 years and many archaeologists have worked there. And of course the other thing is that it covers all the archaeological projects and discoveries that have been going on at Abydos over the last 20 years, as well as the earlier work.

So really I hope that it will help to put Abydos much more visibly on the archaeological map in Egypt. Everyone who is interested in Egypt recognizes that Abydos is a very important site, but I think the full impact of its archaeology hasn’t been appreciated before, and I’m quite hoping this book will help to do that.

HK: Do you have any plans for any future books?

DO: About Abydos, I have to say that a future book would be a good idea, because discoveries are being made all the time and I had to keep rewriting parts of my book as something new would happen! Even now, a little bit of it is now out of date because of more recent discoveries. I’m hoping that maybe in another ten, fifteen years there’ll be yet another big book about Abydos and that will be written by one of these younger archaeologists who are now active at the site.

HK: What advice would you give current students of archaeology and anthropology who might be interested in working at Abydos?

DO: Well, the thing is that now most of Abydos has been divided up into concessions that are assigned to specific institutions. Permission to work in Egypt comes from the Egyptian authorities, the Supreme Council of Antiquities, and what they do is allocate a particular site to an institution that wants to work there.

So we have these various institutions—Penn, Yale, the Institute of Fine Arts, Brown University, University of Michigan, plus the German Archaeological Institute—and the result is that we pretty much already cover the entire area of Abydos. And we are regarded by the Egyptians as the institutions responsible for its excavation. So I think that there isn’t much opportunity for additional archaeological work in Abydos except within the framework of the institutions that are already working there.

And we have done that. We’ve facilitated, for example, a Paleolithic survey carried out at Abydos by the University of Pennsylvania, and we’ve facilitated other work that goes on there. But it all has to be channeled through the institutions that are already active there.

On the other hand, Abydos is a site that is very accessible to visitors. Anyone who is interested in going to see the monuments there and the archaeology there, if you are visiting Egypt, it’s pretty easy to do. It involves a long taxi ride, or a long bus ride to get to the site, but once you are there you can visit most aspects of it.

HK: So a student who wants to get involved with the digs at Abydos would have to go through the institutions that are already working there, right?

DO: Yes, I would say that anybody who wanted to develop a career working at Abydos these days really should be a student at one of the involved institutions, of which there are many. There are a lot of different programs which a student could enroll in and have an expectation of eventually being able to work at Abydos and maybe develop a project of interest of their own there.

HK: One final question. What impact do you feel your work has on the cross cultural dialogue in particular, and world peace in general?

DO: Well, that’s a good question. I think there are a couple of answers to that. One is that I feel we are certainly contributing to an international understanding of the richness and diversity of ancient cultures, whether they are in Egypt, or Mesopotamia, or Mesoamerica, or whatever it might be, and how much we all share in the heritage of these early cultures. And I think that does contribute to the sense that there is a global community of interest in what happened in the past. And internationally that interest is shared everywhere. Insofar as we bring out important new information and insights about Abydos we are contributing to that.

I think the other important thing is that we are also contributing more specifically to the revelation and the preservation of Egypt’s cultural heritage. And of course in many ways that’s a global resource also. All across the world people are fascinated by ancient Egypt, and many tourists visit Egypt. And we are not only exploring Abydos, we are actively working with the Supreme Council of Antiquities to conserve the major monuments and to protect the site from intrusion from modern farms and villages and things of this kind. There is a lot of pressure for new land in Egypt, which is understandable, but the important sites have got to be protected from that, and we’re very actively engaged in that. So I think our work really does have some important global dimensions to it.