Saqqara New Kingdom Tombs
The area of desert which stretches southwards from the causeway of the Pyramid of Unas at North Saqqara had been neglected as an important source of archaeological interest since Karl Lepsius recorded a few standing monuments there in 1843. By the 20th century these had disappeared and there were no visible structures remaining, until British archaeologist Geoffrey Martin noticed some large rectangular depressions in the sand and the presence of a few worked pieces of stone scattered here and there.
Early explorers had collected many New Kingdom antiquities from Saqqara,
which eventually found their way into museums around the world,
although their precise provenance was usually unknown. Thebes had been
the royal necropolis for most of the New Kingdom Period, with members of
the Theban elite being buried in tombs on the West Bank near their
pharaohs. Memphis took second place as the country’s capital, but was
still the centre of administration for the whole of Egypt and the
officials and functionaries who lived around the palaces and religious
institutions were for the most part buried in the Saqqara necropolis.
Dr Martin, who had been working at the Saqqara animal necropolis
during the 1960s, decided to investigate the area south of the causeway.
In 1975, armed with an old map drawn by Lepsius’s surveyor, he formed a
joint expedition of the Egyptian Exploration Society and Leiden Museum
to begin a search for the tomb of Maya, overseer of Tutankhamun’s
treasury during Dynasty XVIII. What he in fact found was not Maya’s
tomb. The team missed Maya’s monument by a matter of metres and in the
event came down upon an even greater prize – the lost tomb of
Tutankhamun’s regent, General Horemheb.Subsequent seasons were spent investigating the areas adjacent to Horemheb’s monument, which is probably the most important of the New Kingdom tombs in the necropolis. More tombs of the period were found and in 1986 Dr Martin’s original aim was achieved with the discovery of the tomb of Maya through the tomb-shaft of an adjacent structure. The Saqqara New Kingdom tombs, unlike their Theban counterparts, generally consist of free-standing tomb-chapels, in effect miniature temples, above a complex of funerary chambers hewn out of the rock which are accessible through deep shafts. The chapel walls were decorated with limestone reliefs, colourfully painted on plaster. The tombs can be divided into three main types of construction – a simple single-roomed chapel; a cult-room flanked by chapels and an open courtyard; and a more complex ‘temple tomb’ reserved for the highest of the elite.
The New Kingdom necropolis has provided a rich source of information about the citizens of Memphis and their families during this period and has been the cause of much excitement among archaeologists and students of Egyptology. Several other teams have since conducted excavations in the area. Between 1977 and 1988 a University of Cairo team directed first by Soad Maher, then by Sayed Tawfik uncovered rows of important tombs along the eastern edge of the necropolis, excavating around 35 tombs in the area of the Monastery of Apa Jeremias. Since the 1980s the Mission Archeologique Francais du Bubastieion under the direction of Alain Zivie have been working to clear the tomb of Aper-el, the Vizier of Lower Egypt under Amenhotep III and Akhenaten whose rich burial was discovered by Zivie in 1987. The Royal Museum of Ontario have also been working towards the documentation of all objects from Saqqara which are scattered around the world, providing a context for the numerous artefacts which have until now had no provenance. Archaeologists of the Leiden Expedition are also still continuing to clear the tombs of Memphis high officials.
The following is a brief description of New Kingdom tombs found since 1975, in chronological order of their discovery or clearance.
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