Archaeologists from the University of Warsaw have found a tomb in the Saqqara necropolis. So far, there is not much news either. What is surprising about this case is that the tomb belonged to a high official in charge of keeping the secret documents in the royal chancery during the reign of the first pharaohs of the Sixth Dynasty (around 2300 BC).
Most archaeologists consider this stage to be the last phase of the Ancient Kingdom of Egypt. The kings of this period ruled from Memphis. Teti was the founder of a dynasty that includes Pepy II, the pharaoh who supposedly ruled for 94 years (evidently the longest reign in Egyptian history).
The tomb of this official was discovered during an expedition by the Polish Center for Mediterranean Archeology in autumn 2021 in which it was excavated inside the Dry Moat that surrounds the Step Pyramid complex of King Djoser, to the west of the mausoleum of Vizier Merefnebef.
During fieldwork the facade of a tomb chapel was unearthed. It is decorated with reliefs that represent the person buried in the place. “The dignitary bore the name of Mehtjetju and was, among other things, an official with access to the sealed royal documents, that is to say sacred. He was an inspector of the royal estate and a priest of the mortuary cult of King Teti”, explains Professor Kamil O. Kuraszkiewicz, director of the expedition.
“This means that (this official) most likely lived during the reigns of the first three rulers of the Sixth Dynasty: Teti (reigned 2323-2291 BC), Userkare (2291-2289 BC), and Pepi I (king between 2289 and 2255 BC), and therefore almost at the same time as Merefnebef”, adds the Egyptologist. Merefnebef was the chaty (highest official) during Userkara’s reign and fell out of favor with Pepi I.
Kuraszkiewicz considers that Mehtjetju’s high social position enabled him to hire skilled craftsmen to build his own tomb, as the reliefs on the facade betray an exceptionally skilled hand. The elegance of the lines and the subtlety of the modeling rival the best reliefs from the tomb of the vizier Merefnebef.
Even so, the rock in which the chapel was carved is very brittle and erodes easily, so as soon as it came to light it required the immediate intervention of the conservators. What the archaeologists did not find was polychromy on the façade. “It is possible that it was never created because the decoration of the chapel was not completed,” they say.
“The side walls of the entrance have no relief decoration, just figures painted in black ink on lime plaster,” adds Professor Kuraszkiewicz. These sketches were probably intended to serve as a draft for the carving of the reliefs. The sketches represent the sacrificial animals: cows, oryxes and ibexes.
The incomplete decoration, however, does not mean that Mehtjetju was not buried in his tomb. “If he hadn’t been buried here, the mausoleum would most likely have been occupied by someone else. The decoration is unfinished probably because the investor died before the work was finished and was buried in the hastily finished tomb”, concludes the researcher.
Specialists from the University of Warsaw plan to explore the interior of space on their next visit to the Saqqara necropolis, in the fall of this year 2022.
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