Archaeologists Discover a 4,000-Year-Old Tomb With a False Door at Egypt's Ancient Saqqara Necropolis

Archaeologists in Egypt have unearthed a door that leads nowhere and a collection of artifacts inside a high-ranking official’s 4,000-year-old tomb. These discoveries were made during excavations at Saqqara, the necropolis at the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis. The dig at the UNESCO World Heritage Site also revealed a network of burial shafts.

Although some of the shafts had been looted in antiquity, they still held human remains and funerary objects, including more than 100 faience ushabti figurines. These small statues were often placed with the deceased to work as servants for them in the afterlife. The new finds, announced last week by Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, could help researchers study how Saqqara was used across many years.

During ancient Egypt’s Old Kingdom period, which spanned from roughly 2700 to 2200 B.C.E., the necropolis was a resting place for royals and other elite figures. It remained a meaningful site during the generations that followed, and it was used for burials through the Roman era. Quick facts: Another discovery at Saqqara “Saqqara would have been the place to be seen dead in,” Campbell Price, curator of Egypt and Sudan at the Manchester Museum in England, told Smithsonian magazine’s Jo Marchant in 2021.

Hieroglyphic inscriptions reveal that it belonged to a man named Sekhentiu-Ptah. The false door was found inside this tomb, which also held an offering table and purification basin. The ancient Egyptians often believed that the deceased could use false doors to “freely enter and exit” a tomb, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The inscriptions suggest that Sekhentiu-Ptah “held several senior positions, including royal chamberlain, supervisor of the king’s works, supervisor of royal documents, priest of the goddess Maat and supervisor of scribes,” according to a statement from the ministry. Saqqara is located some 20 miles south of Cairo. Since it was first carefully studied in the 19th century, it has provided archaeologists and historians with a window into the beliefs and cultural practices of Egypt’s Old Kingdom.

This latest discovery is part of an archaeological mission to the west of Saqqara’s Bubasteion necropolis, named for the goddess Bastet. Earlier this summer, Egyptian officials also announced an initiative to accommodate an increasing number of tourists at Saqqara. Updates to access roads and infrastructure are in progress.