Exactly there, in the area so far neglected by archaeologists, by some perceived even as a dumping site or a quarry of stone for the royal necropolis, the Polish mission, representing the Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology of the Warsaw University, established by Prof. Kazimierz Michalowski and today bearing his name, started its excavations in 1987. Three small trial pits made at three various points of that area convinced us that an important part of the Memphite necropolis extends at the western side of the Djoser's pyramid. It contains burials of various epoques, from the beginning of the 3rd millennium B.C. until the Byzantine Period.  There are numerous shafts hewn in the rock and leading to subterranean funerary chambers, as well as mummies and cartonnages deposited in the sand.

Particularly interesting and mysterious were the discoveries in the trench nearest to the Djoser pyramid, ca. 100 m. to its west. Running parallel to the pyramid, there is a broad wall constructed of irregular stone slabs joined with mud mortar. Its upper part, dismantled already in antiquity, consisted of a layer of mud bricks. By whom and why? The wall put on a levelled rock surface betrays a structure from early dynastic times. Its date is also evidenced by the pottery found in the strata of sand and stone rubble on both sides of the wall. A diagnostic feature in this context are faience tiles with blue-glazed surface - resembling those found on some walls in subterranean galleries of the Djoser pyramid. Such finds inevitably raise the question whether we are dealing with the superstructure of a tomb belonging to a nobleman from the times of the Djoser or, perhaps, even a westward extension of the funeral complex of that ruler.

The research on this site could be resumed in 1996 and was continued in
subsequent years as a joint Polish-Egyptian project. Our attention concentrat-
ed entirely on the trial-pit, in which the mysterious wall had been unearthed.
Enlarging this excavation toward the south we were surprised by the fact that
the wall turns at the right angle in the direction of the pyramid. That preludes a direct connection of the wall with Djoser's funerary complex. Such a structure would unlikely mark the western border of that enclosure. It turned out that the wall surrounds a court, which constitutes the superstructure of an important tomb. Whose?

The answer to that question required patience. In order to find an entrance to the tomb, we had to expand the excavation further eastwards, i.e. in the direction of the pyramid, where the deposits of sand and stone rubble covering ancient constructions became higher and higher. They could not be explored mechanically, because they contained numerous burials from the Greco-Roman period that had to be carefully documented before being removed. These were not only mummies buried in the sand or skeletons laid on and covered with mats, but also bodies wrapped in cartonnages that bear a rich polychromy and are partly gilded. Such plaster-cases were usually closed in simple coffins. One of the coffins, made of terracotta, is anthropoidal in its shape and a human face is modelled in relief on its lid.

At the bottom of the trench we reached a levelled rock covered with a thick layer of mud, containing many tiny fragments of animal bones. On the surface of the mud "floor" there are many round red spots with black interior - remains of ritual fires, which bear witness to religious ceremonies related to the cult of the dead. That platform hewn in the rock and bordered with a wall may surmount subterranean galleries containing burials and their funerary outfit.

In order to get there, one had to find the entrance. That required a further enlargement of our excavation towards Djoser's pyramid. But there, another a surprise waited for us. While exploring late burials in the upper stratum, we suddenly struck a thick layer of mud brick, which, as it turned out, belonged to a gigantic vault covering a thick layer of stone slabs. Irregular in their shape and varied in their size, those slabs were undoubtedly deposits of local stone left by craftsmen hewing funerary shafts in the vicinity of the pyramid. They form of a "curtain" covering a place that had to be camouflaged. The layer of stones was set on the bottom of two pits hewn in the rock, separated by a rock shelve running directly towards the pyramid. But these "pits" end only 1.40 m below the surface of the primeval court. How far westwards and northwards did they reach? Where did they lead to?

That question remained unanswered until the next campaign. Further parts of those structures were covered with even higher layers of sand and rubble that accumulated in later times. Some facts, however, became evident already at that stage. The eastern part of the court of an earlier tomb had been brutally destroyed for the construction of a new one, undoubtedly for another important official. Irregular, extremely rough hewing of the rock along the edge that became the border between the earlier court and the two pits of later date testifies to the usurper's lack of respect for an older sepulchre. Who could be audacious enough to partially destroy and usurp a tomb of an eminent figure, perhaps even a ruler, from earlier times?

Multiple potsherds found in the layer covering that structure testify that the usurpation should have occurred as early as in the Old Kingdom, i.e. in the second half of 3rd millennium B.C. Even more surprising appears the fact that the tomb of the usurper was walled up and hidden shortly after construction. It seems that many bricks used for the camouflage came from the dismantled upper part of the wall surrounding the earlier court. Who did wall up the later tomb and for what reason?

That question remained open for yet another year, until our excavations in autumn 1997. The eastern border of the area to be explored during that campaign was set 10 meters further towards the Djoser's pyramid. Already the first minutes of our work brought to light a row of large limestone blocks extending from north to south, just under today's surface of earth. It clearly formed a border of a monumental architecture. Its northern part is paralleled by a mud-brick wall, constituting the eastern border of a rectangular court. Like two lateral walls bordering the court to the north and south, it has characteristic external face with recesses, covered with a thick layer of mud and a
thin layer of whitewash. Founded on clay pugging which rests on a deep layer of rock rubble, those walls surround a space tightly filled with splinters of local rock. The surface of that filling, sloping westwards, was also covered by a layer of mud, remains of which are still visible at the edge of the walls. The whole structure has been thus engineered as a thick cover sealing the court from above.

At the northern edge of the court, on the bottom of the rubble filling, a rectangular surface of pure sand came to light below that cover. Its southern edge was marked by remains of a few mummies and skeletons resting on stones, which turned out to be the top edge of a large funerary shaft. The superstructure of the latter is built of large, irregular blocks of stone. Further down, the shaft is hewn in the rock. Square in its cross-section, the shaft was filled with fine-grained sand. Each of its sides is 2.30 m. long, which enabled lowering of a large sarcophagus in a horizontal position down to the burial chamber. The exploration of the shaft was continued simultaneously with the dismantling of the mysterious "curtain" some meters further to the west.

It became clear that that huge agglomerate of stone and brick was supposed to hide the entrance to a rock-hewn chapel of the Old Kingdom. We slowly unearthed its magnificent facade decorated with hieroglyphic inscriptions. Those inscriptions enabled us to identify the usurper who lived at the end of the Old Kingdom. He turned out to be a vizier - the most important figure in pharaonic Egypt after the king himself- whose name was Meref-nebef. He also had two other names: the "beautiful name" Fefi and the "great name" Unasankh. Already these names revealed the date of the tomb. The latter name contains that of the last king of the 5th dynasty, Unas, while the former one resembles the name of the first ruler of the next dynasty, Teti. The hieroglyphic inscription sculptured on the internal lintel of that beautiful faqade informs
that the vizier Fefi was i.a. a priest connected with the pyramid of king Teti. Erected on the other side of Djoser's pyramid, i.e. to its north-west, the pyra mid of that pharaoh has survived until our times. As the pyramid of Unas, the former of the two kings related to our vizier, stands on the other, south-west ern side of the Djoser's pyramid, it is easy to understand the location of the  vizier's tomb between the funerary monuments of these two pharaohs.

The funerary chapel of the vizier is small, but remarkable in its extremely rich and fine decoration. This rectangular room is 6.46 m. long (north-south) and 2.43 m. wide (east-west). One can enter it through a passage in the middle of its western wall, from a small court located 1.40 m. below the court of the earlier tomb. The surprisingly narrow entrance (0.60 m. wide) forms the axis of a majestic facade, shaped as a rock-hewn niche 5.89 m. long. The niche is 0.68-0.72 m. wide and 2.47 m. high. Its fronton is capped with an exterior architrave on which the titles of the deceased are hewn in sunk-relief. The ceiling of the niche, extending between the two architraves is painted in red and thus imitates granite, a stone much harder that the soft and friable limestone, in which the stone cutters were to hew the tomb for the vizier.

The "internal architrave", a long rectangular panneau with four lines of hieroglyphic inscription containing precious information, fills the space between the ceiling and the top of the entrance, along the whole frontal wall. Each line ends with one of the three names of the deceased. The name Meref-nebef is mentioned twice, in the upper and lower register. The inscription on the lintel constitutes a kind of an ideal biography of the deceased, similar to the ones decorating facades of other tombs of noblemen from that period. On the northern side, the panneau ends with a "visit card" of the deceased, which is a rectangle containing, besides the image of the vizier and one of his sons, a short text enumerating some functions of the deceased, especially those connected with the pyramid of the pharaoh Teti.

The style of the hieroglyphs sculptured on the "internal architrave" differs from that of the large-size signs hewn in the rock on the "external architrave". The form of those signs reminds one of the Pyramid Texts, the oldest Work of Egyptian religious literature, found on the walls of royal tombs, especially of those that are preserved in the pyramid of Unas, the last ruler of the 5th dynasty. The surface of the rock here has been covered with a thin layer of whitewash, which gave a texture resembling limestone, the material of the Pyramid Texts. The interior of the signs, rendered in sunk relief, bears traces of blue-greenish polychromy, which again associates them with the decoration of royal tombs of that period.

The reliefs decorating facade in its lower part are much more colourful. A long hieroglyphic inscription composed of 51 vertical columns is sculptured in raised relief. Contrasting with the monochrome rigidity of the architrave, it resembles a mosaic of colours. The relief coated with a thin layer of gypsum has a polychrome surface. The hieroglyphs, revealing a meticulous modelling of iconographic details, emerge from a uniform grey-bluish background. The lower register of that rich decoration resembles a pictographic signature of the vizier Fefi: eight large-size representations of the deceased nobleman walking towards the entrance of the chapel are displayed symmetrically on both sides of the facade.
 
The colours of the rich polychromy are preserved much better on the reliefs decorating the interior of the chapel. Modelled in raised relief, the scenes and hieroglyphic inscriptions resemble the lower part of the facade. The scenes depicted on two parallel faces of the narrow doorway show the deceased accompanied by two different women, only one of them being labelled as his wife. Other female companions of Meref-nebef are represented inside of the chapel, five described as his wives. Their names are: Iret, Sesh-seshet, Nebet, Metchetu and Hemi. In some scenes four of his wives constitute a band of harpists.
 
The relief decorating the walls of the chapel provide a kaleidoscope of scenes known from several tombs of the highest Memphite officials of late Old Kingdom (5th and 6th Dynasties). Some scenes look like their miniatures but their polychromy is preserved better than in any other tomb of that period. It seems that the author of that repertoire tried to assemble on the walls of one single chamber the maximum possible number of themes that in other tombs were spread on walls of various rooms.
 
Those elements of the decoration that were of particular importance for the dead in his afterlife occur on the chapel's western and northern walls. On the western wall, at each side of the doorway there is a "false door", through which the soul of the deceased, according to the ancient Egyptian beliefs, contacted with the world of the living. An abundance of fauna and flora, as well as vessels containing offerings are depicted in the scenes accompanying the "false door". One can see processions of offering bearers with birds, bull thighs, vegetables and flowers. Above them there are two extensive lists enumerating the offerings. Along the walls decorated with these scenes there is a rock step resembling a low bench - doubtless a place for offerings. The offering rituals which took place in front and inside of the funerary chapel are evidenced by numerous potsherds found in the rubble, which at the moment of the discovery filled almost one third of its total height.
  
Daily life scenes are depicted on the southern and eastern walls. The whole southern wall is decorated with the scene of a festival attended by the vizier and one of his wives (? - her name is not preserved). They are watching half nude girls performing dances with almost acrobatic elements. Female harpists appear to be again the four wives of Meref-nebef. At its western end, the tableau is bordered with a vertical sequence of scenes showing artisans (e.g. carpenters, jewellers) and other people at work.
 
An extraordinary abundance of details and colours distinguishes the scene of hunting in bulrush, depicted in the southern part of the eastern wall. The tragedy of kingfisher nestlings (ceryle rudis) attacked by a hyena-like animal, had been observed and rendered by the artist with extreme accuracy, regarding both the design and the colours. Its is shown on the background of a papyrus thicket unveiling water with lotus flowers. An ichneumon (mongoose) crawling on a papyrus stem towards another nest has been depicted as a symmetric motif. A butterfly resembling today's "Danaus chrysippus chrysippus" of especially intensive colours stretches its wings above the scene. The vividness of the scene denotes a keen sense of observation of the Egyptian artist, his skill of realistic and precise depiction of nature, an extraordinary concern for each detail, rendered both in relief and in the painting, as well as his feeling for harmonious composition of the whole scene.
 
Different in each aspect is the scene sculptured and painted at the southern end of the eastern wall. Its specific features comprise not only a pastel shade of the colours, but also individual composition of the scenes, as well as different proportions of the figures. Scenes of fishery, as well as transportation and presentation of various gifts of the Nile are composed in several registers. Another wife of the vizier, a lady named Hemi, here is depicted not together with the deceased, but alone in a lower register. That part of the decoration is probably of later date than other scenes. Hemi could have been the last consort of Meref-nebef in his turbulent life. It seems interesting that her name resembles the "beautiful name" of princess Hemet-Ra, whose titles relate her to both the pyramid of Unas and the "meret" temple of king Teti, which may evidence that she and our vizier lived contemporaneously, performed similar functions
and represented the same social rank. Would the last wife of Meref-nebef be a
royal daughter, perhaps married to him only when he became a vizier? Lack of
the vizier-title in the hieroglyphic texts inside the chapel and its frequent occurrence in the inscriptions decorating the facade may suggest that Fefi was granted his title only in the last phase of his brilliant career. Marrying a king's daughter could then ennoble this ambitious official, which was the case of Mereruka, another vizier of that period.
 
Representations of Fefi's children appear even more diagnostic than those of his wives. It turns out that the figures of some of his sons were destroyed by iconoclasts, probably after the vizier's death. They have been hammered-out with an astounding precision. Only one of his male offspring, bearing the same name Fefi as his father, has been left intact.. This unequivocal evidence of a damnatio memoriae may be observed already in the doorway to the chapel. Only one of the small-size figures representing the sons walking in the company of their father, the figure of vizier's namesake, has not been hammered-out. Although the adolescent Fefi friendly turns his head and smiles to his brother, merely a negative has remained of the latter's figure. Were the two brothers sons of the wife who is accompanying the deceased in the scene?
 
The erased figures of the young Fefi's brothers may testify to internal quarrels which presumably ravaged the large family of Meref-nebef after his death. One may imagine that the father's tomb became a place of scenes that had nothing to do with harmony of a family life. It seems very likely that those quarrels let some relatives or priests stop the sacrilege by walling up the entry to the chapel and its whole faqade. Reused for that purpose were also mud bricks from the wall of an earlier tomb.

But the drama that apparently took place in the family of the deceased vizier may also turn out to be just one more evidence of political and social unrest that marked the turn from 5th to 6th dynasty and the end of the Old Kingdom. The history of that period is still full of white pages. Considering the fact that also the word "king" in some inscriptions accompanying the images of Meref-nebef in his tomb was chiselled-out, one should presume that the family conflict may have been related to general social problems that tormented pharaonic Egypt in the last phase of the Old Kingdom, after the long period of glory.
 
However, such a desperate step as walling-up and camouflaging of the tomb shortly after its foundation (judging by the objects found inside the chapel, none of them dating from later times than Old Kingdom), may also have had other or additional reason. That could have been extreme fragility of the local rock, because of which stone-cutters and sculptors had to face tremendous technical problems while working in that material. All-over the sculptured rock we may detect desperate struggle of craftsmen trying to accomplish their work. Some fragments of large-size hieroglyphs on the external architrave have been modelled in gypsum, which supplemented the crumbling surface of stone. In the southern part of the tomb's facade, south of the decorated niche, artists started to sculpt a monumental "false door" in the rock, but were visibly unable to complete their task. After having started sculpturing at the top, they had to stop approximately at one third of the "door's" height, where disinte-
grating rock prevented maintaining rectangular edge of vertical cornices. The surface of rock on both sides of that stela remained just preliminarily smoothed and no hieroglyphic sign was ever sculpted on it. Nearby the unfinished "false door" archaeologists found a large but only roughly hewn stone slab, which the architects probably intended to use as an architectural component of the facade. It seems that an architrave running westwards from the faqade was to be inserted between the frontal niche and the unfinished "false door". Its eastern end would have been implanted in a rectangular recess, which is cut here in the rock. At its western end, it could have been supported by a pillar, probably based on a rock shelf left by the builders in front of the faqade. That project has never been accomplished, either.
 
We have evidence that unfinished remained even the wall then erected by the usurpers in the northern part of the original courtyard and supposed to border the enclosure of the new tomb. Both the structure of that wall and sedimentological research of archaeological layers bordering it to the north suggest that the construction was stopped on the level of the lowest layers of stone. Thus, it never performed the function of the wall enclosing the yard of the vizier's tomb.
 
Whatever could have been the reasons for the dramatic decision to wall up the tomb, the fact remains that the thick layer of stones and even thicker multi-layer "curtain" of mud bricks efficiently protected the tomb against any possible penetration. For the next two thousand years, i.e. until the end of the dynastic epoch and the beginning of the Ptolemaic Period, that area had not been re-used for sepulchral purposes. New burials were located in there only in the years following the death of Alexander the Great. But then, the brick surface of the Old Kingdom constructions became a perfect bedding for the graves, while bricks could easily be reused in their simple "architecture".
 
Why was that place never re-used as a cemetery for two thousand years, unlike other parts of Sakkara, where earlier tombs housed many later burials during subsequent periods of pharaonic Egypt? If the reason was a kind of particular respect for noblemen buried at that place earlier, why had that tradition been suddenly abandoned at the beginning of the Ptolemaic Period? This question may find an answer in the discovery of the first tomb of Alexander the Great. If archaeological research confirms the hypothesis of its location nearby the Memphite Serapeum and the Ptolemaic exedra exhibiting the statues the greatest Greeks, the sudden "fashion" to bury the dead on the western side of the Djoser pyramid will become comprehensible. No doubt, a place in the vicinity of the tomb which housed the body of the deified Macedonian ruler could become an ideal place of eternal rest for many later generations.

Karol Mysliwiec
Translated by Marek Gizmajer