During the 2022 and 2023 seasons, the joint Leiden-Turin Expedition to Saqqara continued work in the area north of the tomb of Maya. In the previous excavation seasons, the expedition had uncovered the perimeter walls of a large New Kingdom tomb (V82.1) located in the west part of this area. The deposits that covered and filled the structure were further excavated and the inscriptions found on the wall reliefs allowed the tomb owner and his spouse to be identified. They are Panehsy, an early-Ramesside steward of (the temple of) Amun, and Baia, singer of Amun-bunakhtef. A partial excavation of the underground burial complex yielded much evidence of later use, while the excavation to the north and east of the superstructure uncovered material evidence for Late Antique occupation. The excavation east of the tomb of Panehsy added more Ramesside chapels to the cluster previously found in this area, including that of Yuyu, maker of gold foil. During the 2022 and 2023 seasons of fieldwork, selected objects of wood and textile found during earlier seasons were examined in more detail. The two seasons also saw the initiation of two more projects, namely the geophysical survey of an area south of the present excavation, and an oral history project aimed at researching the contribution of workmen to the Leiden-Turin Expedition.

The ongoing excavations in the archaeological concession area of Cairo University at the Memphite New Kingdom necropolis of Saqqara have uncovered a number of ancient graffiti. This article aims to present all graffiti recorded in the early Ramesside tomb of Iurokhy. Special emphasis is placed on a graffito depicting and naming male individuals bringing offerings to the tomb. It is suggested that the individuals represent members of the actual support staff of the mortuary cult, those who looked after the mortuary provisions of the deceased tomb owner. One of the individuals depicted, a man named Heriherneferher, left more than just a representation of his person. He, himself, was buried in one of the spaces of the tomb's superstructure. This paper further presents a list of graffiti recorded in adjacent Ramesside tombs, thereby adding to the published corpus of Memphite tomb graffiti.

The present article studies aspects of the artistic production at New Kingdom Saqqara, a necropolis of the ancient Egyptian royal residence city Memphis. Following a brief review of the functions of ancient Egyptian tombs, this article will first set out to scrutinize the tomb-making section of society (e.g., size, membership). Second, the corpus of tombs will be reviewed to uncover the diverse nature of the tomb owners and to investigate access to resources required for tomb making. Third, the article will proceed to place the tombs in spatial and temporal context and reflect on the artistic production in a necropolis in motion.

A Cultural Landscape Forever in the MakingThis book set as its main aim the study of the Memphite necropolis at Saqqara through the New Kingdom (ca.1539-1078 bce).Grounded in the biographical approach to landscape (Chapter 2), the life-history of this cultural geography is conceived as a never-ending process of growth and ageing, and the making of the necropolis viewed as a work forever in progress-its making continuing with every new day.The entanglement of people and landscape (re-)creates material traces, meanings, identities, and memories of entire communities over many generations.1People moved through and acted in this landscape amidst all that had been made before.Every subsequent present moment contributed to the continual process of increasing the past, thus creating a layered landscape.The landscape of our study area has been very actively in the making since the New Kingdom, the period under study.It means that today we are witnessing and experiencing an emphatically different landscape from that seen and experienced by the inhabitants of ancient Memphis at any one particular time during the c. 461 years of what Egyptologists refer to as the New Kingdom.Despite the myriad of (geo-)archaeological tools at our disposal to try to overcome this methodological problem, all attempts at re-constructing the ancient landscape(s) will always be partially successful.This is all the more so for the New Kingdom desert-edge cemeteries on the elevated plateau west of Memphis.It was thoroughly excavated by antiquities' collectors and dealers in the 19th century, who often left no records of their work and left no material remains at the site.Systematic exploration of the site has so far only started to scratch the surface of an incredibly extensive city of the dead that was, perhaps paradoxically, first and foremost a place for the living.The living in the city of the dead experienced (and contributed to) this (spatially, temporally and perceptually) growing landscape.By placing them centre stage, the necropolis is treated as having city-like qualities.Exploring the necropolis as an urban space is not entirely new.In 1899, Victor Loret was

This article presents the Saqqara tomb of Ry, an army official who built his funerary monument in the immediate post-Amarna period (temp. Tutankhamun c. 1319–1310 BCE). The Leiden-Turin Expedition to Saqqara excavated this anonymous mud-brick tomb structure in 2013. Recent research revealed that various decorated limestone revetment blocks held in museum collections around the world derive from this tomb. They were removed by early excavators almost 200 years ago and formed part of the antiquities collections of prominent collectors such as Giuseppe Passalacqua and Henry Abbott. The dispersed tomb elements bearing texts and iconography are here contextualised and the funerary monument is analysed in the framework of the development of the Memphite New Kingdom necropolis. ملخص البحث يقدم هذا المقال مدفن ري في سقارة، مسؤول بالجيش بنى لنفسه المدفن في فترة ما بعد العمارنة مباشرة (فترة توت عنخ أمون، حوالي 1319-1310 قبل الميلاد). قامت بعثات ليدن وتورينو في عام 2013 بتنقيب هذا المدفن المجهول في سقارة، وهو مبني بالطوب الطيني. كشفت الأبحاث الحديثة أن العديد من لوحات الحجر الجيري المزخرفة والمنتشرة في عدة متاحف حول العالم أصلها من هذا المدفن. لقد تم نقلها أثناء الحفريات المبكرة قبل مئتان عام تقريباً وكانت جزءاً من المجموعات الأثرية لهواة جمع الآثار البارزين مثل جوزيبي باسالاكوا وهنري أبوت. العناصر المبعثرة لهذا القبر تحمل نصوصاً وأيقونات مختلفة، في هذا النص تم جمعها ودراستها وتحليل الغرفة الجنائزية في إطار تطور مقابر ممفيس خلال فترة الدولة الحديثة.

Previous examinations of ancient Egyptian graffiti have focused on textual graffiti and developed interpretations specific to this class of evidence. In contrast, relatively few studies have considered the communicative power and meaning of figural graffiti, presumably because of the inherent challenges that this data set presents to academic research. To counterbalance the current emphasis on textual graffiti, this contribution examines graffiti making in the New Kingdom necropolis at Saqqara using an integrated approach taking in both textual and figural material. In accordance with the imagistic principle of Egyptian magic, the authors propose that certain types of figural graffiti may be regarded as pictorial prayers in their own right, intended to ensure the permanent presence of the graffitist in the tomb, or to protect and beatify the deceased in the afterlife. Since literacy is not a prerequisite for drawing a picture, the important question is raised of whether the production of figural graffiti expanded throughout the social scale or, like textual graffiti, was restricted to the elite and sub-elite. ملخص البحث الدراسات السابقة التي تم إجراؤها على الكتابة و النقوش الجدارية المصرية القديمة ركّزت إهتمامها على تفسيرات معينة لهذا النوع من الأدلة. في المقابل تناولت بعض الدراسات القوة التعبيرية والمعنى من وراء النقوش التصويرية، على الأرجح بسبب التحديات التي توفرها مجموعة البيانات هذه إلى البحث الأكاديمي. لإمكانية موازنة الجهود الحالية المبذولة في الكتابات و الرسومات الجدارية، تدرس هذه المقالة صناعة الرسومات الجدارية في مقبرة تعود إلى الدولة الحديثة في سقارة بإستخدام نهج متكامل يتناول كل من المواد النصية والتصويرية. وفقاً للمبدأ التصويري للسحر المصري، يقترح المؤلفون وجود بعض أنواع من النقوش الجدارية يمكن إعتبارها على أنها صلوات مصوّرة في حد ذاتها وهي تهدف إلى ضمان التواجد الدائم للنقوش في المقبرة، أو لحماية المتوفى أو منحه السعادة الأبدية في الحياة الآخرة. بما أن معرفة القراءة والكتابة ليست شرطاً أساسياً لرسم صورة ما، فإن السؤال المهم الذي يطرح نفسه الآن هو ما إذا كان إنتاج الرسومات الجدارية يمتد عبر النطاق الإجتماعي أم أنه يقتصر على النبلاء ومن يحيط بهم فقط على غرار النقوش النصية.

In 2015, the Museo Egizio in Turin joined the Leiden expedition to Saqqara, in the area south of the Unas causeway. This report presents the expedition’s new approach as well as some first results of this new cooperation. In the 2018 season, the Leiden-Turin expedition worked in the northern sector of its concession, covering an area of ca. 250 sqm just north of the tomb of Maya. Here Late Antique layers overlie a wind-blown deposit containing some simple burials and numerous “embalmers’ caches”, some of which yielded marl clay cups with hieratic labels. An overview of both the pottery and the human remains found during this season is provided in the present report. Below the wind-blown deposit is a level with Ramesside funerary chapels and shafts. One of them has a remarkable decoration including six small-format figures carved in high relief in the middle of its back wall. The shaft of another chapel was also excavated, revealing several plundered chambers which yielded only scanty finds. A large mud-brick wall exposed during the previous season turned out to belong to the outer wall and pylon entrance of a monumental tomb, whose owner’s name has not been found yet. A photogrammetric survey by a team of the Politecnico di Milano yielded a 3D model of the dig (included in the web version of this report), as well as several 3D models of the monumental tombs (completed or in the making). During the season, conservation work was carried out on several tombs and on the newly discovered Ramesside chapel. ملخص البحث: شارك المتحف المصري بتورينو في عام 2015 مع بعثة لايدن فى سقارة، في المنطقة الواقعة جنوب طريق أوناس الصاعد. يُبرز هذا التقرير الأسلوب الجديد للبعثة وكذلك بعض النتائج الأولية لهذا التعاون الجديد. في موسم 2018، عملت بعثة "لايدن – تورينو" في القطاع الشمالي من الامتياز الممنوح لهم، وهو ما يغطي مساحة حوالى 250 متر مربع شمالي مقبرة مايا. تكسو طبقات العصور القديمة المتأخرة في هذه المنطقة رواسب محمولة بالرياح، وتحتوي على بعض المدافن البسيطة والعديد من "مقتنيات المحنطين"، بعضها اشتمل على أكواب طينية من الطين الكلسي بعلامات مكتوبة بالخط الهيراطيقي. يوفر هذا التقرير لمحة عامة عن كل من الفخار والبقايا البشرية التي عُثر عليها خلال هذا العام. أسفل الرواسب المحمولة بالرياح يوجد مستوى مكون من الأماكن المخصصة للصلاة وتقديم القرابين وأكثر من بئر كلها تعود إلى حقبة الرعامسة. أحدها يحتوي على زخارف رائعة بما في ذلك ستة أشكال صغيرة الحجم منحوتة نحتًا يبرز معالمها في منتصف الجدار الخلفي. بالإضافة إلى اكتشاف عامود معبد آخر والكشف عن حجرات منهوبة عديدة أدت إلى اكتشافات ضئيلة. كما تبين أن جدارًا كبيرًا من الطوب اللبن، كان قد تم اكتشافه خلال الموسم الماضي، ينتمي إلى الجدار الخارجي ومدخل صرح مقبرة ضخمة لم يتم تحديد اسم مالكها بعد. أسفر مسح تصويري قام به فريق من مدرسة الفنون التطبيقية للمهندسين في ميلانو "Politecnico di Milano" عن تقديم نموذج ثلاثي الأبعاد لموقع التنقيب (يوجد في النسخة الالكترونية من التقرير على الموقع الالكتروني)، بالإضافة إلى العديد من النماذج ثلاثية الأبعاد للمقابر الأثرية (التي تم إعدادها أو قيد الإعداد). خلال الموسم، تم القيام بأعمال صيانة وترميم للعديد من المقابر وكذلك مكان الصلاة المكتشف حديثًا العائد إلى حقبة الرعامسة.

In the 2019 season, the joint Leiden-Turin Expedition to Saqqara continued work in the area north of the tomb of Maya with the aim of lowering the terrain above the new tomb discovered during the 2018 season (V82.1) and to prepare the area for further exploration in 2020. Many layers of deposit situated immediately to the north of the new tomb were removed and – although they mostly originated from previous excavations in the 1980s and 1990s – systematically investigated. Several dumps of organic material such as linen and wood as well as numerous small finds and relief fragments were identified and recorded. In addition, existing storage facilities on site were renovated and upgraded. In this process, part of the underground structures of the tombs of Horemheb and Meryneith were surveyed by the 3D Survey Group (Politecnico di Milano). Thanks to the cooperation with the same Milanese team, a new documentation method was tested during the ongoing excavation work. Within a 3D-model the different stages of excavation were recorded, allowing the digital reconstruction of the stratigraphy of the whole area and the documentation of all finds in their original contexts. A Digital Surface Model of the entire concession area was also produced, and 3D-models of some of the previously excavated monumental tombs were created. Lastly, since heavy rainfalls had damaged many of the earlier excavated monumental tombs open to the public, they were consolidated and where necessary rebuilt. ملخص في موسم 2019، واصلت البعثة ليدن-تورينو المشتركة عملها في سقارة في المنطقة شمال قبر مايا، بهدف إزالة الأتربة التي تراكمت فوق القبر الجديد الذي اكتُشِف خلال موسم 2018 (V82.1) وإعداد المنطقة لموسم التنقيب لعام 2020. تمت إزالة العديد من طبقات الأتربة التي تغطي المنطقة الشمالية من القبر الجديد، بالرغم من أن هذه الرواسب تراكمت في الغالب بموجب الحفريات السابقة في الثمانينيات والتسعينيات، فقد تمت دراستها بشكل منهجي. قامت البعثة بالتنقيب وبتسجيل العديد من المواد العضوية مثل الكتان والخشب و غيرها من الشظايا واكتشافات أخرى صغيرة. كما أنه تم الكشف وتسجيل مرافق التخزين الموجودة في الموقع. من خلال هذه العملية، قام فريق الباحثين من الفرع التقني لجامعة ميلانو بمسح جزء من الهياكل تحت الأرض لمقابر حورمحب و مرينيث باستخدام الماسح ثلاثي الأبعاد. بفضل تعاون هذا الفريق، تم أثناء أعمال التنقيب اختبار طريقة جديدة في التوثيق. استناداً على النموذج ثلاثي الأبعاد، تم تسجيل مراحل التنقيب المختلفة مما سمح بإعادة البناء الرقمي للمنطقة بأكملها وتوثيق جميع الاكتشافات في أماكنها الأصلية. تم تنفيذ نموذج رقمي لكامل سطح المنطقة بالإضافة إلى إنشاء نماذج ثلاثية الأبعاد لبعض المقابر الأثرية التي نُقّب عنها سابقاً. وأخيراً، بما أن الأمطار الغزيرة ألحقت الضرر بالعديد من المقابر الأثرية المكتشفة سابقاً والمفتوحة لزيارة الجمهور، فقد تم تدعيمها وإعادة بناء الأقسام الضرورية.

This contribution takes as its point of departure the observation that the relationship between individual tombs in the New Kingdom necropolis at Saqqara is still poorly understood and that no coherent internal patterns have been established. The organisation of this vast elite necropolis and the spatial distribution of tombs therein are here studied by analysing the prosopographical data of 448 individuals: the tomb owners. After introducing the prosopographical method and its challenges, in particular as concerning the case study of Saqqara, its research potential will be demonstrated. The distribution of tombs according to the titles (occupational, rank, and honorific) of their owners and the observable changing patterns through time provide a first, tentative indication for the rationale of their distribution. Since the location of amajority of New Kingdom tombs is today lost, knowledge of the rationale underlying tomb placement is pivotal to allow for making statements about the original appearance and development of this necropolis. This research potential is illustrated with selected case studies.

In early 1859, the French Egyptologist Théodule Devéria was in Egypt to assist Auguste Mariette—who had just been appointed as Director of Antiquities—with copying texts at a number of sites in Egypt. At Saqqara, Devéria photographed a doorway of the now-lost tomb of Ptahemwia, the early Nineteenth Dynasty Great Overseer of Cattle and Overseer of the Treasury of the Ramesseum. This article starts with a note on Mariette's work at Saqqara and early photography in Egypt. Then, the architecture, iconography, and texts of the tomb's doorway are analysed, followed by an updated list of objects pertaining to Ptahemwia. It concludes with a discussion of the titles and epithets held by this official.