Archaeologists working at Saqqara, the sprawling necropolis south of Cairo, have uncovered a decorated tomb belonging to a senior Old Kingdom official whose title translates roughly as “keeper of the secrets of royal decrees.” The burial, found in the Bubasteion area of the site, adds a new name and a new set of grave goods to the long roster of bureaucrats who served Egypt’s pyramid-building kings.
Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities identified the tomb’s owner as an official named Sekhentio-Ptah, who lived sometime during the Old Kingdom, a period spanning roughly 2649 to 2150 B.C. that produced the pyramids at Giza and the administrative class that ran the kingdom around them.
A Bureaucrat Buried in the Shadow of the Pyramids
Sekhentio-Ptah’s tomb was carved into the Bubasteion area, a stretch of Saqqara that later became famous for something entirely different: mass burials of mummified cats. In his own lifetime, though, the area was simply part of the elite Old Kingdom cemetery attached to the royal capital at Memphis, where officials close to the king secured their own patch of eternity near their sovereign’s monuments.
According to a translated statement from the ministry, inscriptions inside the tomb list several of Sekhentio-Ptah’s titles, including “Overseer of all the King’s Works” and “Overseer of Royal Documents,” in addition to the “keeper of secrets” designation that gave the discovery its headline-grabbing name. Taken together, the titles sketch a career spent managing construction projects and paperwork at the highest level of the royal administration, reported Live Science.
The Real Meaning Behind “Keeper of Secrets”
The title sounds like something out of a conspiracy thriller, but Egyptologists who study these inscriptions describe a far more mundane job. Ann Macy Roth, a clinical professor of Egyptology at New York University who was not involved in the excavation, told Live Science the phrase “probably merely means that as someone in charge of royal documents and the people who write them, he has access to confidential information.” She called it “a common title among royal scribes,” a rank-and-file honorific for administrators trusted with sensitive state paperwork rather than evidence of some secretive inner circle.
That reading fits Sekhentio-Ptah’s other titles, which point squarely at document management and oversight of royal building projects, the kind of career that would plausibly earn a scribe access to decrees before they became public.
False Doors and a Purification Basin
Inside the tomb, the excavation team recorded an offering table, a purification basin and two false doors, symbolic portals that ancient Egyptians believed allowed a deceased person’s spirit to pass between the tomb and the world of the living. Roth said the design of the false doors places them in the late fifth or early sixth dynasty, roughly 4,350 years ago, narrowing the tomb’s original construction to a fairly specific window within the broader Old Kingdom.
More Than 100 Shabtis and a Wooden Falcon
The tomb also yielded more than 100 shabti figurines, small statuettes that ancient Egyptians placed in burials to act as servants for the dead in the afterlife, along with a wooden statue of a falcon that may represent the falcon-headed god Horus. Excavators additionally found fragments of cartonnage, a plastered material wrapped around mummies, though Sekhentio-Ptah’s own mummy was never identified among the remains.
The sheer number of shabtis is notable on its own. A single tomb yielding more than a hundred of the figurines points to either an unusually well-provisioned burial or, as Roth suggested, an accumulation built up across several later interments that used the same tomb as a convenient resting place. Either way, the volume of grave goods recovered gives researchers a substantial assemblage to work through as they try to separate Sekhentio-Ptah’s original burial equipment from material added long after his death.
Signs the Tomb Was Reused for Later Burials
Roth, reviewing the photographs and details the ministry released, said the tomb was likely reused for additional burials long after Sekhentio-Ptah was laid to rest, a practice that was common throughout ancient Egyptian history. In her assessment, the shabtis and the cartonnage probably belong to these later occupants rather than to the tomb’s original owner, meaning the objects found inside may span multiple burial episodes separated by centuries.
A Necropolis Later Devoted to a Cat Goddess
The Bubasteion takes its name from Bastet, the feline goddess whose cult grew enormously popular in Egypt’s later periods. From the late period through the Roman era, roughly 664 B.C. to A.D. 395, the same general area became a dedicated animal necropolis where thousands of mummified cats were buried as offerings to the goddess, a tradition traced in detail by the American Research Center in Egypt’s overview of Bastet’s cult and its Nile Delta origins. The ministry’s statement on Sekhentio-Ptah’s tomb made no mention of cat burials at this particular spot, underscoring that the site’s association with Bastet came long after the official was first buried there.
Bastet’s own connection to Saqqara runs surprisingly deep. According to the research center’s overview, some of the earliest known references to the goddess come from inscribed stone vessel fragments found in the galleries beneath the Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara, dating to the second dynasty, roughly 2800 B.C., centuries before Sekhentio-Ptah’s own burial. In that earliest form, Bastet appeared as a lioness-headed deity tied to the royal court at Memphis rather than the gentler cat goddess of later periods, and her cult’s move from Memphis to the Delta city of Bubastis, which eventually lent its name to the necropolis where Sekhentio-Ptah’s tomb was found, remains only partly understood.
Live Science reported that it reached out to the excavation team for further comment but had not received a response by the time of publication, leaving some details of the discovery, including the tomb’s full layout and any additional finds from the surrounding burial network, still to be confirmed.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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