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Ptahshepses and Sabu: the Saqqara tombs the Czech mission dug out again

30 October 2026

In October 2026 Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities showed off the latest work of the Czech Institute of Egyptology at Saqqara, the mission led by Miroslav Bárta. The team has dug out again a family of Old Kingdom tombs that Auguste Mariette opened between 1858 and 1860 and the sand then swallowed: the tomb of the official Ptahshepses and, just north of it, the tomb of his father Sabu.

Inside Sabu's tomb they found something Mariette missed. The offering chapel of Sabu's wife, Ikhetnefert, still has its carved false door. Their son Ptahshepses is the better known of the family. His false door has stood in the British Museum since 1897, and its inscription tells the story of his life.

Mariette left the work half done

Mariette, who founded Egypt's Antiquities Service, cleared about 160 Old Kingdom tombs in this part of Saqqara. His men worked in the offering chapels, statue rooms and a few burial chambers, drew no full plans and took some inscribed stones away, Ptahshepses' false door among them. Sand covered the tombs again, and Ptahshepses' was lost for over a century.

The Czech team, who also dig at neighbouring Abusir, went looking with detailed satellite images and Mariette's old maps. Bárta called it a difficult search lasting several years. In 2022 and 2023 they found Ptahshepses' mastaba, a flat-roofed tomb of 42 by 22 metres that still stands over 4 metres high. The 2026 season reopened Sabu's larger tomb beside it.

Ikhetnefert's chapel is the new find

Sabu's mastaba measures about 54 by 28 metres and was once about 5 metres tall. Its outer walls are carved with the niched palace facade of royal buildings. In its offering chapel, reliefs show Sabu and Ptahshepses watching lines of men carry in offerings.

Mariette missed the chapel of Ikhetnefert. Its false door shows her with Sabu and both sons, Ptahshepses and a second son whose name the reports give as Ranefer. A false door was the spot where the living left food and drink for the dead, and the carved figures and names on it told visitors whom they were feeding.

Bread on an offering mat Raised arms

Ptahshepses carried the god Ptah in his name

His name, ptḥ-špss (Ptah-shepses), means "Ptah is noble". Ptah was the god of Memphis, the city whose cemetery Saqqara is, and the patron of craftsmen.

Read sign by sign, the god's name comes first: the stool (Q3) for p, the bread loaf (X1) for t and the twisted wick (V28) for ḥ. Then comes a nobleman seated on a chair (A50), which stands for the word špss, "noble", with the folded cloth (S29) written twice to spell out its two s sounds.

His chief title was wr ḫrpw ḥmwt, "great one of the leaders of craftsmen". In later centuries the same title belonged to the high priest of Ptah at Memphis.

Stool Bread loaf Twisted flax wick Noble seated on a chair Folded cloth

See the seated noble sign

The British Museum false door tells his life

Mariette took Ptahshepses' false door and the architrave above it out of the tomb. Together they stand 3.66 metres high and are now in the British Museum (EA 682), with one fragment in the Oriental Institute in Chicago. The door was painted a mottled pink to look like granite, and its hieroglyphs were painted green.

The inscription runs in columns down both sides. It says he was born under Menkaure, builder of the smallest Giza pyramid, and educated at the royal court. Each column seems to cover one reign. Only the cartouches of Menkaure and Shepseskaf survive, so the later kings are worked out from the order of the columns. The British Museum's catalogue has his career run on into the 5th Dynasty, probably to Niuserre.

Under Userkaf he married Khamaat, a king's eldest daughter. The Czech team takes her for Userkaf's daughter, while the British Museum's catalogue says she was probably a daughter of Shepseskaf. Either way, Ptahshepses is the first man of non-royal birth known to have married a king's daughter.

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Osiris may make one of his first appearances on the lintel

The architrave over the false door carries five lines of the offering formula, ḥtp-dj-nswt, "an offering which the king gives", addressed to Anubis and to Osiris. Anubis was the usual god of Old Kingdom offering prayers. Osiris turns up only rarely in the 5th Dynasty. Egyptologist Mark Smith notes that if Ptahshepses lived into Niuserre's reign, his lintel could be the earliest evidence for the god. When he died is still argued.

Osiris' name, wsjr, is written with the seat (Q1) and the eye (D4).

Seat Eye

Read the offering formula phrase by phrase

Ptahshepses lived past sixty

Robbers emptied his burial chamber in antiquity and took the jewellery. They left a limestone sarcophagus with his body lying on its back, as well as pottery, canopic jars and mummified fish. The Czech team reported the fish as the first of their kind.

Egyptian anthropologists studied the remains before anyone told them who he was. They put his age at death above 60, and at least 65 in the team's 2023 report. His biography, which runs through several reigns, points to a long life too. The team says the body adds new evidence on how the dead were mummified in the Old Kingdom.

Questions

Who is Miroslav Bárta?

A Czech Egyptologist at Charles University in Prague, long the head of the Czech Institute of Egyptology's excavations at Abusir and Saqqara. He led the mission whose Saqqara work was presented in October 2026.

Can you visit the tombs of Ptahshepses and Sabu?

No opening to visitors was announced with the finds. The team says conservation and restoration of both tombs are under way. The Ptahshepses false door can be seen in the British Museum in London.

How old are the tombs?

Ptahshepses lived in the 25th and 24th centuries BC, and the Czech team dates his tomb to the reign of Niuserre of the 5th Dynasty. That makes it about 4,400 years old. News reports round it to 4,000.

Where at Saqqara are they?

In the north of the Saqqara cemetery, in the stretch between the pyramid fields of Abusir and Saqqara.

Glossary

cartouche: An oval ring drawn around a royal name, a loop of rope tied at one end. Kings wrote their two main names in cartouches.
dynasty: A line of kings counted together, usually one family. Egyptologists number Egypt's kings in about 30 dynasties, following the priest Manetho.
Egyptologist: A scholar who studies ancient Egypt: its language, writing, objects, buildings and history.
hieroglyphs: The picture signs of ancient Egyptian writing, used from about 3200 BC to AD 394. A sign can stand for sounds, for a whole word, or for the kind of thing a word means.
mastaba: A flat-topped tomb of mud brick or stone with sloping sides, built over a burial shaft. The name is the Arabic word for a bench.
offering formula: The prayer ḥtp-dj-nswt, "an offering that the king gives", asking for bread, beer and other good things for the dead. It is written on tombs, stelae and coffins.
Old Kingdom: The age of the pyramid builders, about 2686 to 2181 BC, from the 3rd to the 6th Dynasty.
priest: A servant of a god in a temple, who washed, dressed and fed the god's statue each day. A high priest led the staff of a great temple.
pyramid: A royal tomb with four sloping sides meeting at a point, built in the Old and Middle Kingdoms. Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza is the largest.
relief: A carving on a flat surface. In raised relief the background is cut away. In sunk relief the figures are cut into the stone.
sarcophagus: A large stone coffin. In rich burials it held one or more coffins of wood.
tomb: A burial place: a pit, a mastaba, a pyramid or rooms cut into rock. Its chapel was where the family brought offerings.

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Where to see it

Saqqara site
British Museum, London museum