I went to Saqqara this morning with John Rogers, Secretary to the Board of Goldman Sachs, and Dina Habib Powell, who is a managing director with the firm and also the daughter of a dear friend of mine. 

Dina was born in Egypt, but grew up in Texas. I knew her when she was a small girl. She spent many years working at the White House, even serving for a time as Assistant United States Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs. John has come to Egypt before, with his family, and we enjoyed an amazing trip to Bahriya oasis, where we had a midnight dinner in the desert. I first met him when I was the director of the Giza Pyramids, and I found him to be a very kind and intelligent man. I consider him a friend, and it is always a pleasure to see him. This time, I am happy to say that there were many new and exciting developments that I was able to share with John. Saqqara in particular has been the scene of major discoveries in recent months. It was an overcast morning, unusual for Egypt. John, Dina, and I went to see the queen’s pyramid that I discovered near the pyramid of King Teti. I showed them the burial chamber, and the tunnel that thieves had dug through the superstructure of the pyramid to reach it. It was this tunnel that eventually helped my team to enter the burial chamber as well.

After we saw the pyramid, we went to the site of an exciting new find - a 26th Dynasty shaft tomb that my team had just discovered inside a 6th Dynasty mastaba in the Gisr El-Mudir area at Saqqara. This is the same area where my team discovered two Old Kingdom tombs late last year. The day that we were there, my team was preparing to open one of the four wooden coffins found inside the burial chamber. I was happy that John and Dina were there to share the excitement with us. I wanted to be in the tomb to supervise as my assistants carefully lifted the lid of the coffin. There are two ways to reach the burial chamber of this tomb, which lies some 11 meters underground. The original shaft is open, and a long ladder inside it allows us to come and go from the tomb. There is also a secondary shaft, and we have set up a simple lift that we can use to send people and equipment up and down. It is equally challenging and dangerous to enter the tomb by either method, but I prefer to use the lift because it is quicker!

Inside the tomb, I showed John and Dina the niches in the walls where some thirty mummies were laid to rest. When the moment came to open the coffin, we all waited with great excitement - to our delight, the mummy inside was intact! It is a typical 26th Dynasty mummy, wrapped in linen and covered in resin. I am sure that there are many amulets hidden among the wrappings, placed there to protect the deceased in the afterlife.

After we visited the new tomb, I took John and Dina to see the restoration work that my team is carrying out under the 3rd Dynasty Step Pyramid of Djoser, which dates to between 2630 and 2611 BC. The rising groundwater level all over Egypt is causing salts to leach out of the limestone bedrock of Saqqara, making the rock-cut tunnels underneath the pyramid dangerous and unstable. We are working now to ensure that they do not collapse.

Finally, we went to the beautiful Imhotep Museum, where I took some time to speak with the Saqqara antiquities inspectors about our future plans for both the site and the museum. The Imhotep Museum was one of the first to be built as part of my initiative to modernize Egypt’s museum system. We are now renovating all of our older institutions and building new museums throughout Egypt, for the benefit of visitors and scholars alike! I am looking forward to welcoming John and Dina back to Egypt in the future, when there is even more progress to report!