After a decade of searching, a Czech archaeological team working at Saqqara has brought back to light a group of Old Kingdom tombs that had lain buried and forgotten for 165 years. The tombs, which belonged to high priests and senior officials, were first uncovered by the French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette during excavations in 1858 and 1860, when his reports recorded 160 tombs at the site. They were then reburied beneath the sand and lost until the Czech mission, using satellite imagery and field surveys, located them again. The find was announced by Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and first reported by Ahram Online.

Saqqara, about 20 miles south of Cairo, served as the main burial ground for Memphis, the capital of the Old Kingdom, and remained in use for more than 3,000 years. Mariette, who founded the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, was the first to map this stretch of the necropolis systematically, but the tombs he recorded slipped from the archaeological record almost as soon as they were found.

The most important of the rediscovered monuments are the tombs of Sabu and his son Ptahshepses. Sabu served as vizier and overseer of the royal scribes, and his tomb, which stands north of his son's, has exterior walls built to echo the facades of royal palaces. Its entrance chamber is decorated with reliefs showing Sabu and his wife Ikhetnefert, and her chapel holds a false door carved with scenes of the couple with their sons. Ptahshepses was found through the combination of satellite imagery and ground survey, and his mummy lay untouched inside a limestone sarcophagus. Early examination suggests he lived past 60, exceptional for his time.

Ptahshepses held senior posts under four Fifth Dynasty kings — Sahure, Neferirkare, Raneferef and Nyuserre — and was the first man outside the royal family to marry an Egyptian princess, Khamaat, the daughter of King Userkaf, founder of the dynasty. Hisham El-Leithy, secretary-general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the tombs show the high artistic quality and sophistication of Old Kingdom funerary architecture and hold valuable inscriptions, reliefs and architectural features.