In southern Saqqara, among the tombs of senior Old Kingdom officials, a joint French-Swiss archaeological mission has discovered a mudbrick mastaba with a finely decorated false door belonging to a physician named Teti Neb Fu. He lived during the reign of King Pepi II and held numerous senior titles, including chief palace physician, priest of the goddess Serket, “magician of Serket”—a specialist in venomous scorpion and snake bites—chief dentist and director of medicinal plants.
Mohamed Ismail, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, emphasized the discovery’s importance as an addition to the site’s history. The texts and images on the mastaba’s walls reveal new aspects of daily life and culture in the Old Kingdom.
Mission director Philippe Collombert said preliminary studies suggest the mastaba was looted in antiquity, but its walls remain intact, preserving beautiful carved and painted decoration. One wall features a brightly colored false door, depictions of furniture and funerary equipment, and an offering list, topped by a frieze bearing the owner’s name and titles. The ceiling was painted red to imitate granite, with an inscription containing the owner’s name and titles at its center. A stone sarcophagus was also found, with a line of hieroglyphic text on the inside recording his name and titles.
The French-Swiss mission began excavating the officials’ cemetery behind the funerary complexes of Sixth-Dynasty King Pepi I and his wives in southern Saqqara in 2022. Its work has also uncovered a mastaba belonging to the famous vizier Weni, known for the longest autobiography of a senior Old Kingdom official, recorded on the walls of his second tomb at Abydos in Sohag.
