Conspiracy, murder, revenge—it’s all at Saqqara, a cemetery of ancient Egypt’s rich and powerful.
Princess Idut didn’t live to adulthood. The limestone reliefs that line her mortuary chapel show her only as a child. Finely modeled scenes celebrating the abundance of the Nile River Valley surround her—fish and waterfowl, a crocodile snapping at a newborn hippo, cows with their calves, gaggles of geese—all normal decoration for a royal Egyptian burial. But something isn’t right. “Idut has replaced someone else,” says Naguib Kanawati, professor of Egyptology at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. “Look here,” he continues, pointing to a rough patch by Idut’s knee in a boating scene. “A foot has been erased, chiseled out and sanded over. And a man’s kilt too.” I can just make out the hint of a strapping male, standing tall, hovering behind the demure girl. Princess Idut died around 2330 B.C. She was interred beneath her mortuary chapel, which stands near the pyramid tombs of her grandfather King Unas, and her father, King Teti, at the place now known as Saqqara. Site of Egypt’s first monumental stone tombs, Saqqara was one of the most revered royal cemeteries of ancient Egypt—roughly equivalent to Arlington National Cemetery in the United States today. When Idut’s tomb was discovered in the mid-1920s, no one paid much attention to the altered reliefs. But recently Kanawati took a closer look and found traces of unexpected intrigue. “I’ve reread the hieroglyphs and identified the tomb’s original owner,” he says. “It was Ihy, a vizier, or prime minister, of King Unas.” Like most wealthy, well-positioned Egyptians of his time, Ihy had spent years preparing his final resting place. So how did Princess Idut end up with it? Kanawati’s answer involves a tantalizing new theory about a palace coup and the mysterious circumstances surrounding King Teti’s accession. “We don’t know where Teti came from. We just know he married a daughter of Unas and became king when his father-in-law died. I think he came to the throne by force and Ihy opposed him, unsuccessfully.” As an enduring punishment, Teti gave Ihy’s tomb to a daughter. This dynastic succession that once seemed so simple is one of many episodes acquiring a new spin at Saqqara, where burials span the entire 3,000 years and 31 dynasties of the ancient Egyptian civilization. Focusing on periods when the site was most heavily used by the rich and powerful, archaeologists are discovering evidence for the kind of cloak-and-dagger dramas that would make headlines today—conspiracies, assassinations, acts of revenge, scheming queens, ambitious politicians, and religious extremes.
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