It’s windy, scorching hot and
in the middle of the stretches of sand — is Saqqara, the ancient burial ground
in Egypt. Wooden coffins with perfectly preserved mummies, bronze statues,
caskets have all been excavated from the site over the years. The area also has several
pyramids, including the famous step pyramid of Djoser. In 2018, less than a
kilometer away from this pyramid, archeologists discovered a 4,400-year-old
tomb.
In Secrets of the Saqqara Tomb, we embark on this journey of excavation
with a team of Egyptian archaeologists, anthropologists, doctors, Egyptologists, and an extremely hardworking bunch of diggers. They help uncover
some of Egypt’s secrets which turn out to be one of the most significant
archaeological finds of the century.
The main focus of the film is
on deciphering the tomb: Who owned it? Who was buried in it, and why did the
person need such a grand design? The ancient Egyptians wanted to have a
fabulous afterlife, and believed that a spectacular tomb helped them go from a
“secular creature to a sacred being”.
The tomb was usually decorated with
scenes from an ideal life that they wished to enjoy for eternity.
Reading the Hieroglyphs on the
walls, they note that it belonged to a priest called Wahtye.
The priest in that
period was considered as the middleman between the king and the people, and
between the king and his God. What follows is a detailed excavation of the
shafts, surrounding areas searching for clues about Wahtye, his family and
trying to understand how they died.
A doctor studying the bones of
the Wahtye and his family noted that they could have died of malaria. If this
can be proven right, it will be the first documented case of malaria in
history.
More interesting and exciting
than finding a mummified human is stumbling upon a mummified animal. When
Saqqara yielded a mummified animal — larger than a cat, smaller than a lynx —
the researchers set to work. The results of the scans and studying the fur gave
another shock to the team - it was a mummified lion cub, which was confirmed to
be the first of its kind in history. This find could help tell more stories
about the period’s religion, culture, and economy.
It’s not just a documentary
about ancient Egypt and its history, as the viewers are up close with the
tiring digging, moments of anticipation, and experiencing the sheer joy the
findings bring. The short explainers by the team and accompanying illustrations
help lay out the information the excavations have unearthed.
“We are the people who can
best give voice to our ancestors… because they are our ancestors, we are one
step closer to them than the foreigner,” an archaeologist says.
The people of
the land telling their story, their history and their culture make Secrets of
the Saqqara Tomb strike all the right chords.
It is a heart-warming story of
life from the world of the dead.
Secrets of the Saqqara Tomb is
currently streaming on Netflix.