To tell the truth, it was a more illustrious character who put Egyptologists on the path of Tetinebefou. This is Ouni, who was grand vizier of Pepi I, and whose autobiography has been known to us since the 19th century thanks to an engraved stele adorning his tomb in Abydos, 400 kilometers south of Saqqara, where the sovereign had dispatched him. The Franco-Swiss mission discovered limestone blocks in Saqqara bearing a copy of this autobiography, suggesting that the far-sighted Ouni had two tombs prepared for his journey to the afterlife.
That of Saqqara, which remains to be excavated, was found in the third circle of the funerary complex, beyond the pyramid of Pepi I, outside the tombs of the royal family and its multiple wives, among the great ones of the kingdom gathered along of a main street. In 2022, a first doctor’s grave was discovered in the middle of it, “built by ‘squatters’ from a later period”, explains Philippe Collombert with a smile. All that remained was the mudbrick superstructure.
A colorful and finely engraved decor
The researchers were happier at the end of 2024, when they found a filled-in well in the middle of this same street, hidden by a block of limestone which had only been partially cut by ancient quarrymen. After clearing the embankments to a depth of three meters, the excavators came across a lintel bearing the name of “Tetinebefou” and his title of “doctor to the pharaoh”, without specifying the identity of this one, but presenting a style “characteristic of Pépi II”, says Philippe Collombert.
The doctor-magician had a classic “oven tomb” of the period built: the well made it possible to lower the wooden sarcophagus and place it in the oven under a stone slab which constitutes the floor of the richly decorated room. The cult took place on the surface, where a mastaba marking the grave has long since disappeared. Of the deceased and the sarcophagus, and the furniture that accompanied it, everything has also vanished. “Looters had lifted the slab and blocked it with a stone to access the sarcophagus,” explains Philippe Collombert. The theft could have occurred the day after the burial, if it took place during times of unrest, or a hundred years later, he suggests.
-All that remains is the decor, more colorful than the usual alternation of red and black and more finely engraved than average. The objects represented bear the name of the deceased, in small hieroglyphs five millimeters high, “very meticulous”, notes Philippe Collombert. Another remarkable detail, the ceiling, whose painting on limestone evokes the veins of granite, suggests that the doctor had obtained the right to imitate this noble material reserved for elite tombs.
At the end of the excavation, the tomb was sealed. There is little chance, due to its small dimensions, that it will ever be open to the public. During the next excavations scheduled for the end of the year, the Franco-Swiss team will once again focus on the tomb of the elusive Ouni, who, in addition to his two tombs, apparently belonged to a family of three brothers with the same name. , since the epigraphy revealed the existence of “Ouni the elder” and “Ouni of the middle”…
