discovered by the French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette.
New Kingdom monuments
Several clusters of tombs of high officials, among which the tombs of Horemheb and of Maya and Merit. Reliefs and statues from these two tombs are on display in the National Museum of Antiquities at Leiden, the Netherlands, and in the British Museum, London.
After the New Kingdom
In the periods after the New Kingdom, when several cities in the Delta served as capital of Egypt, Saqqara remained in use as a burial ground for nobles. Moreover the area became an important destination for pilgrims to a number of cult centres. Activities sprang up around the Serapeum, and extensive underground galleries were cut into the rock as burial sites for large amounts of mummified ibises, baboons, cats, dogs, and falcons.
Monuments of the Late Period, the Graeco-Roman and later periods
Several shaft tombs of officials of the Late Period.
Serapeum (the larger part dating to the Ptolemaeic Period)
The so-called 'Philosophers circle', a monument to important Greek thinkers and poets, consisting of statues of Hesiod, Homer, Pindar, Plato, and others (Ptolemaeic)
Several Coptic monasteries, among which the Monastery of Apa Jeremias (Byzantine and Early Islamic
