"Located south of Cairo, Saqqara, the principal necropolis of Memphis, is a privileged site in Egyptian history. There, Egyptian and foreign Egyptologists have made many discoveries, in particular French archaeologists: Auguste Mariette, Gaston Maspero, and Victor Loret in the past, Jean-Philippe Lauer, who passed away at the dawn of his one hundredth year (2001), and in these last decades, Jean Leclant, founder of the French Archaeological Mission of Saqqara." "In this distinguished line of egyptologists, Alain Zivie and his team of the French Archaeological Mission of the Bubasteion have spent the last twenty-five years examining, from the sands of Saqqara, a major New Kingdom cemetery that was later transformed into catacombs of cats. They have brought to light the tomb of the vizier 'Aper-El, with its burial treasure, and those of the painter Thothmes, of Maia, the foster mother of Tutankhamun, of an ambassador of Ramesses II, of the scribe of the Aten treasury in Memphis, and of others, as well." "Presenting the archaeological, historical, and artistic consequences of these investigations and these discoveries, the egyptologist here takes an approach that is sensitive to an authentic scientific adventure. To do this, he also uses and comments on a long series of beautiful photographs by Patrick Chapuis, in which we discover the works and the days, as well as the joys, of an entire team."--BOOK JACKET.