Secrets of the Saqqara Tomb

A dig is under way at Saqqara in Egypt. The team finds a tomb under the sand: a chamber sealed four thousand four hundred years ago, its walls covered in coloured reliefs and almost undamaged. It belongs to a priest named Wahtye. The excavation team is entirely Egyptian and works for months opening the chamber, the shafts and the burial rooms below. Every section opened brings a new question. James Tovell directs. The documentary was released on Netflix in 2020. Its best side is the team. The camera stands with the workers on the dig as well as the archaeologists, and their knowledge is part of the narrative; in documentaries of this kind those people usually stay invisible. The inscriptions and reliefs give information about Wahtye's family, and the team tries to draw a story out of it: his mother's position in the tomb, the names of his siblings and a possible epidemic. The narrative does not overstate the finds; the team argues more than one possibility about what they have and gives no firm conclusion. The photography is plain and the spaces are narrow; the descents down the shafts are the tensest passages. It runs about ninety minutes. Who it is for: anyone interested in archaeology documentary and the history of Egypt. Who it is not for: the pace is slow, the technical detail is dense, and the dramatic structure is weak.