Photograph by Kenneth Garrett
In a cramped and humble tomb at the bottom of a shaft almost 60 feet (18 meters) deep, archaeologist Naguib Kanawati retrieves the skull of King Teti’s overseer of Upper Egypt. “This man was responsible for collecting taxes. You’d expect him to have a large sarcophagus. Otherwise why dig the shaft?” says Kanawati, director of the Australian Centre for Egyptology at Macquarie University. “This is a miserable burial for a man of that stature. He wasn’t being punished, but something must have happened at the end of his career.” Whatever it was remains a mystery.