More than 4,000 years ago, an Egyptian official named Sekhentiu-Ptah held a collection of titles that placed him remarkably close to royal power. He oversaw the king’s works and documents, supervised scribes, and even served as the “Keeper of the Secrets of Royal Commands.”

Now, archaeologists have found his tomb. An Egyptian archaeological mission excavating the Saqqara necropolis in Giza has uncovered the Old Kingdom tomb of Sekhentiu-Ptah, including its funerary chapel, an intact false door, and a complete collection of alabaster ritual objects still positioned where they were left thousands of years ago.

Nearby, researchers discovered an interconnected network of burial shafts containing human remains, more than 100 funerary figurines, and three stone sarcophagi that were still sealed when archaeologists found them.

Speaking with The Jerusalem Post, Mohamed Abdel-Badie, head of Egypt’s Antiquities Sector, said finding a complete set of funerary objects still in their original position was “an important discovery, offering valuable information about funerary rituals and practices during the Old Kingdom.”

The discovery was made during the Egyptian mission’s first excavation season in Sector A, west of the Bubasteion at Saqqara, roughly 20 miles south of Cairo. Saqqara served as a major burial ground for ancient Memphis and contains monuments and tombs spanning thousands of years of Egyptian history.

Sekhentiu-Ptah’s tomb dates to the Old Kingdom, the era roughly spanning the third millennium BCE that witnessed the construction of Egypt’s great pyramids.

Inside the remains of his funerary chapel, archaeologists encountered a false door still standing in its original location. Such doors were symbolic thresholds associated with the deceased and the offerings made to sustain them in the afterlife.

Directly in front of the false door was a complete group of alabaster ritual objects that had apparently remained together in their archaeological context. The assemblage includes an offering table and offering disk, purification basin, jug, and another basin.

Hieroglyphic inscriptions on the false door and funerary objects revealed not only Sekhentiu-Ptah’s name but an extraordinary résumé.

He was identified as Royal Chamberlain, Overseer of All the King’s Works, Overseer of Royal Documents, Keeper of the Secrets of Royal Commands, Priest of the goddess Maat, and Overseer of the Scribes. Together, the titles indicate that Sekhentiu-Ptah occupied a prominent position within Egypt’s royal administration.

Archaeologists also uncovered a system of interconnected burial shafts filled with human burials and large quantities of painted funerary cartonnage, a material commonly made from layers of linen or papyrus and plaster and used in funerary coverings.

Archaeologists recovered more than 100 faience ushabti figurines. These small figures were placed in Egyptian tombs to perform work for the deceased in the afterlife symbolically. Archaeologists also found a wooden falcon statue, pottery, and three stone sarcophagi that were kept sealed in their original condition.

The collection is particularly interesting because it captures different chapters in Saqqara’s history. While Sekhentiu-Ptah’s tomb belongs to the Old Kingdom, material from the surrounding shafts provides evidence for funerary practices during the much later Late Period. In essence, the site became a cemetery layered on top of a cemetery, repeatedly returned to and repurposed across Egyptian history.

Not everything survived undisturbed. Archaeologists found openings cut between some burial chambers, evidence that ancient tomb robbers had already penetrated portions of the complex. Even so, enough remained intact to allow researchers to reconstruct how the necropolis changed over time.

The surviving artifacts retain “great archaeological and scientific value, contributing to understanding the site’s internal layout and the development of its architecture through its successive historical phases,” excavation director Dr. Amr El-Tayebi explained.

For now, the discovery is a work in progress. The Egyptian team is continuing to document and compare the artifacts with material recovered elsewhere in Egypt, with plans to publish the results in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Archaeologists also believe Sector A could contain additional structures and artifacts still waiting beneath the sands of Saqqara.

Tim McMillan is a retired law enforcement executive, investigative reporter and co-founder of The Debrief. His writing typically focuses on defense, national security, the Intelligence Community and topics related to psychology. You can follow Tim on Twitter: @LtTimMcMillan.  Tim can be reached by email: tim@thedebrief.org or through encrypted email: LtTimMcMillan@protonmail.com 

Nine centuries ago, people gathered at what is today recognized as the Etowah Indian Mounds site, located roughly 40 miles northwest of Atlanta, Georgia, for enormous community feasts. They ate, drank, and eventually discarded broken pottery into pits that would become part of the foundations of the ancient city’s first monumental mound.

Now, traces hidden inside two pieces of that discarded pottery have revealed something archaeologists never expected to find so far from the tropics: ancient cacao DNA.

Researchers say the discovery provides the first direct evidence that cacao, the plant used to make chocolate, reached the Mississippian civilization of the eastern United States roughly 800 to 900 years ago.

Because cacao cannot grow naturally in Georgia, its presence also points to surprisingly extensive networks capable of moving exotic goods across long stretches of pre-Columbian North America. The findings were published in PLOS One.

“This study presents the first evidence that cacao consumption was part of the Mississippian world at roughly the same time as it appeared at Chaco,” researchers write. “This discovery at Etowah asks us to broaden our understanding of the networks that distributed cacao throughout the Americas before European colonization.”

Chocolate has a deep history in the Americas. Archaeological evidence indicates cacao was being consumed in South America at least 5,000 years ago and later became culturally important throughout Central America.

More surprising was a 2009 discovery indicating that people at Chaco Canyon in modern New Mexico drank cacao between roughly 1050 and 1350 CE. Since cacao only grows in tropical climates, the finding meant long-distance exchange networks had carried the plant hundreds of miles northward.

Whether cacao traveled even farther into what is now the eastern United States remained unclear.

However, Etowah offered an intriguing place to look. Located in modern Georgia, the Indigenous city eventually became one of the most important centers of Mississippian civilization. The pottery examined in the new study came from feasting deposits dating to the 11th and 12th centuries, early in Etowah’s history.

Researchers had previously analyzed residues from 31 Etowah pottery fragments. Twenty-one contained at least two chemical compounds associated with caffeinated beverages, while three contained all four compounds the scientists examined.

Yaupon holly, a native plant used to produce the caffeinated beverage historically known as Black Drink, contains several of the same chemical biomarkers as cacao. Researchers, therefore, concluded that the Etowah vessels most likely contained yaupon rather than cacao.

However, this time, scientists went looking for cacao itself.

Researchers subjected samples from three pottery fragments to ancient DNA analysis, producing more than 502 million useful paired sequences before using successive filters to identify genetic material specific to Theobroma cacao.

Two pottery samples cleared the researchers’ threshold for identifying cacao.

Importantly, the genetic material also displayed telltale characteristics of ancient DNA. The fragments averaged only 84 base pairs long, consistent with the degradation expected after centuries of decay. The researchers also employed strict contamination controls and bioinformatic filtering to distinguish cacao from other organisms present in the samples.

The evidence does not establish exactly how cacao reached Georgia. Preliminary genetic comparisons linked one sample most closely to Amelonado cacao and another to Curaray, both of which also showed similarities to Marañon cacao. Those lineages originated in the Amazon basin, including parts of modern Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil, but also spread into Central America long before cacao appeared at Etowah.

Cacao may have traveled from Central America through long-distance exchange networks or passed indirectly through communities in the American Southwest before reaching the Eastern Woodlands. However, too few genetic markers survived to pinpoint its immediate source, and researchers say no direct archaeological evidence currently establishes either route.

Perhaps more intriguing is where researchers found the cacao.

The pottery came from pits packed with animal bones, ceramics, and organic material interpreted as the remains of communal feasting associated with the construction of Etowah’s first platform mound. Researchers suggest cacao was more than an exotic luxury and could have played a role in ceremonies intended to reinforce social bonds during the city’s formative period.

The discovery also raises the possibility that previously detected chemical residues at other Mississippian sites, including Cahokia, could contain cacao that was mistaken for locally available yaupon. Confirming that possibility will require additional ancient DNA testing.

“These results ask us to reopen lines of research long closed, especially regarding contacts between the impressive civilizations of Central and South America and the great Mississippian civilization of the Eastern Woodlands,” researchers write. “More broadly, our results suggest that it is time to explore the possibility that cacao was distributed more widely in the precontact Americas than we have understood.”

Study: King, A., Powis, T.G., Argout, X., Vignes, H., Utge, J., Rhoné, B., et al. “Cacao in the Mississippian World: Archaeogenomic evidence for T. cacao consumption at the Etowah Site, Georgia.” PLOS One 21(8):(2026). 

Tim McMillan is a retired law enforcement executive, investigative reporter and co-founder of The Debrief. His writing typically focuses on defense, national security, the Intelligence Community and topics related to psychology. You can follow Tim on Twitter: @LtTimMcMillan.  Tim can be reached by email: tim@thedebrief.org or through encrypted email: LtTimMcMillan@protonmail.com