"The contents listing for the next issue of Archaeology magazine is online on the Archaeology website. It's cover image and lead story focueses on Saqqara, City of the Dead by Andrew Lawler, and there is an online feature on the subject:
"Saqqara has yielded some of antiquity's most compelling art and architecture, from the magnificent complex of Djoser, which set the standard for future pharaonic tombs, to intimate, carved stone friezes picturing some of the most moving scenes of daily life in ancient Egypt, such as one in the modest grave of Nefer, a minor official, in which a farmer gently feeds and pets his bull. But it also remains vexing. Whether people actually lived there is in dispute. And despite all the Old Kingdom royal tombs, no mummies of rulers have been identified. At the same time, excavators have found tens of thousands of mummies of cats and dogs, ibis and fish, baboons and crocodiles. No concrete evidence of the workshops one would expect at such a vast funerary metropolis has been found, and, despite the richness of individual tombs, there is as yet no completed modern survey of the site."
See the full abstract at the following URL:
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