The Discovery of 3 rd Dynasty Statues Found in the Cemetery of Teti at Saqqara

This article presents two hard-stone statues of non-royal officials discovered in the mastaba of Wsr-ef-Re, son of King Userkaf, in the Teti Cemetery at North Saqqara. Although recovered from a securely 5 th Dynasty context, both sculptures—one in black granite, naming the khet -priest Tp-m-ankh, and one in grey granite, belonging to the official Aym-rn-khp, ‘prince of Elkab’ and ‘chief judge’—display formal, material, and epigraphic traits characteristic of 3 rd Dynasty private statuary. This article provides a detailed description of the mastaba and its southeastern chamber, before turning to a close analysis of the two statues. Comparison with canonical early Old Kingdom pieces supports a 3 rd Dynasty attribution and suggests that the statue of Tp-m-ankh preserves the earliest attested occurrence of several priestly and administrative titles later known in the mid-5 th Dynasty. The article further discusses the unusual co-occurrence of these statues with a unique group of red-granite statues of King Djoser and his family inside a 5 th Dynasty tomb, arguing that this pattern of reuse and concentration of early material strengthens the case for locating the still-unidentified tomb of Imhotep in the northern Saqqara necropolis.