Having studied the archaeological maps and modern satellite images at length, I set out across the sands armed with an iPad and iPhone, heading roughly northwest from what remains of Emery’s dig house. In spring 2015, I set off for the plateau to attempt to locate, or at least get close to the site of some of the monuments that have been associated with Imhotep’s tomb.
He wanted to find the tomb of Imhotep and had been drawn to the area by a combination of two types of evidence: some very large tombs of Imhotep’s time, and a scatter of ritual deposits indicating much later cultic activity of the kind one would expect around the temple of Imhotep, which texts tell us was in the area. The North Saqqara plateau was extensively excavated by Bryan Emery in the 1960s and early 1970s. Chris Naunton strides into the desert to find the architect and physician vilified by Hollywood
