The most ancient burials found at this site date back to the reign of Amenhotep III, the ninth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty during the 1350s BC. Working as an administrator during the reign of his father, Khaemweset, a son of Ramesses II of the nineteenth dynasty, ordered that a tunnel be excavated at the site, and a catacomb of galleries - now known as "The Lesser Vaults" - be designed with side chambers to contain the sarcophagi for the mummified remains of the bulls. But for one, all chambers were found emptied of their contents except for a disarray of dedication stelae. A second gallery of chambers, now known as "The Greater Vaults", was excavated under Psamtik I of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty and later extended to approximately 350 m in length, 5 m tall and 3 m wide by the Ptolemaic dynasty along with a long, parallel service tunnel. These gallery chambers contained granite and diorite sarcophagi weighing up to 70 tonnes each, though all were found empty. The long boulevard leading to the ceremonial site, flanked by 600 sphinxes, likely was built under Nectanebo I, the founder of the thirtieth dynasty.
Discovery
The temple was discovered by Auguste Mariette, who had gone to Egypt to collect Coptic-language manuscripts, but later grew interested in the remains of the Saqqara necropolis. In 1850, Mariette found the head of one sphinx sticking out of the shifting desert dunes, cleared the sand and followed the boulevard to the site. After using explosives to clearrocks blocking the entrance to the catacomb, he excavated most of the complex. Unfortunately, his notes of the excavation were lost, which has complicated the use of these burials in establishing an Egyptian chronology. Mariette found one undisturbed burial, which is now at the Agricultural Museum in Cairo. The other 24 sarcophagi of the bulls had been robbed.
Controversy
A controversial aspect of the Saqqara find is that for the period between the reign of Ramesses XI and the twenty-third year of the reign of Osorkon II - about 250 years - only nine burials have been discovered, including three sarcophagi Mariette reported to have identified in a chamber too dangerous to excavate. Because the average lifespan of a bull was between 25 and 28 years, egyptologists believe that more burials should have been found. Furthermore, four of the burials attributed by Mariette to the reign of Ramesses XI have since been retrodated. David Rohl advocates changes to the standard Egyptian chronology and has argued that the dating of the Twentieth Dynasty should be pushed some 300 years later on the basis of the Saqqara discovery. Most scholars.
