At the foot of the pyramid of Djoser, the oldest stone monument in human history, stands the huge necropolis of Saqqara, one of the most sacred places in ancient Egypt. For 14 years, a team from the Department of Egyptian Antiquities at the Louvre, led by Christiane Ziegler, explored and studied this extremely rich site which yielded one of the masterpieces in the Louvre's Egyptian department: the mastaba of Akhethetep. April 2004: the documentary relates the day-by-day progress of an extraordinary archaeological excavation, and reveals a huge ancient Egyptian funerary complex with inviolate tombs, magnificent and perfectly preserved sarcophagi, prophylactic figurines, intact mummies and canopic vases. These treasures of art and science will provide a clearer understanding of the funerary rituals of this period and of the Egyptian society of the last millennium BC.

This mammoth project was also based on cooperation between scientists from the Louvre and the CNRS and the Egyptian workers they employed. The viewer's interest and emotion are stirred as much by the human as by the scientific adventure.

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