'Secrets of the Saqqara Tomb': Who was Wahtye? Ancient Egyptian priest's lavish tomb held deadly secrets
When it comes to Ancient Egypt, while a lot has been uncovered, there is still much more to be understood. It is why excavations around Egypt still continue to this day and probably will for a long time. Netflix's latest documentary, 'Secrets of the Saqqara Tomb' proves that the burial grounds of Egypt still hold many secrets. Among them, an excavation at the famed Saqqara burial grounds may have helped demystify the life of an ancient Egyptian priest and what happened to him. Wahtye was a high-ranking priest and official who served under King Neferirkare Kakai during the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt
Wahtye's tomb is a lavish one -- it was filled with unique artifacts, statues, and its walls were covered in hieroglyphics telling the story of Wahtye's life. But, it was soon uncovered that all is not what it seems and that Wahtye had his own secrets to hide. In the documentary, we meet Nabil and Nermeen, two hieroglyphics experts who are working to translate the story on the walls. One inscription stated, "Wahtye, Purified Priest to the King, Overseer of the Divine Estate, Overseer of the Sacred Boat, Revered with the Great God, Wahtye."
Of the two of them, it is Nabil who is more vocal about his suspicions over Wahtye, whom he believes was an egoist because Wahtye's name was mentioned many times in the tomb and there were over fifty statues of the ancient priest within it. However, something was off. In an extravagant carving featuring a man and a woman, the usual story is that it should be that of the tomb's owner and his wife. While Wahtye's name is mentioned, the name accompanying was that of Merit Min, his mother. Nabil also notes something strange -- Wahtye's name was inscribed after something else was scraped off. Could Wahtye have seized someone else's tomb and made it his own?
Here, Nermeen has a few theories. In one part of the tomb, Wahtye has dedicated a poem to his brother's spirit, yet, he does not name his brother. The two experts believe that Wahtye stole the tomb from his brother, and inscribed the song as a form of penance. But what of the afterlife? If one steals, that would be bad news for them wherever they were going in the next life. It would seem that Wahtye believed that if he inscribed a message making him part of the afterlife judges, he could absolve himself, and thus enjoy it as he wanted to.
The mystery of Wahtye's family is even stranger. According to the inscriptions of his tomb, he had four children. On excavating the shafts in the tomb, the archaeologists uncover something disturbing. One shaft holds the bones of three children -- one below 20 years of age, another below 18 years of age, and the third was a very young child of possibly six years old when he died. The second shaft held the bones of an old woman (in her fifties), a younger woman (potentially in her thirties), and that of another smaller child. Since Wahtye had three boys and one girl, it is believed that these bones belonged to his family, prompting questions as to how his children could have died young.
The deaths of his young children seemed to have affected Wahtye. Whereas the tomb was as exquisite as one could find in Egypt, Wahtye himself was buried in a simple wooden coffin. Amira Shaheen studied Wahtye's bones and learned that he was a delicate man, and possibly just 35 years old when he died. The bones of his lower limbs indicated that he was unhealthy and potentially suffered from anemia like his mother. Amira suspects that the whole family might have perished due to some disease given that Wahtye and his mother died at different ages and that all the children died young -- and she believes that it could have been malaria that killed them. If Amira's theory could be proven right, this would be the first documented case of malaria in history, by over a thousand years.
'Secrets of the Saqqara Tomb' is now streaming on Netflix.