After another year of exploring the depths of the Saqqara necropolis, a Polish archaeological mission has announced the discovery of a 4,300-year-old tomb that belonged to an ancient Egyptian officer in charge of secret documents during the reign of the first pharaohs of the Sixth Dynasty, around 2,300 BC.

Archaeologists with the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Warsaw found the tomb by chance last autumn while excavating a mysterious ditch known as the Dry Moat that encircles the step pyramid of King Djoser, the earliest such construction in Egypt. The team was working near its previous discovery, the tomb of an ancient vizier named Merefnebef, when the facade of the other’s tomb was suddenly unearthed.

Kamil Omar Kuraszkiewicz, the director of the expedition, told Al-Monitor that the discovery “is not in the immediate vicinity of the tomb of Merefnebef — in fact, there are over 40 meters [130 feet] between them — but in the so-called Dry Moat of the step pyramid complex, a fascinating structure that has been recently the focus of our research.”

Kuraszkiewicz added, “Exploring a section of the Dry Moat, we were searching for structures from the times of Djoser.”