On 18 April 2025, a joint Egyptian archaeological mission uncovered something that had lain hidden beneath the sands of Saqqara for more than four millennia: the tomb of Prince Waserif Re - also transliterated as Wer-Ka-Ra - son of Pharaoh Userkaf, the founding monarch of Egypt's Fifth Dynasty. The discovery, announced simultaneously by the Supreme Council of Antiquities and the Zahi Hawass Foundation for Archaeology and Heritage, immediately ranks among the most significant finds in Egypt in recent years - not merely for its age, but for what it reveals about a figure history had almost entirely forgotten.
The tomb was found in the Saqqara necropolis, forty kilometres southwest of Cairo and the ancient burial ground of Memphis, one of the most archaeologically dense sites on earth. Saqqara is home to the Step Pyramid of Djoser - Egypt's earliest large-scale stone structure, built over 4,600 years ago - and to the pyramids of several Fifth and Sixth Dynasty kings. Yet even in this landscape layered with royal burials, the tomb of Prince Wer-Ka-Ra stands apart.
A Prince Lost to Time
Little was previously known about Wer-Ka-Ra. His father, Userkaf, ruled Egypt for approximately seven to eight years around 2498–2491 BCE, according to the Turin King List and the chronologies established by Egyptologists such as Jürgen von Beckerath. Userkaf is remembered as a reformer: he broke with the monumental excess of the Fourth Dynasty - the dynasty that built the Great Pyramids of Giza - and turned instead toward the cult of the sun god Ra. He constructed the first dedicated sun temple at Abu Ghurab, just north of Abusir, and relocated the royal necropolis back to Saqqara, placing his own modest pyramid adjacent to Djoser's Step Pyramid in a deliberate act of political and religious symbolism.
Prince Wer-Ka-Ra, however, occupied a position of extraordinary authority in his own right. The hieroglyphic inscriptions carved into the tomb's false door enumerate his titles: Hereditary Prince, Governor of Buto and Nekheb, Royal Scribe, Vizier, Judge, and Chanting Priest. The combination of these roles - sacerdotal, judicial, administrative, and regional - indicates a figure who wielded power across multiple domains of the Egyptian state. Buto, in the Nile Delta, and Nekheb, near modern-day El-Kab in Upper Egypt, were two of the most symbolically significant cult centres in the country. To govern both was to control the twin pillars of Upper and Lower Egypt in the name of the crown.
The Pink Granite False Door
The centrepiece of the discovery is a monumental false door carved from pink granite, measuring 4.5 metres in height and 1.15 metres in width. According to Mohamed Ismail Khaled, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, this is the first false door of its size and material ever found in Egypt. False doors served as a ritual interface between the living and the dead in ancient Egyptian funerary architecture - offerings placed before them were believed to sustain the ka, or spirit, of the deceased. The scale and material of Wer-Ka-Ra's door, however, place it in a category of its own. Pink granite, quarried primarily from Aswan, was reserved for the most important monuments and statues; its use here suggests both the prince's proximity to the throne and the resources available to his funerary cult.
The door is elaborately decorated with hieroglyphic texts recording the prince's name, titles, and a list of ritual offerings. In front of it, the team also discovered a red granite offering table measuring 92.5 centimetres in diameter, inscribed with detailed lists of sacrificial items - bread, beer, oxen, and fowl - standard fare for an Old Kingdom elite burial but executed here with unusual precision.
Thirteen Seated Figures and the Mystery of Djoser
To the north of the tomb's main entrance, the excavation team made a find that has electrified Egyptological circles: thirteen pink granite statues seated on high-backed benches, the first such ensemble discovered in Saqqara. Several of the figures appear to represent Wer-Ka-Ra's wives - elevated heads placed above the others indicate hierarchical positioning within the group - while two statues stand headless, and a black granite figure measuring 1.35 metres was found toppled face-down.
But the most startling revelation came from within a separate chamber. There, the team uncovered a statue group depicting King Djoser, the Third Dynasty pharaoh who commissioned the Step Pyramid, alongside his wife and ten daughters. According to Zahi Hawass, the archaeologist who led the excavation, these statues were likely originally placed in a chamber adjacent to Djoser's Step Pyramid and were transferred to Wer-Ka-Ra's tomb during the Late Period - a span of roughly two millennia after the prince's original burial.
"This is the first time we find a statue group of King Djoser's family," Hawass stated on 18 April 2025, calling it "a rare and important discovery." The mission has indicated that further investigations will attempt to determine why and how these statues were moved - and what their relocation might tell us about the reuse of sacred objects across Egyptian dynastic periods.
A Tomb Across Millennia
The presence of the Djoser statues is not the only evidence that Wer-Ka-Ra's tomb was repurposed long after its original construction. A black granite statue of a standing male figure, measuring 1.17 metres in height, was discovered in one of the chambers bearing hieroglyphic inscriptions that date to the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty - the Saite period, which spanned roughly 688 to 525 BCE. The statue's style, material, and epigraphy all point to a Late Period provenance, confirming that the tomb remained active - perhaps as a site of ancestral veneration - nearly 2,000 years after the prince's interment.
A secondary granite entrance on the tomb's eastern façade adds another chronological layer. Flanked by two pink granite pillars, this entrance bears the cartouche of King Neferirkare Kakai, the third king of the Fifth Dynasty, who reigned approximately 2477–2460 BCE. Neferirkare was Wer-Ka-Ra's nephew - the son of Sahure, Userkaf's successor - suggesting that the tomb may have been expanded or modified during his reign, or that Wer-Ka-Ra's funerary cult received royal patronage after his death.
The convergence of Old Kingdom, Fifth Dynasty, and Late Period elements within a single tomb makes this a site of exceptional archaeological complexity. As Hawass observed: "Saqqara is one of the most important archaeological sites in the world. Every discovery here brings us closer to understanding the complexity of our ancient civilization."
Saqqara's Expanding Significance
The discovery comes at a time when Saqqara is generating a remarkable volume of new archaeological data. In recent years, the necropolis has yielded hundreds of coffins, mummies, and funerary artefacts spanning multiple periods, alongside the ongoing excavation of Old Kingdom mastaba tombs. The site's layered history - from the First Dynasty mastabas through the New Kingdom tombs of officials and the Ptolemaic Serapeum - makes it a uniquely rich repository for understanding the full arc of ancient Egyptian civilisation.
For the Fifth Dynasty specifically, Wer-Ka-Ra's tomb provides critical new evidence. The dynasty, which ruled for approximately 150 years from 2494 to 2345 BCE, represents a period of ideological transformation in Egyptian kingship. The Papyrus Westcar, a literary text from the Hyksos period but possibly reflecting earlier traditions, recounts a prophecy that the first three kings of the Fifth Dynasty - Userkaf, Sahure, and Neferirkare - would be the divine children of Ra. The dynasty's reverence for the sun god manifested in the construction of personal sun temples at Abusir, a tradition initiated by Userkaf and continued by most of his successors. The Abusir Papyri demonstrate that offerings for deceased Fifth Dynasty rulers were first consecrated in a sun temple before being dispatched to his mortuary temple - a theological innovation that bound the king's funerary cult to the daily solar cycle.
Wer-Ka-Ra's tomb, located near his father's pyramid complex at Saqqara, reinforces the geographic and ideological continuity of this programme. The prince's position as "Governor of Buto and Nekheb" further situates him within the administrative apparatus that supported the Fifth Dynasty's sun-centred theology and its expansive network of temple economies.
What Remains Unknown
Excavations at the site are ongoing. The team has indicated that further chambers and artefacts remain to be uncovered, and that the transfer of the Djoser statues - their original location, the circumstances of their removal, and the motivations behind their relocation - remains an active area of investigation. The identity of the Late Period figure represented by the 26th Dynasty black granite statue has also yet to be confirmed.
What is already clear is that the tomb of Prince Wer-Ka-Ra has fundamentally altered the archaeological record of the Fifth Dynasty. A prince who was virtually unknown before April 2025 now emerges as a figure of considerable political and religious stature - one whose burial complex has yielded one of the largest false doors in Egyptian history, a family portrait of Egypt's most famous pyramid builder, and a window into the afterlife of a tomb across two millennia of reuse and reinterpretation. In the words of Egypt's Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, Sherif Fathy, the discovery is "a milestone in uncovering new layers of Egypt's rich and ancient history" - and one made entirely by an Egyptian-led team, a point of considerable national pride.
As the dig continues, Saqqara will undoubtedly yield further secrets. But the tomb of Wer-Ka-Ra has already delivered something rare: a figure plucked from near-total obscurity, now restored to the historical record with a depth of detail that Egyptologists will be studying for decades to come.
