Brunet, The XXIInd and XXVth Dynasties Apis Burial Conundrum, Journal of the Ancient Chronology Forum 10 (2005), 26-34. Wikimedia Commons has media related to Serapeum of Saqqara.
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The other 24 sarcophagi of the bulls had been robbed. Mariette found one undisturbed burial, which is now at the Agricultural Museum in Cairo. Unfortunately, his notes of the excavation were lost, which has complicated the use of these burials in establishing an Egyptian chronology. After using explosives to clear rocks blocking the entrance to the catacomb, he excavated most of the complex. 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. 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. The long boulevard leading to the ceremonial site, flanked by 600 sphinxes, likely was built under Nectanebo I, (379/8–361/0 BC) the founder of the Thirtieth Dynasty (the last native one). These gallery chambers contained granite and diorite sarcophagi, some weighing up to 70 tonnes (including lid), though all were found empty.
Ī second gallery of chambers, now known as the "Greater Vaults", was excavated under Psamtik I (664–610 BC) 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. But for one, all chambers were found emptied of their contents except for a disarray of dedication stelae. Working as an administrator during the reign of his father, Khaemweset, a son of Ramesses II (1279–1213 BC) 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. 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.