Antiquities restorer Abu al-Hassan Ahmed Hussein works on engravings on a limestone tomb belonging to a high-ranking royal butler dating back 3,350 years.

SAQQARA, Egypt — Archaeologists unveiled the tombs Tuesday of a pharaonic butler and a scribe that have been buried for more than 3,000 years — proof that Egypt's sands still have secrets to reveal.

Although archaeologists have been exploring Egypt intensively for more than 150 years, some estimate only one-third of what lies underground in Saqqara, site of the country's most ancient pyramid and burial site of kings, has been uncovered.

"The sands of Saqqara reveal lots of secrets," said Egypt's antiquities chief, Zahi Hawass, as he showed reporters a 4,000-year-old mud brick tomb that belonged to a scribe of divine records, Ka-Hay, and his wife.

The tomb, along with the butler's 3,350-year-old limestone grave and two painted coffins, were discovered earlier this year near the famous Step Pyramid of King Djoser — the oldest of Egypt's more than 90 pyramids.Hawass said the three discoveries are just the tip of what remains undiscovered at Saqqara, which was the burial grounds for Memphis, the capital of Egypt's Old Kingdom.In December, archaeologists in Saqqara discovered the mummified remains of a doctor who was buried along with surgical tools more than 4,000 years ago. Two months earlier, the graves of three royal dentists were discovered in Saqqara after the arrest of tomb raiders led archaeologists to the site.Hawass said the mud-brick tomb unveiled Tuesday, which also featured wooden statues and a door with intricate hieroglyphic carvings — including one of the scribe and his wife — "could enrich our knowledge about the people who actually surrounded the kings of Saqqara."Three wooden statues also were found in the tomb. Two of them, each about 3 feet tall and depicting the scribe, were laid out on pieces of foam on the ground.On the other side of the Step Pyramid, archaeologists then unveiled the second tomb, which belonged to a butler who died some 3,350 years ago.Carved out of limestone, it contained murals that showed scenes of people performing rituals and monkeys eating fruit. The blue and orange colors of the paint were surprisingly well preserved.

"This is a very, very lively scene," said Maarten Raven, the excavation's director and a curator at the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, Netherlands.Raven said he believed other tombs from the New Kingdom, similar to the butler's, had yet to be uncovered in Saqqara, which is famous for Old Kingdom antiquities. Many of the New Kingdom tombs, which date from 1570 B.C. to 1070 B.C., can be found in the southern Egyptian city of Luxor.Hawass also unveiled two wooden coffins, 4,000 years old, found south of the Step Pyramid. The rectangular coffins held human-shaped coffins known as anthropoids, containing the mummies of a priest and a woman.Saqqara, a popular tourist site in the desert about 12 miles south of Cairo, hosts a collection of temples, tombs and funerary complexes. Its Step Pyramid is the forerunner of the more sophisticated pyramids in Giza, which are believed to have been built about a century later.

Archaeological workers remove a wooden statue from a more than 4,000-year-old mud brick tomb that belonged to a scribe of divine records and his wife. It's located near the Step Pyramid in Saqqara, Egypt. Archaeologists unveiled ancient tombs bearing intricate hieroglyphics that had remained buried for thousands of years.

Tape holds together the fragile paintwork on a coffin dating back about 4,000 years. It was found near the famous Step Pyramid.