Maarten Raven Maarten Raven Maarten J. Raven (born 1953, Utrecht) is a Dutch Egyptologist. Raven is the curator (since 1978) of the department of Egyptology at the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden. In addition to his work at the museum, he has been active as an archeologist in Saqqara since 1975. In Saqqara, he has been working (as joint field director since 1999) on a New Kingdom archeological burial site, a cooperation of the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden and the Egypt Exploration Society (1975–1998) and Leiden University (1999-) In September 2012 he was also appointed as extraordinary professor 'Museology of Ancient Egypt' at
Saqqara inspired the monumental enclosure wall around the Step Pyramid complex. Djoser's funerary complex, built by the royal architect Imhotep, further comprises a large number of dummy buildings and a secondary mastaba (the so-called 'Southern Tomb'). French architect and Egyptologist Jean-Philippe Lauer spent the greater part of his life excavating and restoring Djoser's funerary complex. Nearly all Fourth Dynasty kings chose a different location for their pyramids. During the second half of the Old Kingdom, under the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties, Saqqara was again the royal burial ground. The Fifth and Sixth Dynasty pyramids are not built wholly of massive stone