The Abusir Archive first turned up on the Cairo antiquities dealers' shelves in 1893, found, it was believed, by the labourers known as sabakhin ('dung men'!). Yet it wasn't until Ludwig Borchardt discovered several fragments of papyri in the ruins of the mortuary temple of Neferirkare, which were then matched up by Hugo Ibscher, that the provenance was finally established.

Luck played a large part in its survival, because if Niuserre hadn't redirected his predecessor Neferirkare's causeway after his death the archive would never have survived. Why? Because the temple archive was always kept in the valley temple, not the mortuary temple which is now under several feet of mud and water.

Three temple archives have survived, namely those of Neferirkare, Raneferef and the great Queen Khentkaus. The tiny papyrus fragment found in the temple of Neferirkare lead directly to the search for the temple of Raneferef. No-one imagined that more papyri would be found here, but its discovery surprised everyone. There were also good and bad aspects of the discovery - good because unlike the discovery of the Neferirkare papyrus, the Czech team could make a careful record of the circumstances surrounding the find, but bad because the papyri were scattered over a large area of the temple. Its retrieval and documentation required considerable time, which created problems protecting such an isolated site. Eventually over 2,000 separate pieces of papyri were retrieved and preserved, ranging from tiny fragments to large sections, and found mainly in the storage rooms in the north-west of the temple. Originally fastened with leather straps and stored in wooden boxes, it would seem that the thieves who had ransacked the temple in antiquity had stolen the boxes after tipping out their contents, which in the course of time had been trampled underfoot and covered in layers of crumbling masonry, to be finally engulfed in layers of the sand which safely preserved them for 4,500 years.

So what did the papyri tell us? Well, it's still early days and the task begun by the eminent scholar Madame Posener-Kreiger sadly ended with her death in 1996. But so far it would seem that a large proportion are accounting documents recording various supplies and yields from the pharaoh's estates allocated to provide support for his mortuary cult; these include supplies of grain, milk, fruit, vegetables, wine, beer, fats, poultry and meat, a fascinating keyhole through which to view a very distant past.