The desert plateau of Saqqara, to the west of the ancient capital of Memphis in Egypt, is saturated with graffiti, stretching in date from the 3rd Millennium BCE and into the present day. These inscriptions offer a glimpse of the diverse communities who have lived and worked in this ancient capital zone stretching from Abusir in the north to Dahshur in the south: from the scratched names and titles of cult-priests in Old Kingdom tombs; to painted inscriptions left by New Kingdom scribes around the ancient pyramid temple complexes; to short inscriptions in Greek, Carian, Arabic, and the languages of visitors and inhabitants of Memphis in later periods. This talk will explore how ancient people carved, scratched, and inked traces of themselves into the landscape, and how graffiti are intimately bound to the life-history of ancient Egyptian monuments of this immensely ancient place.