Where Saqqara is
Saqqara lies on the west bank of the Nile, on the strip of desert that rises above the valley, south-west of modern Cairo and south of Giza. Below it, on the valley floor, stood Memphis, one of the capitals of ancient Egypt. Saqqara was Memphis’s cemetery: the city lived in the green valley, the dead were buried in the dry desert on the ridge above it.
It is one of several royal cemeteries strung along that desert edge, with Giza to the north and Dahshur to the south. What makes Saqqara special is not one monument but its length of use: almost every period of Egyptian history left tombs here.
Why Egypt’s first pyramid is here, not at Giza
The answer is chronology. When King Djoser of the Third Dynasty built the first pyramid, Giza was still an empty plateau; its great pyramids came a generation of kings later, in the Fourth Dynasty. Saqqara, by contrast, was already the elite cemetery of the capital: kings and high officials of the First and Second Dynasties, between about 3040 and 2686 BCE, had been buried there in large brick tombs.
So Djoser built where his predecessors and his court were buried, close to Memphis, and turned the traditional tomb into something new: the Step Pyramid, a royal tomb built entirely of stone and rising in steps. Only later did his successors move to new sites, Dahshur and then Giza, for even bigger projects.
Who is buried at Saqqara?
Kings, first of all. Beyond Djoser, several later kings built their pyramids at Saqqara, including Unas, the last king of the Fifth Dynasty. Around them lie the tombs of their officials, whose decorated chapels show daily life, work and offerings in carved and painted relief; the tombs of Mereruka and Ti are among the best known.
The pyramid of Unas holds a famous first. Its burial chamber is the earliest known to be inscribed with the Pyramid Texts, spells meant to protect the dead king on his way to the afterlife. Carved around 2400-2300 BCE, they are among the oldest religious texts known, and later pyramids at Saqqara continued the practice.
Sacred bulls in granite tombs
Saqqara also buried animals. In the Serapeum, a gallery of tombs cut into the rock, the Egyptians laid to rest the Apis bulls, sacred animals linked to the god Ptah of Memphis. The first known Apis burial dates to the reign of Amenhotep III in the New Kingdom, and the practice went on until about 30 BCE. Some of the stone coffins, in granite and limestone, weigh up to 80 tonnes.
The Serapeum was rediscovered in 1851 by the French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, who found a half-buried sphinx and followed the description of an avenue of sphinxes left by the Greek geographer Strabo. Robbers had come first: only one Apis sarcophagus is reported to have been found intact.
What came after: tombs into Roman times
The cemetery did not close when the pyramid age ended. People kept burying their dead at Saqqara through the New Kingdom, the Late Period and into the Ptolemaic and Roman eras, often reusing older shafts and tombs. That is why the site is still giving up finds. In 2020 Egyptian archaeologists announced 59 sealed wooden coffins found in burial shafts, then about 100 more, with 40 statues of the god Ptah-Sokar; most date between the sixth and the first centuries BCE.
Discoveries like these show how much of Saqqara is still unexplored. The burial customs behind them, from mummification to the painted coffin, go back a long way. They began with the first kings whose tombs started the cemetery, in the age of the First Dynasty.
Where to see it
Saqqara is an archaeological site south-west of Cairo, within reach of Giza. The Step Pyramid complex, the pyramid of Unas, the Serapeum and several decorated tombs of officials can be visited; opening of individual tombs changes, so check the official site before going.
Sources
- Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities of Egypt, “Saqqara”.
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Saqqarah”.
- Ahram Online, “A hundred coffins unveiled at Saqqara” (2020); Smithsonian Magazine, “Archaeologists are just beginning to unearth the mummies and secrets of Saqqara”.
- Lonely Planet, “Serapeum” (on the intact sarcophagus).
