From a bench-shaped tomb to a pyramid
Before Djoser, kings and nobles of early Egypt were buried under mastabas, low rectangular tombs with flat tops and sloping sides, many of them at Saqqara, the cemetery of Memphis. Djoser, a king of the Third Dynasty, started his tomb the same way. What makes his monument revolutionary is what happened next: it was built in stone, and it kept growing upwards.
The result is the first pyramid in Egypt: about 62.5 metres high on a base of about 121 by 109 metres, rising in six steps. It stood at the centre of a huge walled complex, and it opened the way to the smooth-sided pyramids of the next dynasty, ending with the Great Pyramid at Giza.
A plan, or an afterthought?
The building itself answers this. The French architect Jean-Philippe Lauer, who spent decades at Saqqara, identified a series of construction phases, usually labelled M1, M2 and M3 for the mastaba and P1, P1′ and P2 for the pyramid. First came a square mastaba, enlarged twice. Then, before an extension on the east side was even finished, the builders enlarged all four sides and turned the tomb into the base of a pyramid of four steps. In a final phase they raised it to six steps and dressed it in fine Tura limestone.
So the staircase was not the plan from the first day: it emerged through changes of plan during the work. One way to see it is that the builders stacked mastabas of decreasing size, one on top of another, until the tomb towered over the cemetery. Some scholars add a symbolic reading, that the steps formed a staircase towards the northern stars where the king would join the gods; no Egyptian text says so, so it remains an interpretation.
A city of stone for the afterlife
The pyramid was only the centre. Around it ran an enclosure wall about 1.6 km long and about 10 metres high. Inside lay courts, temples and chapels, all built in stone.
The strangest part is the Heb-sed court, named after the jubilee festival that renewed a king’s power. Along its sides stand dummy buildings: facades of chapels copying the shrines of Upper Egypt on one side and of Lower Egypt on the other, with little or nothing inside. They were not for living people. They gave the dead king a permanent setting in which to go on celebrating his jubilee for eternity.
Underground: tunnels and walls of stone matting
Beneath the pyramid lies a network of passages: storage galleries, a tunnel for offerings and a chamber that was never finished, a kind of underground palace for the afterlife. Some of its walls were covered with tiles set between carved limestone ledges, designed to imitate the reed matting that hung on the walls of the king’s palace. The burial shaft at the centre, under the pyramid, is about 28 metres deep.
The king in his box, and his architect’s name
On the north side of the pyramid is a serdab, a small closed chamber that held a life-size seated statue of Djoser, the king’s spirit statue. It is believed to be the oldest known life-size Egyptian statue. On its base the king appears under his Horus name, Netjerikhet, the name he used on his monuments. The original is now in the museum in Cairo.
Who designed all this? Later tradition credits Imhotep, Djoser’s high official. Unusually, his name is carved on the base of a statue of Djoser (Cairo, JE 49889), one of the few contemporary inscriptions that prove he existed. Royal statues rarely carried anyone else’s name, so the honour says a lot about his standing. Royal statues like these follow fixed poses, each with its own meaning, which is the wider story of Egyptian sculpture.
Where to see it
The Step Pyramid stands at Saqqara, south-west of Cairo. After a restoration that began in 2006, it reopened to visitors in March 2020. The statue of Djoser and the inscribed base are in Cairo.
Sources
- Madain Project, “Pyramid of Djoser” (construction phases after J.-P. Lauer).
- University of Memphis, Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology, “Step Pyramid complex of Djoser” (colour tour).
- Al Jazeera / Reuters, “Egypt reopens its oldest pyramid after 14-year restoration” (5 March 2020).
- Ancient Egypt Online, “Step Pyramid of Djoser”.
