Pyramid of Djoser

Feel the ground first. Under your shoes, the sand of Saqqara is fine and pale, with small chips of limestone scattered through it. The wind comes off the desert plateau and carries a dry, mineral smell. Ahead of you, a stepped mountain of stone rises out of the haze. It looks almost unfinished, like a staircase built for someone much larger than us. This is the Pyramid of Djoser. Many historians consider it the oldest large monument in the world built entirely from cut stone.

To understand why it matters, picture Egypt before it existed. Kings and nobles were buried under mastabas. A mastaba is a low, flat, rectangular tomb, usually made of mud brick. They were solid and dignified, but they hugged the ground. Then, in the Third Dynasty, around the twenty-seventh century before Christ, something changed. A king named Djoser decided his tomb would reach for the sky.

The man credited with the design is Imhotep, Djoser's chief official. Here is the first surprise. Imhotep is one of the very few architects from the ancient world whose name we still know. His name and titles were found carved on the base of a statue of Djoser, discovered here at Saqqara. Over the following centuries, his reputation grew far beyond building. Later Egyptians honoured him as a sage and a healer. Eventually they worshipped him as a god of medicine and wisdom.

Look closely at the shape in front of you. You can see six great steps, each one a little smaller than the one below. Archaeologists believe the monument did not begin like this. It started as a single square mastaba. The builders then extended it, and then stacked new layers on top, in several stages. The plan grew as the work went on. In a sense, you are looking at an idea changing its mind, layer by layer, in stone.

The pyramid stands roughly sixty metres tall. In its first life, it was faced with fine white limestone, smooth and bright. Most of that outer casing is gone now. Over thousands of years, people took the dressed blocks for other buildings. What you see today is mostly the rougher core. Notice how the blocks are fairly small, almost like large bricks. The builders were still thinking like mud-brick builders. They used stone, but at a scale their hands already knew.

Now turn your attention to the long wall around the complex. It once enclosed the whole site in a great rectangle. The surface is cut into a rhythm of recessed panels and projecting bastions. Egyptologists often call this pattern a palace facade, because it seems to copy the walls of a royal residence. Along the wall, builders carved many gateways. But only one of them is real. The others are false doors, solid stone, meant for the king's spirit rather than for living visitors.

The real entrance leads you into a long colonnaded hall. Walk slowly here. The columns are not free-standing. They are attached to short walls behind them, as if the builders did not yet trust a stone column to stand alone. Look at their surface. It is carved with vertical ribs. These ribs copy bundles of reeds or plant stems, the materials used in earlier Egyptian buildings. Stone is pretending to be something softer.

The ceiling tells the same story. In some parts of the passage, the stone above you is carved to look like rounded logs laid side by side. Wood was precious in Egypt, and it was the old way to roof a building. Here, the builders made stone imitate timber. This is the second surprise of the place. The world's first great stone monument is, in many details, a careful stone copy of a world made of reed, wood and mud.

Beyond the hall, a wide open court spreads out to the south of the pyramid. On its eastern side, you will find a row of small chapel-like buildings. Many of them are dummies. They have facades, but solid interiors. Scholars connect them with the Heb Sed, a royal festival of renewal. During this festival, the king proved his strength to rule again. By building the festival in stone, Djoser could celebrate it for eternity.

On the north side of the pyramid, look for a small, tilted stone box built against the base. This is the serdab, a sealed chamber for a statue. Lean in and look through the two small holes in the front. A seated figure of Djoser gazes back at you. The statue here is a copy. The original is kept in Cairo. The holes were made so the king could look out and receive the offerings and incense of the living.

Below your feet, the pyramid hides a maze. Shafts and tunnels run deep under the monument, far more extensive than the building above suggests. At the bottom of the main shaft lies a burial chamber made of granite. Some underground rooms were decorated with blue-green faience tiles, set to imitate reed matting. Ancient tomb robbers reached these spaces long ago. In recent years, Egypt carried out a long restoration of the pyramid. Afterwards, some of the interior was opened again to visitors.

As you walk around, remember that Saqqara is not one monument but a vast burial ground. It served Memphis, an early capital of Egypt, for thousands of years. Later kings built their own pyramids nearby, and nobles built richly carved tombs. Many of them looked back at this stepped shape as the beginning of everything. Not far from the entrance, the Imhotep Museum holds finds from the site. It is a good place to see objects connected to the people who worked here.

Before you leave, stand back and let the whole outline settle in your eyes. Notice the warm colour of the stone as the sun moves across it. Listen to the wind, and maybe the distant call of a guard or a camel driver. Every later pyramid in Egypt, including the smooth giants of Giza, follows the path that started here. As you walk back across the sand, look over your shoulder once more... at the first staircase toward the sky.