The step pyramid of Djoser

Around 2700 BC, someone decided to build something that had never existed before. Not just the pyramid itself, but the idea of it. Everything that came before, the mastabas, the mud brick tombs, the low rectangular structures that kings had been buried in for generations, was adequate. It worked. Imhotep, the architect Djoser chose to design his tomb, decided adequate was not enough.

What Imhotep built at Saqqara was not conceived as a pyramid from the start. According to the site, it is the first pyramid and the first large stone building in history. It began as a mastaba, a flat-roofed rectangular tomb about 63 meters across and 8.5 meters high, conventional in form if unusually large. Then he extended it. Then he stacked another mastaba on top of it. Then another. Then another. Over several phases of construction he arrived at six mastabas stacked on top of each other, each slightly smaller than the one below, rising to 60 meters. The base measures 121 by 109 meters.

The logic was religious as much as architectural. The steps were not decorative. They were a staircase. When Djoser died and was resurrected, he would climb them to join Ra, the sun god, in the sky.

Below the pyramid the engineering is equally remarkable. The burial chamber sits at the bottom of a central shaft 28 meters deep, but the complex extends further, with several levels reaching down to 40 meters. Inside those levels archaeologists found more than 30,000 vessels carved from solid stone, including granite, alabaster, and schist. The walls of the lower chambers are decorated with blue and green ceramic tiles and inscriptions from Djoser's celebration of the Heb-Sed festival, a ritual renewal of royal power that kings were expected to perform after thirty years of rule. The tiles are among the oldest examples of faience in Egypt.

Imhotep, the man responsible for all of this, is one of the most remarkable figures in ancient history. His titles alone tell you something: Advisor to the King of Lower Egypt, First After the King of Upper Egypt, Administrator of the Great Palace, Hereditary Prince, Grand Visionary of Heliopolis. He was an architect, a physician, a scribe and an astronomer. After his death he was deified, which was extraordinarily rare for a commoner. The ancient Egyptians worshipped him as a god of medicine for two thousand years. When the Greeks arrived they identified him with Asclepius, their own god of healing. There is no other architect in history who was turned into a god.

The pyramid stands at Saqqara, the vast necropolis on the western bank of the Nile about 30 kilometres south of Cairo. It is part of a larger funerary complex that once included a mortuary temple, courtyards, shrines, and a boundary wall nearly 1.6 kilometres in perimeter. Much of that complex has been excavated and partially restored. Saqqara as a whole contains tombs spanning 3,000 years of Egyptian history, from the First Dynasty to the Coptic period.