Memphis and its pyramids · Early Dynastic, Old Kingdom, New Kingdom, Late Period, Ptolemaic
Saqqara
Djoser's Step Pyramid, the first big stone building, and the Pyramid of Unas with the first Pyramid Texts.
Where
The desert edge above Memphis, about 15 km south of Giza
When
Used from the 1st Dynasty to Roman times; the Step Pyramid c. 2667–2648 BC
Built by
Djoser and his official Imhotep; Unas, last king of the 5th Dynasty; and many others
Famous for
The Step Pyramid; the Pyramid Texts; the Serapeum; painted mastabas
Who built what
Saqqara was the main cemetery of Memphis for three thousand years. The first kings' officials built big mud-brick mastabas along its edge. Then, in the 3rd Dynasty, King Djoser's builders, led by Imhotep, raised the Step Pyramid: six stone steps about 62 m high, inside a walled courtyard full of stone copies of shrines and buildings for the king's festival of renewal. It is the oldest large building of cut stone in the world.
Later kings built pyramids here too. The small pyramid of Unas (c. 2375–2345 BC), the last king of the 5th Dynasty, was the first with texts carved inside: the Pyramid Texts, spells for the king's life after death. Officials of the Old Kingdom built mastabas with the finest daily-life reliefs in Egypt (Ti, Ptahhotep, Mereruka), and in later times the sacred Apis bulls of Memphis were buried in the long underground galleries of the Serapeum, which Auguste Mariette found in 1850–51.
What survives
The Step Pyramid has been restored, and its courtyard, colonnaded entrance and festival court can be walked through. Under it, a maze of galleries held stone vessels by the tens of thousands, and some rooms were lined with blue faience tiles and relief panels of the king.
Unas's pyramid is now a heap from outside, but its burial chamber and antechamber still carry the Pyramid Texts, cut in columns and filled with blue paint. Gaston Maspero entered it in 1881. The causeway leading to it, more than 700 m long, had painted reliefs; some survive.
The Step Pyramid of Djoser: six steps, about 62 m high.
3 short, well-known texts from Saqqara, each with its transliteration (the Egyptian sounds in Latin letters) and a translation. Tap Sign by sign to see what each sign is and how it is read. Royal names are drawn in their cartouches.
Djoser's Horus name, Netjerikhet
Transliteration
nṯrj-ẖt
Translation
“Netjerikhet ("divine of body")”
Where: On the relief panels in the galleries under the Step Pyramid, and on the base of a statue of the king found at the pyramid, which also names Imhotep with his titles (now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo).
In his own time the king was called by his Horus name, written in a serekh, a rectangle showing a palace facade with the falcon Horus on top. The name Djoser is known only from later texts. The statue base is the best evidence that Imhotep was a real official of this king.
Simplified: The serekh around the name is not drawn.
Sign by sign
Reading: The standard reading; the Wikipedia articles "Djoser" and "Imhotep".
The cartouche of Unas
Transliteration
wnjs
Translation
“Unas”
Where: Among the Pyramid Texts on the walls of his burial chamber and antechamber, where the king is named again and again.
The texts speak to and about the king by name; this is the name they use. The hare writes wn, and the ripple of water under it repeats the n.
Sign by sign
Reading: The reading as in the Wikipedia article "Unas" (which gives this spelling of the nomen).
A Pyramid Text: "you have gone away alive"
The signs for ḥꜣ "O" and for šm "go" are not yet in the site's hieroglyph font, so this line is given in transliteration only.
Transliteration
ḥꜣ wnjs n šm.n=k js mt.(tj) šm.n=k ꜥnḫ.(tj)
Translation
“O Unas, you have not gone away dead: you have gone away alive.”
Where: In Unas's burial chamber, which holds the oldest known copy of this spell.
The opening of the spells Egyptologists number 213 (Sethe, section 134). It sets the theme of the whole collection: the king has not died but gone on living, to take his seat among the gods. The endings in parentheses are not written in the text.
Reading: Sethe, Die altaegyptischen Pyramidentexte (1908–1910), PT 213 §134a; translated here for Teddy Rook Book.
Dates follow Shaw, ed., The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (2000); before 664 BC they are approximate. Readings are the standard ones in the sources named under each inscription; translations are Teddy Rook Book's own. The hieroglyphs are drawn in the site's font, TRB Hieroglyphs, so their shapes are simplified; where an inscription's arrangement or signs can't be shown faithfully, the card says so.