Pyramid Age

The Old kingdom

Topographic Information

Heb-Sed Area
The Egyptian Civilization

• Can be divided into three main

periods:
• Old Kingdom
• 2663 B.C.-2160 B.C.
• Middle Kingdom
• 2066 B.C.-1650 B.C.
• New Kingdom
• 1549 B.C.- 1069 B.C
Chronological Information

3rd Dynasty 2663-2597 4th Dynasty 2597-2547

Nebka 2663-2654 Sneferu 2597-2547
Djoser 2654-2635 Khufu 2547-2524
Sekhemkhet 2635-2629 Djedfre 2524-2516
Khaba 2629-2623 Khafre 2516-2493
Huni 2621-2597 Menkaure 2493-2475
Shepseskaf 2475-2471
The Evolution of Egyptian
Pyramid Construction
Before Narmer’s time, the dead were buried in the desert in sand pits.
The hot, dry climate of the Egyptian desert offers perfect conditions for
natural mummification. Eventually, however, the sand might blow away,
exposing the body to animals.
For this reason, Egyptians began to erect a small stone bench (mastaba)
over the burial pit. This practice ultimately became more elaborate.
Egyptians began to dig down into the sand to bedrock, excavate a
chamber for the dead in the bedrock, cover the excavation, and cap the
pit with a mastaba on top.
 pr-djt (meaning "house for eternity" or
"eternal house"
• Pr is the hieroglyph for 'house', the floor-plan of
a walled building with an open doorway
• The djed is one of the more ancient and
commonly found symbols in ancient Egyptian
religion. It is a pillar-like symbol in Egyptian
hieroglyphs representing stability. It is
associated with the creator god Ptah and Osiris,
the Egyptian god of the afterlife, the
underworld, and the dead. It is commonly
understood to represent his spine.
Mastaba
Mastaba
“House of eternity”
Traced back to Pharaoh Aha (2686 BCE)
Designed as protection for the mummy
Tombs carved into the bedrock and covered with mud bricks with
enclosures on the sides
◦ Early mastabas not good as sand would blow away and bodies were eaten by
jackals
Traditional royal
tombs were one
level stone
structures with
“basements” of
rooms, false
passages, tunnels,
and, of course,
the tomb.
 MASTABAS

• Mastaba tombs were low rectangular brick or stone structures. Like the pyramids,
they were built on the west side of the Nile (symbol of death, where the sun falls into
the underworld).
• In the mastabas, lavish tombs with all necessary possessions would be prepared for
the Phaorahs
• The pyramids evolved from the mastabas
Ins and outs of a Mastaba
• Saqqura is a vast, ancient burial ground for the
ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis.
Saqqara
SAQQARA & ABYDOS
DJOSER
3rd Dynasty King
King Djoser’s right-hand man was
an architect, an astrologer, a
highly regarded doctor even by
the Greeks, a poet, a priest, a
scribe, and the King’s vizier. You
of course, would know him as the
great….
 m h o tep
eal I
The R
• The pyramid was built for the
burial of pharaoh Djoser by
Imhotep, his vizier.

The real Imhotep was deified

1400 years after his life.

•Source of the Greek God of

healing Asclepius
•
The burial of the king, as well as his passage from this world to
the next, was not simply a private affair of importance only to
the royal family and its retinue but an event of national
significance. The ritual cycle by which the living pharaoh, the
god Horus, became Osiris, Lord of the Underworld, guaranteed
the survival of Egypt itself. By expressing this act in
architectural form in the building of the pyramids, the kings of
the Old Kingdom stumbled on—or perhaps cunningly devised—a
method of unifying all Egyptians in a single religion of ancestor
worship in which the pyramids served as giant reliquaries.
(Nagle, 27-28)
• Saqqura has numerous pyramids.
• The earliest stone pyramid was built at Saqqura
around 2700 BCE; it is the Step Pyramid of Djoser.
Djoser’s Step Pyramid at Saqqara
2650 BCE
Pharaoh Djoser was 2nd Old Kingdom
Imhotep was his brilliant Vizier/Architect
First major stone building (limestone)
◦ Symbolic meaning: stone immortalizes Djoser, preserving him from slow
erosion of time
Layers of mastabas placed on top of each other
6 steps (layers) rise to height of 60 metres
• There are 6 “steps” to the pyramid.
• The burial chambers of the Step Pyramid of Djoser are
hidden underground in a maze of tunnels.
Pyramids did not stand alone; they were part of a FUNERARY COMPLEX.
The complex includes a PROCESSIONAL CAUSEWAY that links a
FUNERARY TEMPLE to the pyramid, SOLAR BARQUES buried on the four
sides of the pyramid, and MASTABAS and smaller pyramids where the family
of the king and nobles were buried
 Journey to the Underworld

The dead travel

on the “Solar
Bark.”

A boat for the

journey is
provided for a
dead pharaoh in
his tomb.
The Sed festival ceremony was carried out in buildings that included: a palace for the
king to be used during the festival, small wooden pavilion shrines for the gods of Egypt.
Heb-Sed, also called Sed Festival, one of the oldest
feasts of ancient Egypt, celebrated by the king after 30
years of rule and repeated every 3 years thereafter.
The festival was in the nature of a jubilee, and it is
believed that the ceremonies represented a ritual
reenactment of the unification of Egypt, traditionally
accomplished by Menes.
From numerous wall reliefs and paintings and from the
Heb-Sed court in the Step Pyramid complex of Djoser,
in Ṣaqqārah, much information has been gleaned about
the festival.
The king first presented offerings to a series of gods
and then was crowned, first with the white crown of
Upper Egypt and then with the red crown of Lower
Egypt.
Finally, the king, dressed in a short kilt with an
animal’s tail in back, ran a ritual course four times and
was then carried away in a great procession to visit
the chapels of the gods of Upper and Lower Egypt.
Reconstruction of the Heb-Sed building at Ṣaqqārah
was under way during much of the 20th century.
The Ritualistic Center
Djoser Step Pyramid
Function and Meaning

• The Djoser Step Pyramid the funerary

complex provided a spatial framework
for the procession of the rites.

• The space itself was symbolic it was

the area in which the king transformed
into a divine being.

• The Sed festival, was believed to have

granted the king the renewal and
regeneration of his divine powers at
the presence of the gods and priests of
unified Egypt.

• The Pyramids were constructed around

this “pharaonic image.”
Djoser’s ability to marshal his people to build pyramids is a legacy of
Narmer, the first powerful central leader of a unified Egypt, who began,
with irrigation channels, the tradition of public works projects.