We completed seeing Giza Pyramids ,and the great Spinx .
After reaching Cairo the previous evening we had checked into our hotel in Giza ,next day after breakfast Omar our driver came with Khalid our guide .
They made a real contrast , Omar the young man with a pasted smile on his face and an acerbic tongue in traffic .
And
Khalid who was more wizened ,in his fifties less impulsive ,slower to smile and had a paternal affection to Omar .
Khaled took us to Pyramids and Spinx first about which I will write in a post .
Later he suggested we also see Saqqara around 15 km from Giza .
This was a vast tomb complex .
He told us Saqqara was the place with the worlds first solid structure to last so long
Precisely 2700 years BC ,around 4700 years back ,off Memphis the big city of those times a funeral complex came to existence on the west bank of Nile river called Saqqara .
The Nile had started flooding again increasing fertility and the people were more prosperous ,
The king Netjery khet Djoser divine of body ruler of upper and lower Egypt, had been ruling for a longer period all conducive to building activities .
He was either son of king casa khemwy or his nephew
He was a wise man a good king hence immortal .
He may have led campaings of war to the west to Libya
The step pyramid was the first stone building known to humanity .
Initially it was a sqaure Mastaba or building .
Was the Mastaba extended to become a step pyramid a limestone staircase for the pharoh to climb into heaven once he died ?
Imoteph was the divine architect
Some say the brother of the king and the architect ,he was also the High priest of the temple in Saqqara .
Imoteph was identified as a God Aceliphus the God of medicine .
He was titled as the next to the king ,Advisor to the king of lower Egypt ,Administrator of the great palace ,grand visionary of Heiopolis ,a title related to sun worship and astronomy .
His assistant Hesse Ra too contributed to building this complex .
it took years to build the whole complex 64 meters .
Limestone was qaurried and brought by the Nile ,later workers rolled it by ramps ,the slabs were placed as a step pattern coverimg the labyrynthine maze like tunnels borrowing deep inside .
The step pyramid was 60.mts or 200 feet tall 120 meters long 109 meters wide it rises in six layers of ever decreasing size appearing like a giant staircase to the sky .
The shape was akin to a mound of earth rising from the primeval ocean what Egyptians believed in .
In northern side was a temple to the great king
A collonade of pillars appearing in front led into the path to the central pyramid the piilars appearing as reed bundled together ,it now has concrete ceilings probably more colourful ones entrusted with precious stones earlier
There definitely had been tomb robbers descending on this early pyramid for the chamber of the Kings stone sarcophagus made of 26 pink granite stones 3.6 mts high but is empty including the kings mummy itself was not seen .
The mummy of the king was never found .
The chamber itself was 28 meters down the pyramids vault ,this was not the floor but it went upto 40 mts down .
Around 30000 urns made of solid stones alabaster and scist and green blue ceramic tiles depicting life in midst of death were placed in side rooms .
The labrynthine side rooms were probably filled with treasure urns as there has been collection of some broken pieces ,evidences of these have been even from tombs of his ancestors as if he was the gaurdian of their repositaries in their travel to the after life .
Was the step pyramid built like an ancient space ship to fly to the heavens with the pharoahs mummy ?
Or as a giant staircase for king Djoser to climb to the heavens to meet the sun God Ra himself when resurrected.
The walls were etched with heiroglyphics and figuirines .
The step pyramid is in the northern edge of a huge complex of 16 hectares
So its no mere tomb its an after life palace for the king himself
The southern tomb had two levels ,it was discovered by an English archeaologist in 1928 Cecil Malaby Firth .
The French archeologist Jean Philippe Lauer believed that the tomb was a chamber meant for the kings soul .
It has an upper floor with a row of cobra heads outside like protecting the step pyramid from harm
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