Getting It Right:
The Step Pyramid at Saqqara

June 11, 2006

The Step Pyramid at Saqqara, built by King Djoser, was built in the 27th century BC.. which means it is getting up over 4,600 years old. It is the grand-daddy of the pyramids.. which does not mean that it had no precursors, but that it marks the point where tomb construction took a monumental leap upward. Some of the uncertainty involved in that leap are evident in the design of the pyramid itself, which was not executed in a single stroke.. but groped after. You can see it in the stones of the pyramid:

Those are not the monumental rectangular stones of the pyramids at Giza.. these are irregular piled stone-bricks. Right there in the cutout one can see the change of plans.. the incorporation of a lower level in a broader more comprehensive plan. That is exactly the allure of the Step Pyramid: you can see the ancient Egyptians thinking and experimenting. It was no wonder of the world, but it was a precondition for those wonders.

It is not only the above ground stones that carry a sense of drama.. but also the subterranean labyrinth of tunnels.. what were they doing? Unfortunately it is not possible to visit these underground paths. Had I been lucky enough to visit this site in the 19th century, these tunnels would have been the main point of interest. In his Description of Egypt Edward William Lane briefly describes the appearance of the Step Pyramid, but then gets down to business describing in detail what is underground..

What was under there? A sample of what Mark Lehner describes in The Complete Pyramids:

Galleries VI-IX contained a remarkable collection of stone vessels. Stacks of plates and cups—mostly of alabaster but also of other fine stones—added up to a staggering total of around 40,000 vessels. Many bore inscriptions revealing that the majority were not made for Djoser, but probably belonged to his royal ancestors... The Step Pyramid was not only a vocabulary of forms passed on to the future, but also a repository of the past. [90]

That is what we should expect of imaginative leaps forward: they are both summations and beginnings at the same time. That also represents two contrary interpretive tendencies: either to emphasize the past and context so heavily that the forward looking creative impulse is buried.. or to praise a unique accomplishment without reference to its ties to the past. The former is the mistake of scholars, the second that of popularizing journalists.

No one these days seems to mind not going underground.. perhaps because there is now so much to see above ground. This monumental entrance would have taken Lane by complete surprise.. it was nowhere to be seen. This is all reconstruction, and almost from scratch. The French archeologist Jean-Philippe Lauer was the man who dedicated years of his life to fleshing out the vague hints contained in the fragmentary remains, ancient Egyptian representations, and analogies with other early sites.

The goal was not to recreate the site as a whole, but to rebuild significant portions so that the visitor can get a taste for the whole. From the above sample of the inner court, one can imagine the entire wall. You can also see from the shapeless rubble behind the rebuilt wall just how little the excavators had to go on. Just as in the Temple of Hatshepsut at Dayr al-Bahri, this complex is a work of the archeologist's imagination.. which I don't mean in a denigrating way. I feel only respect that someone could take such meager clues and construct something so challenging..

In the middle of that same courtyard are the markers for the heb-sed festival, in which the king in the thirtieth year of his reign would run around these markers.. and be rejuvenated. In the subterranean labyrinth is even a representation of King Djoser making this run. The outer layer of these markers was clearly a modern creation.. and how little was really left is visible in the center of the markers. Without ancient representations, we would have no idea how these markers looked.. or even that we were supposed to be finding anything like markers.

Here again is fairly elaborate reconstruction.. nothing to which the shapeless mounds of rubble could have led anyone. It is the clever application of difficult visual images to rubble on the ground that we have to thank for this clarity..

Not every fragment got the grand treatment.. and one can still glimpse pieces lying on the ground, fenced off.. as if still puzzling, but holding out the hope that someone sometime will know what to do with all these things.

It is nothing short of miraculous how a determined lover of a site can take something fragmentary in the extreme.. an empty desert not worth commenting upon.. and build an order that is so compelling that few visitors even realize the extent to which what they are looking at has been recreated.