The very first pyramid ever in Egypt at Saqarra near Cairo - Imhotep's marvel

Our new friend Moh’d Adel Omar, noted Egyptologist and guide, began the day by taking us to Saqqara. Like us, you may have never heard of it; BUT it has the distinction of being the very first pyramid ever built, even before the Giza pyramids in Cairo.  Getting there meant a ride thru villages on dusty roads, camels, carts and farming communities en route.  A bit like travelling in northwest India, without the colour. Saqqara is around 20 kms on the same limestone plateau as Giza.  

Saqqara’s name is derived from the name of the mortuary deity “sokar”. Some scholars believe that the name Saqqara is not derived from Sokar, but from a local Berber tribe "Beni Saqqar".  
The area is huge – 22 kms N to S and 7 kms E to W. it is worth noting that Saqqara was built well before the stone pyramids of Giza and that it is from 2650  BC. That’s 4,550 years ago. Pyramid building in Egypt first began here.  Its mind boggling to think that Saqqara’s pyramid with a well planned layout, the stonework looking like wood work, the incredible paintings / etchings etc were all created so many years ago. Imagine the craftsmanship and how difficult it must have been without modern tools. Due credit needs to be given to a Frenchman who gave 75 years of his life to Saqqara: an archaeologist Jean Philippe Lauer. He undertook modern restoration techniques and in his honour, the Egyptian Antiquities Dept has a special plaque as well as a room in the museum dedicated to his life work.   

The 3^rd Dynasty saw the beginning of this Step or rectangular pyramid built by Djoser, its 1^st king. His name comes from ‘Geser’ or ‘Sacred’; his other name was Netjerykhet. Sixteen kings built pyramids here which are still being excavated. High officials added private funeral monuments. It remained an important complex for non-royal burials and cult ceremonies for more than 3,000 years, well into Ptolemaic and Roman times. Its a World Heritage Site since 1979.  
By the main road is a ticket window. Facing it is a large board which details out the 12 main tombs and monuments here. Difficult to read as the sun casts shadows on the raised letters. We go up a winding road and then see two pyramids in the distance. 

                                                                          Further away is the Step Pyramid. The pyramid complex is surrounded by a huge wall of limestone. Between the bastions of the wall are 14 closed dummy doors. To enter the complex, you face a large square structure with a smallish door. Chinese with their long camera sticks (they have no concern for other tourists) have to be dodged or blocked so that you can progress forward. Adel now is in his element. He makes us look around and up and tell him what we see. We are entering a corridor with round stone logs above us. Adel gleefully points out what we have missed – these stones represent wooden palm logs in ceilings; there is even a stone hinge representing wood hinges. There is no real door. There are huge dummy doors with hinges in the open position.  

We enter a colonnade of many columns. A small wall joins each column.  Apparently the inspiration was from bunches of reeds tied together with the heads fanning outwards. Scholars speculate that the columns symbolised the provinces of Egypt. Deities may have been between each column. One particular aspect which is fascinating is that there are traces of red paint in many columns – as if representing wooden columns.

We come through to a huge – massive - courtyard relatively busy with tourists.  They are in groups – some facing the stone pyramid in front of us, some in the far distance going towards some buildings and some to our left seeing some structures there. I stare at this massive pyramid. It’s so different from Giza. There are two workers way up on the left side. Due to barricades blocking the major repairs, no tourists are allowed near the scaffolding which covers one wall. 

The 3 columns are part of a Royal Pavilion or Heb Sed Temple in which apparently a statue of the royal soul was kept. Adjacent to it is the Heb Sed courtyard. We see remains of chapels. There are two buildings called the North and South House. Here we see something unique. Facing the door is graffiti in hieratic script, a cursive writing of hieroglyphics !! Apparently written by Thebes’s tourists in praise of Djoser. Earliest records of tourists who came to admire monuments which were already 1,000 years old then.

The form of the pyramid can be explained as a development of the large mastabas (mud-brick tombs) of the First and Second Dynasties; the six steps, each smaller than the one below, having been produced by the addition to the original mastaba of successive new layers of masonry, accompanied by the enlargement of the lower stages. The Step Pyramid stands 60 meters high and is built of locally quarried clay sandstone of poor quality. The chambers and passages in the interior of the pyramid served partly for the burial of close relatives of the King (in particular those of his sons who died in childhood) and partly for storing grave-goods for the use of the dead.

There is a burial chamber which we reached just before closing time of noon. A steep series of 30 or so steps leads to a flat area of say 10 ft and then a further steeper set of steps to the burial chamber. I was very keen to go inside but the height of the chamber of steps, as seen by the photos meant I have to kneel all the way through !! I tried but Impossible. Very painful to the lower back.

 

In 2011 at the dog catacomb in Saqqara necropolis, Salima Ikram and a Cardiff University team uncovered almost eight million animal mummies at the burial site. It is thought that the mummified animals, half of which were birds and many dogs as well, were intended to pass on the prayers of their owners to their deities. In July 2018, an extremely rare gilded burial mask was found. The last time a similar mask was found was in 1939. In November 2018, seven ancient Egyptian tombs were located at the ancient necropolis of Saqqara with a collection of scarab and cat mummies, dating back to the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties.   In mid-December 2018 the Egyptian government announced the discovery at Saqqara of a previously unknown 4,400-year-old tomb, containing paintings and more than fifty sculptures. It belongs to Wahtye, a high-ranking priest who served under King Neferirkare Kakai during the Fifth Dynasty. The tomb also contains five shafts that may lead to a sarcophagus below.

                                                                                                                                                                       The pyramid of the last king 5^th Dynasty, Unas is smallest and once the finest. He was the first king to adorn the chambers in his pyramid with texts. The walls of the central chamber and the tomb chamber are covered with inscriptions, the "Pyramid Texts," the oldest known Egyptian religious texts, relating to the life after death in which the incised hieroglyphs are filled in with blue pigment. The inner walls are decorated with scenes in bas relief : hunting, boating, animals of various types, battle scenes etc.  The complex of Unas pyramid had a processional ramp, funerary temple and a pyramid valley temple.

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Outside the Complex is The Imhotep Museum. The idea was to have a dedicated space for the discoveries of this area only. Conceived in 1990, launched in 1997, it’s a compact beautiful museum with select exquisite exhibits. A small theatre features a 10 minute film show on the whole complex. There is also a full scale model of the pyramid and funerary complex. The museum has a large corridor with two halls and four halls on the two sides of the corridor.

there are many good exhibits – the first known medical / surgical instruments, The Mummy (which looks as freshly painted as yesterday!), displays of beautiful alabaster jars and how carving of stone vessels was undertaken, how locals drew the human form, and of course Imhotep’s titles. But one of the most beautiful is a set of blue green faience tiles reconstructed to show us how the walls of these chambers looked in days past. 

 We spent a considerable amount of time seeing Saqqara but even then we saw only the major well known exhibits. There are many pyramids and tombs we could have seen but then, time was short and we had many more things to see in Cairo. One thing is certain – Saqqara is to my mind, far more attractive a place than the Giza pyramids. It has far more to offer. Don’t miss if you are in Cairo and ensure you take a good guide with you from whom you can learn the history of those bygone days. 

DEDICATION : 

This article is dedicated to 1) Dr Amr Hassanein  introduced to us by a mutual friend. He extended to us a very warm welcome without ever knowing us. His office arranged for the car and guide. We are deeply appreciative of his  kind hospitality.  
 2) Mr Moh'd Adel Omar, Egyptologist and Guide Extraordinaire. Moh'd is an amazing person - a fount of knowledge, humour and elan. His love for his country and his job as a guide enlarged our knowledge of the country and we missed him throughout the rest of our tour as no other guide matched the high levels he had set! 

Thank you both. 

Text and photographs copyright of the author. No part of this article or photographs maybe transmitted or reproduced by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without written permission. Do contact the author on email -- helpthesun@gmail.com   

A dream realized -- seeing King Tut and his ancestors in Valley of Kings, Luxor

Luxor, as you saw from my earlier blog on Luxor Temple, has many important sites. The Valley of the Kings is huge. Here for nearly 500 years, 16^th – 11^th C BC, tombs were built for Pharaohs and important nobles of the 18^th – 20^th Dynasty of ancient Egypt. This valley is on the west bank of the Nile, opp modern Luxor.  

The official name for the site in ancient times was The Great and Majestic Necropolis of the Millions of Years of the Pharaoh, Life, Strength, Health in The West of Thebes, or more usually, Ta-sekhet-ma'at (the Great Field). At the start of 18^th Dynasty, only the kings were buried within the valley in large tombs. 

The valley is known to contain 63 tombs and chambers (ranging in size from a simple pit to a complex tomb with nearly 120 chambers or rooms and was the principal burial place of the major royal figures. The royal tombs are decorated with scenes from Egyptian mythology and give clues to the beliefs and funerary rituals of the period. All of the tombs seem to have been opened and robbed in antiquity. But you still get the grandeur of the opulence and power of the rulers of this time. 

The valley has become famous for the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb. It is one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world. In 1979, it became a World Heritage Site.  

The modern abbreviation "KV" stands for "Kings' Valley", and the tombs are numbered in the order of 'discovery' from Ramesses VII (KV1) to KV63 (discovered 2005), although many of the tombs have been open since antiquity, and KV5 was only rediscovered in the 1990s. The West Valley tombs often have the "WV" prefix but follow the same numbering system. A number of the tombs are unoccupied, the owners of others remain unknown, and others are merely pits used for storage. Most of the open tombs in the Valley of the Kings are located in the East Valley, and this is where most tourists and facilities are found.

Some tombs were quarried out of existing limestone clefts, others behind slopes of scree or were at the edge of rock spurs created by ancient flood channels. 

As we enter the main building which leads to the Valley, there is a huge model of the Valley with the tombs. Its graphic as it shows you, not only through photos on the walls, but also the model, that the longer you reigned as king, you had the time to make the length of your burial chamber longer. This was important as you devoted more time whilst living to plan your afterlife being remembered! Hence, as Tutankhamen lived a short life, his tomb’s length is very short. Rameses II ruled a long time, hence his chamber is deep and long. 

To get to the tombs, you can walk the 800 m uphill or take a toy train. we are by the tombs area by 9.15 am. There are many tourists so you have to be nimble. The Govt has built a shed like structure for respite from the heat. Whilst you see the crowds, movement into the tombs is fast as people quickly decide to avoid queues so they move elsewhere. As someone who appreciates good write-ups on displays, we must compliment the Antiquities Dept on their many detailed notice boards charting out dynasties, burial procedures and details of each king's life. 

The tomb of Rameses II returned to an early style, with a bent axis, probably due to the quality of the rock being excavated. Between 1998 and 2002 the Amarna Royal Tombs Project investigated the valley floor using ground-penetrating radar and found that, below the modern surface, the Valley's cliffs descend beneath the scree in a series of abrupt natural "shelves", arranged one below the other, descending several metres down to the bedrock in the valley floor.  

The tomb of the king was associated with a mortuary temple located close to the pyramid. These mortuary temples became places visited during the various festivals held in the Theban necropolis. The tombs were constructed and decorated by the workers of the village of Deir el-Medina, located in a small wadi between this valley and the Valley of Queens facing Luxor. The workers journeyed to the tombs via routes over the Theban hills. The daily lives of these workers are quite well known, recorded in tombs and official documents. Amongst the events documented is perhaps the first recorded worker's strike, detailed in the Turin strike papyrus.      

In each tomb, as we entered, and we saw quite a few, there is the long path and then the chamber. Most of them had etchings or bas reliefs on them of human activity, boats and daily life, animals of various types. The majority of the royal tombs were decorated with religious texts and images.  

There was intense competition between the Italians, French, British and Americans in the excavation of the tombs. In 1799, an expedition sent by Napoleon drew maps and plans of the known tombs. Belzoni, working for Henry Salt, who discovered several tombs, including those of Ay in the West Valley (WV23) in 1816 and Seti I (KV17) in 1817. Working at the same time (and a great rival of Belzoni and Salt) was Bernardino Drovetti, the French Consul-General.  Gaston Maspero was reappointed to head the Egyptian Antiquities Service, appointed Howard Carter as the Chief Inspector of Upper Egypt and he discovered several new tombs and explored many more.

Beginning of the 20^th C, Theodore Davis, an American had the excavation permit in the valley. After Davis's death early in 1915, Lord Caernarvon acquired the concession to excavate the valley and he employed Carter to explore it. After a systematic search they discovered the actual tomb of Tutankhamun (KV62) in November 1922. In 2001 the Theban Mapping Project designed new signs for the tombs, providing information and plans of the open tombs. You have to pay extra to get into King Tut’s tomb. More important, as at Saqqara, the steps down are steep and for a tall person like me, impossible to go down. 

"The usual tomb plan consisted of a long inclined rock-cut corridor, descending through one or more halls (possibly mirroring the descending path of the sun-god into the underworld), to the burial chamber. In the earlier tombs the corridors turn through 90 degrees at least once (eg KV43, the tomb of Thutmose IV), and the earliest had cartouche-shaped burial chambers (for example, KV43, the tomb of Thutmose IV). This layout is known as 'Bent Axis', and after the burial the upper corridors were meant to be filled with rubble, and the entrance to the tomb hidden". 

“After the Amarna Period, the layout gradually straightened, with an intermediate 'Jogged Axis' (the tomb of Horemheb, KV57 is typical of this) to the generally 'Straight Axis' of the late Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasty tombs (Ramesses III's and Ramesses IX's tombs, KV11 and KV6 respectively). As the tomb's axes straightened, the slope also lessened, and almost disappeared in the late Twentieth Dynasty. Another feature that is common to most tombs is the 'well', which may have originated as an actual barrier intended to stop flood waters entering the lower parts of the tombs. It later seems to have developed a 'magical' purpose as a symbolic shaft. In the later Twentieth Dynasty, the well itself was sometimes not excavated, but the well room was still present”. 

Most of the tombs are not open to the public – only 18 of the tombs can be opened, but they are rarely open at the same time. Often officials occasionally close those that are open for restoration work. The tour guides are no longer allowed to lecture inside the tombs and visitors are expected to proceed quietly and in single file through the tombs. This is to minimize time in the tombs and prevent the crowds from damaging the surfaces of the decoration. Photography is no longer allowed in the tombs.  In 1997, 58 tourists and 4 Egyptians were killed  by Islamist militants. This led to an overall drop in tourism in the area. On most days of the week an average of 15,000 tourists visit the main valley. On the days that the Cruise ships arrive the number can rise to 25,000 but it all depends upon the political stability. 

Anubis is the jackal shape - the God of Mummification shown near a corpse. Many alabaster jars are there where they preserved various human organs.  
The 3 headed snake shown below is well known - aim was to make Rameses II more powerful. 

"By the end of the New Kingdom, Egypt had entered a long period of political and economic decline. The priests at Thebes grew in power and effectively administered Upper Egypt, while kings ruling from Tanis controlled Lower Egypt.  Some attempt at using the open tombs was made at the start of the 21^st Dynasty, with the High Priest of Amun, Pinedjem I, adding his cartouche to KV4. The Valley began to be heavily plundered, so during the 21^st Dynasty the priests of Amun opened most of the tombs and moved the mummies into three tombs in order to better protect them, even removing most of their treasure in order to further protect the bodies from robbers. Most of these were later moved to a single cache near Deir el-Bari (known as TT320); located in the cliffs overlooking Hatshepsut's famous temple, this mass reburial contained a large number of royal mummies. They were found in a great state of disorder, many placed in other's coffins, and several are still unidentified. Other mummies were moved to the tomb of Amenhotep II, where over a dozen mummies, many of them royal, were later relocated". 

After a few hours here, we moved onto the other side to see the Valley of the Queens. Actually, it’s a great let down. The pictorial history in the entrance building shows the incredible restoration work done by a team of Polish archaeologists over 60 years. As you leave yet another toy train near the gate, you see that there is only one large building. This is where wives of Pharaohs were buried in ancient times. In ancient times, it was known as Ta-Set-Neferu, meaning ‘the place of the Children of the Pharaoh’, because along with the Queens of the 18^th, 19^th and 20^th Dynasties (1550–1070 BCE) many princes and princesses were buried with various members of the nobility. The tombs of these individuals were maintained by mortuary priests who performed daily rituals and provided offerings and prayers for the deceased nobility. This necropolis is said to hold more than seventy tombs, many of which are stylish and lavishly decorated. An example of this is the resting place carved out of the rock for Queen Nefertari (1290–1224 BCE) of the 19th Dynasty. The reliefs in her tomb are still intact.

However, we were told that after we have climbed up all those steps, we can only go up to the First Level and not inside into the various galleries. We felt that was a waste of time and in the 35 deg heat, better sense prevailed and we returned back to the car and later the ship.

Text and photographs copyright of the author. No part of this article or photographs maybe transmitted or reproduced by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without written permission. Do contact the author on email -- helpthesun@gmail.com