The Step Pyramid of Djoser

The magnitude of Imhotep's accomplishment in designing and building Djoser's pyramid may be missed in a time when we take for granted such structures as the Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate bridge, and the Sears Tower. But in the middle of the third millennium before the common era (some 4500 years before present), when the usual building material was mud brick, with its corresponding limitations, Imhotep built with stone.

The step pyramid started out as a mastaba like any other except, of course, that it was made of stone and it was square. (The standard mastaba tomb was an underground burial chamber capped by a rectangular mound with sloping sides and a flat top.) The pyramid, which is a series of six mastabas piled on top of one another, was built in stages; the original royal tomb was found some ninety feet underground and sealed with a 3-ton hunk of granite. Other corridors and chambers were lined with blue tile.

Click on the photograph for a look at the ruins of Djoser's dummy Heb-Sed Court