Royal Tombs from the Age of the Pyramids

Royal Tombs from the Age of the Pyramids

Until recently the transition from the Thinite era to the Old Kingdom seemed to have been marked by distinct political changes, and to have been a cultural turning point. However, new research into the tombs in the cemeteries of Abydos and Saqqara shows us that there was neither a dynastic change nor a cultural breakthrough. It appears from seal impressions that Djoser, first king of the Third Dynasty, brought provisions for and sealed up the tomb in Abydos of Khasekhemui, the last king of the Second Dynasty. Several kings from the beginning of the Second Dynasty had already sited their tombs — spacious galleried complexes with massive superstructures in the central area of Saqqara, the royal cemetery of the Third Dynasty. Khasekhemui — Djoser’s father or father-in-law — seems to have had both a large tomb at Abydos and an enormous gallery tomb in the form of a “Buto-type” mastaba in Saqqara. The troubling tendency for single rulers to have two or more tombs is encountered frequently in Egyptian history, and it cannot be satisfactorily explained by interpretations of some of these structures as cenotaphs, or memorials.

For the ancient Egyptians the preservation of the entire body was undoubtedly an essential and fundamental condition for life after death. Besides this there were, early on, other ritual totems for preserving the deceased king’s physical presence and spirituality. These are, in order of importance: the portrait statue, the royal stela, and the royal tomb. These various images and different homes for the deceased king — mummy, statue, stela, pyramid, and tomb — were first brought together in monumental architectural form in about 2680 BC in the tomb precinct ofDjoser, constructed in view of the royal palace.

To this extent the reign of Djoser marks an important watershed, the start of a magical period, in which Egypt emerges from its dark early history, and the brilliance of the Old Kingdom begins: the Age of the Pyramids. This is how the Egyptians themselves saw it, and in Pjoser’s reign they recognized a real beginning, a new era, although the ancient Egyptian view of life was in fact cyclical rather than historical. It was seen as a succession of recurring events, as in nature, structured by annual festivals and the royal jubilees.

In one of the few pseudo-historical documents from ancient Egypt, known as the “Turin Royal Papyrus,” from the beginning of the Nine-teenth Dynasty — a list of kings with their dates — the name of Djoser is given special emphasis by the addition of a brief summary. That Djoser should be valued and honored in this way thousands of years later stems not, interestingly enough, from the political union or pacification of the country, or from foreign conquests, but from the fact that he was regarded as the initiator of monumental stone architecture, a role that historically he shares with his son and chief architect Imhotep.

Rough blocks of stone were occasionally employed in and on tombs of the Archaic Period, but Djoser and Imhotep discovered worked stone as a building material and with it created the first monumental architecture, buildings whose forms and symbols gave shape to the state of Egypt. In the stone buildings and courts, which were now “everlasting” thanks to the material, the idea was that the deified king should continue to celebrate, as was his lifetime role as ruler, the rituals and cult practices that ensured the preservation of the world order established by the gods. With death and deification this became his eternal task. Each king therefore had to construct his own tomb precinct and his own pyramid as palace for the next world, and as representation of the eternal Egypt of the afterlife.

This remarkable representation in stone of a state philosophy did not come about suddenly or arise out of nothing. By the reign of Djoser, Egypt had existed as a single country for several hundred years. With unification the old nomadic ways of the leading Upper Egyptian tribes of the First Dynasty were intermingled with the more settled, architectural culture of the peoples of the Delta region.

The different cultural traditions and contrasting geographical realities found their expression in funerary architecture. In the relatively narrow river valley of Upper Egypt the tombs lie mainly on the edge of the desert on either side of the Nile, protected from the annual floods. The earliest are shallow grave pits with a sand tumulus that rises just above the level of the desert. By contrast, the tombs of the earliest ruling class of the more urban state of Lower Egypt could only be built on the higher ground of inhabited sand banks, and deep shafts were ruled out due to the level of groundwater. The tomb was protected by its superstructure. From this feature developed a form of house-tomb with exterior walls decorated with niches, the “Buto-type” mastaba.

It can be shown that this type of tomb first appeared in a princely burial in Naqada and in the large niche mastabas at Saqqara from the beginning of the First Dynasty, which appear there suddenly in the reign of Hor Aha. These are refined tomb buildings of the Lower Egyptian house-tomb type, with massive, virtually solid superstructures, up to 50 m or 100 Egyptian cubits long, 15—20 m or 30—40 cubits wide, and over 5 m or 10 cubits high. Their whitewashed facades, punctuated by niches, were a magnificent display of royal presence above the northern cliffs of Saqqara. If they were not royal tombs or cenotaphs, then they were surely the tomb buildings of queens and the highest princes, impressive power architecture of the ruling dynasty.


The Mortuary Complex of Djoser

Before Djoser’s mortuary complex there were differences in use of space between the Upper Egyptian royal tombs of Abydos and those in the Lower Egyptian royal cemetery. Djoser took forms that had developed in the separate regions through geographical and cultural differences, and combined them harmoniously in one complex and in a single tomb building. Superficially, it was dominated by the form and arrangement of palace tombs of the “Buto-type” mastaba. Thus far, scholars have sought to explain the origins of the Djoser precinct by a very abstract concept, namely as a construction that combines the two types that had existed alongside one another in Abydos for generations: the valley complex and the so-called tumuli of Abydos. However, since it became known that the Abydos royal tombs were not in fact burial mounds of any substantial height, but were covered by no more than a rather unattractive sand bank barely rising above the desert, this theory has become distinctly questionable. Far more likely is that in the construction of the Djoser complex, nearby tomb buildings in the royal cemetery of Saqqara, the “Buto-type” mastabas of the First and Second Dynasties, were used as a model. Although we know little about the character of Djoser from contemporary sources — the only reliable information we possess are his buildings, his statue, and the reliefs depicting him — it seems nevertheless possible that he was responsible for the innovative concept of royal palace for the afterlife. He would have been supported by his kindred spirit, the architect Imhotep.

Recent experimental research into the layout of the building has shown that the tomb precinct was not originally conceived on such a gigantic and all-encompassing scale, but that it grew over a period of more than twenty years in several building phases, with alterations to the layout. At first the complex was to have been about half its size, extending 300 m from north to south, and 113 m east to west, but with the actual architectural elements already laid out and partially completed. The elements built in the first stage of construction included the 10.5 m-high stone enclosure wall with niched panels, the royal tomb with a mortuary temple to the north, the south tomb above the southern enclosure wall with a chapel, the facade of which has a distinctive frieze of uraeus cobras, the great ceremonial court between these two tomb buildings and the small ceremonial court in the eastern part. An important distinction between this and earlier royal tombs is the relatively precise orientation of the whole site to the four cardinals (the four compass points); the variation from the north—south axis, as it was then, was no more than 3°. The boundaries were marked by tall stelae bearing the names of Djoser and his queens, with the protective figure of the mortuary god Anubis. The superstructure of the king’s tomb was planned from the very beginning as a three-tiered step mastaba that, like the south tomb, was oriented east—west; this had the effect of enclosing the great ceremonial courts to the south and north between the high buildings. Only in a second construction phase, when the three-tiered mastaba with the king’s tomb and the south tomb were already nearly complete, was the superstructure of the mastaba converted into a stepped pyramid. In one of the earliest phases this was to consist of four tiers. This plan, as one can see on the east side where the structure lies open, did not develop beyond the first two tiers of the mastaba, at which point it was decided to extend the structure in breadth and height into a six-tiered pyramid 62.5 m in height.

The alteration of the step mastaba into a stepped pyramid gave the king’s tomb its exceptional prominence within the entire tomb complex. In contrast, the shape of the south tomb remained as an elongated east—west-oriented mastaba, only just rising above the south perimeter wall. The presence of two tombs in one precinct with largely identical underground structures is one of the unexplained peculiarities of the Djoser complex. The fact that this double pattern carries on in the southern pyramids of later pyramid precincts does not simplify interpretation. Both burial chambers are built from large granite blocks at the bottom of a 28 m-deep shaft. Because of its internal dimensions, only the granite chamber under the north tomb can have served as a burial place. Various objects were discovered there in the last century including the gilded skullcap of Djoser. The tomb chamber of the south tomb, on the other hand, was too small; it was empty and without trace of a burial. Most likely that chamber contained a transportable, gilded wooden statue that was regarded as equivalent in importance to the body of the deceased king. Nevertheless, the south tomb, which was found empty, was sealed in a similar manner to the tomb underneath the pyramid where the king’s body was buried. The entrance to the granite chamber was through a round opening, which was sealed from above by a granite plug weighing several tons, and which must have been suspended in the antechamber up until the burial. The burial chambers are connected by a system of underground galleries that served to store the enormous quantities of provisions for the afterlife. On the east side of the shafts of both tombs a second system of galleries branches off to form a rectangular gallery around a section of solid rock. The walls of the galleries were decorated with blue-green glazed tiles.

A series of eleven shafts on the east side of the step mastaba led 30 m deep into galleries underneath the king’s tomb. The royal family would have been interred in these, although only the five northernmost galleries were found to have been lined with stone or wood; several alabaster sarcophaguses were found for the burial of children, but no queen. The six southern galleries, on the other hand, were filled with incredible numbers (approximately 40,000) of stone vessels of varying shapes and containing a variety of different materials, among which were a number of vases bearing the names of kings of the First and Second Dynasties.

The raising up and widening of the original step mastaba into a six-tiered pyramid meant increasing the size of the ground plan and building over the mortuary temple to the north of the pyramid, and over the passageway into the tomb. To build a new mortuary temple in appropriate proportions, the complex had to be extended to the north and a court was needed for the delivery of offerings and provisions. A monumental altar, on which the offerings were brought each day to be consecrated, dominates the new north court. The entrance to the mortuary temple and the offerings place was guarded by a small chapel, leaning against the north side of the pyramid, known as the serdcth. In this building was found the only surviving life-size statue of Djoser, which is an impressive image of the inaccessibility and divine dignity of the king in his afterlife.

When the complex was enlarged it took in on the west side an elongated structure that was hitherto regarded as a magazine, though this is very probably the Lower Egyptian tomb of Khasekhemui, last king of the Second Dynasty. The inclusion of this structure demonstrates the idiosyncrasies of Djoser and Imhotep in their design. The Djoser complex is not merely a model of the royal palace, as was previously assumed, but a representation in stone of Egypt in the afterlife. The south and north tombs are symbols for the royal cemetery of Abydos as well as of the Lower Egyptian palace. They are the religious centers of the royal cult. The south court that they enclose and the chapels of the small ceremonial court in the eastern section represent the land of Egypt and its shrines, the world of the living, which is the setting for the eternal cult ceremonies of the king. The north court symbolizes the wealthy marshes of the Delta, standing metaphorically for the offering place of the northern heaven; the western area with the elongated niche tomb symbolizes the “holy realm,” the world of the dead. This stone image of Egypt in the afterlife is surrounded by a tall enclosure wall, which protects it from the chaos of the unordered world. This wall has as many as 15 gateways, yet only one functions as an entrance. Through its precise orientation to the north, following the course of the Nile, the complex is linked to the axis of the world, whose pole is the pyramid with the royal tomb, the palace of eternity.

This impressive invention of an everlasting Egypt in the afterlife developed gradually over a long period of construction. For the time being it must remain an open question whether the mere nineteen years given as the reign of Djoser in the “Turin Royal Papyrus” would have been sufficient to achieve this, or whether we need to double his years, which would be quite consistent with Old Kingdom ways of counting.

Djoser ‘s Successors

None of Djoser’s successors from the Third Dynasty completed his own tomb. Yet they made advances in construction techniques and brought clarity to the division of the underground magazines. The number of the courts was reduced, and they attempted to construct higher step pyramids. The mortuary complex of Djoser’s son or grandson, Sekhemket, was first discovered in the 1950s at Saqqara, to the southwest of the Djoser complex. The tomb chamber contained a coffin that was apparently closed though empty, and which had probably been robbed in antiquity. Another, very much eroded step pyramid from the Third Dynasty stands 10 km further north, in Zawiyet el-Aryan. Huni, the last king of the dynasty, built a series of small, solid, step pyramids from Elephantine in the south to Athribis in the Delta; not pyramids with tombs, but royal monuments, as if they were towers for his palaces. His actual burial place has not yet been found. It is sometimes claimed that Huni began the step pyramid of Meidum, and that Snefru, first king of the Fourth Dynasty, completed it for him, although this thesis is no longer tenable. Huni’s presence is not documented there. His tomb must have been in the region of Saqqara, where high officials of his time were buried. Besides this we can tell from graffiti on buildings and from inscriptions that during the Old and Middle Kingdoms no king finished a pyramid for his predecessor or took it over for himself.