Saqqara
Home to the Step Pyramid of Djoser, Saqqara holds what is probably the earliest important stone building ever erected in Egypt — the direct ancestor of every pyramid that followed, including Giza’s. It was designed around 2650 BC by Imhotep, the pharaoh’s vizier and architect, later revered as a genius so accomplished he was eventually deified as a god of wisdom and medicine.
Beneath the Step Pyramid
The pyramid’s substructure holds an intricate network of underground corridors and chambers, centered on a shaft 25 meters deep and 8 meters wide, leading down to a burial chamber built of granite brought from Aswan, hundreds of kilometers south.
The pyramid itself rises within a vast walled enclosure — 544 meters long and 277 meters wide — originally filled with additional stone structures built to serve the king’s needs in the afterlife, several of which still stand in ruins today.
Visiting Saqqara
Saqqara is typically visited alongside nearby Memphis and Dahshur, together forming a rich, chronological look at the earliest chapters of Egyptian pyramid-building — well worth a full day exploring just south of Cairo.
