Commissioned by the king to design his burial place Imhotep began, simply enough, by building a substantial version of the mastaba-type tomb in which most of Netjerykhet’s predecessors had been interred. The mastaba was to be a large one and it was to be built in limestone blocks, itself an important innovation. Approximately ten thousand tons of stone needed to be quarried for the mastaba, in itself a great quantity. It was, however, to be as nothing when compared with the final extent of the material required for the king’s
Figure 7.1 The majestic profile of the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, seen here beyond vegetation which is no longer to be found in its vicinity, was the supreme achievement of the Third Dynasty, though it is possible that another pyramid, even larger than Netjerykhet’s was planned. From this brick mountain descended the pyramids of the later kings. That it is a quintessentially Egyptian form and concept is apparent from the stepped mounds which were concealed in the First Dynasty mastabas, centuries before the building of this monument to King Netjerykhet.
Source: photograph John G. Ross.
Monument. At some point, as this first structure was completed, daring inspiration seems to have seized Imhotep; of course, it could have seized Netjerykhet, but there is no evidence on the point. As a result the resources of Egypt were harnessed to undertake a project the like of which had never before been attempted anywhere.
Though it is difficult to resist drawing a parallel between them because of the Step Pyramid’s exterior form, the temptation to link the Sumerian zig-gurat directly with the Egyptian pyramid, which bears a superficial resemblance to the Mesopotamian terraced sacred mountain, must be put aside. The origins of the pyramid have been convincingly traced back through the rectangular brick mastaba to a sand-piled tumulus mound. The ziggurat emerged as a consequence of a combination of factors, the need to raise sacred buildings above the level of the flood plain, the necessity to repair and rebuild mud-brick structures with frequency, and the predisposition of the Sumerians to regard certain areas as irrevocably sacred, requiring new temples or shrines to be rebuilt directly on the site of their predecessors.
However, a different set of concepts may have underlain Egypt’s characteristic monuments. It has been proposed that the inspiration for the terraced structure built to provide eternity for Netjerykhet was a natural phenomenon produced by the differing temperatures of the atmospheric layers over Saqqara which had the effect of making the sun’s disc appear as a stepped pyramidal structure. It may be imagined what an impression this would have made on people of the time, given the Egyptians’ always powerful response to symbol.7 A solar stepped pyramid would have been a symbol of immense import to them and not least to Imhotep, with his special relationship to the worship of the sun’s disc.
The more familiar, triangular form of the pyramid, which was to be established in the Fourth Dynasty, may well have also been the result of a solar inspiration. This may be confirmed by anyone who has observed what an Egyptian architect with heightened awareness must have seen, towards the time of sunset in the area to the north of Heliopolis, particularly in the winter months, when the rays of the sun break through low cloud and form a perfectly triangular shaft of light over the flat and largely featureless countryside. It is a remarkable sight and one which might well be calculated to inspire an artist contemplating a fitting monument for kings who were beginning to be identified with the sun; few natural events look quite so like the direct and evident intervention of a divinity.
Nonetheless, the fact that this first of all pyramids is stepped or terraced and, moreover, built of rectangular stone blocks reminiscent of the mud bricks of the mastabas from which originally it evolved is, in the context of possible Sumerian—Egyptian connections, a coincidence that cannot wholly be disregarded though the stone blocks are much larger than the mud bricks. A further argument against any direct attribution of Sumerian influences in the construction of the Stepped Pyramid must be that no true ziggurats survive from Mesopotamia earlier than those built in the second half of the third millennium, later than Netjerykhet’s pyramid by several hundred years. But the real origins of ziggurat building, though not its final form, can probably be traced back to the White Temple at Uruk in the thirty-fourth century BC, which was raised on a series of platforms and, unlike most Sumerian buildings, was built on a limestone base as its foundation.
World History
