There are signs about 2700 Bc that unrest in Upper Egypt led to the faltering of the evolving kingdom. It may have been associated with the adoption of a new royal burial ground at Saqqara, far north of Abydos and close to the ‘capital’ of Memphis, which gave the real or imagined impression that the kings had relaxed their authority in the south. Not for the last time in Egyptian history, a forceful new ruler, Khasekhemwy, restored order and brought fresh energy into the kingdom. Khasekhemwy (died c.2686) is recorded as the last king of the Second Dynasty but his successors in the Third carried on the new impetus. Around 2650 BC an architectural revolution took place, a rare occurrence in Egyptian history. It involved the tomb of king Djoser, the second of the new dynasty, at Saqqara, now firmly established as the royal burial ground. One of Djoser’s advisers, Imhotep, had been entrusted with the supervision of the building of the royal tomb, a task that was always begun well before death. Above ground the tomb started as an ordinary mastaba (in other words was a continuation of earlier models), but this was extended and built upon so that eventually a stepped ‘pyramid’ of six layers emerged. On the southern side were two courtyards, and it has been assumed that these were copies of courtyards from the king’s own palace at Memphis. The largest has been seen as a royal appearance court, a carefully designed forum for showing off the king, perhaps first
At his coronation and then at other great festivities. The smaller court seems to have been a copy of that used for the sed festival, with mock chapels for the provincial gods and two thrones, one to represent each kingdom of Egypt. It is as if the king is provided not only with goods, set out in elaborate chambers under the pyramid, but with the setting which would allow him to continue as ruler in the afterlife.
Nothing like Djoser’s funerary complex had been seen elsewhere. It was faced in the fine limestone from the quarries at Tura, and is the earliest stone monument of this size built anywhere in the world. (The earlier great temples of Mesopotamia were built in mudbrick.) The builders remained under the influence of earlier wooden models. The stone columns in the entrance colonnade are fluted, the first known examples of a design that persists into Greek architecture. The flutes represent either bound reeds or carved tree trunks, copying wooden originals. The complex introduces another innovation in the serdab, a room attached to the main building in which offerings were placed. It had a slit in the inside wall opening on to an inner room where a statue of Djoser was placed in such a way as to be able to see the offerings. The king, seated and looking forward, provided a model for similar statues throughout Egyptian history, though these might also be standing or kneeling. Whatever the stance, they must be shown able to view or receive offerings. Their monumentality also reflects the enormous difficulty in working hard stone in that arms and legs are not shown distinct from the body. For the first time, too, the reliefs in Djoser’s tomb portray the king not as a conqueror, as is the earlier convention, but as undertaking the rituals of kingship. One shows him running, perhaps as part of the sed ceremony. A mass of tunnels surround the underground tomb of the king and they are filled with thousands of stone vessels, some of which show inscriptions from earlier kings as if Djoser was being enshrined as an heir to the past.
There is continued speculation among scholars as to why this revolutionary design was adopted. One simple view is that Imhotep wanted to make the building more imposing. In its finished state the stepped pyramid was 6o metres high. Another view is that the king was associated with a star cult and the steps were the means by which he was to ascend to heaven. Inscriptions from later pyramids, the so-called Pyramid Texts, support this suggestion. One reads, ‘A staircase to heaven is laid for him (the king) so that he may mount up to heaven thereby.’ Whatever the reason, the Step Pyramid continued to inspire reverence for centuries. It was a popular place of pilgrimage and was being restored 2,000 years after it was built. Imhotep himself was later deified as the son of Ptah, the god of craftsmen.
Djoser’s dynasty, the Third, brings to an end the Early Dynastic period. With the Fourth Dynasty (c.2613 Bc) begins the Old Kingdom proper, which was to last to about 2130 BC. The Old Kingdom is dominated by the building of the Pyramids, one of the great administrative feats of history. For the Great Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) alone, 2,500,000 limestone blocks with an average weight of 2.5 tonnes, were hauled up into position. One of the mathematicians accompanying Napoleon on his expedition to Egypt in 1798 calculated that the stones of the three pyramids of Giza could enclose France within a wall 3 metres high. It goes without saying that the
Old Kingdom was a period of prosperity and stability, with power focused overwhelmingly on the king. (There is a fine introduction to all aspects of the pyramids by Mark Lehner, The Complete Pyramids: Solving the Ancient Mysteries, London and New York, 2008.)
The transition from step pyramid to pyramid for the royal tomb can be seen at Meidum, some 50 kilometres south of Memphis, where there are the remains of what was built as a seven-stepped pyramid on the model of Djoser’s. It was then enlarged to eight steps and finally the whole was encased in Tura limestone to form a true pyramid. For the first time a causeway was provided leading to a valley temple. (The king’s body would have been brought up the causeway for final burial after rituals in the valley temple.) The pyramid is attributed to king Sneferu, first of the Fourth Dynasty, but it may not be his as he built two pyramids of his own at Dahshur nearby as well as another at Meidum. (In terms of volume Sneferu was the greatest pyramid builder of them all and he funded his programme by creating royal estates in Upper Egypt and cattle farms across the Delta that provided grain and meat for his workers. Analysis of remains in the workers’ villages show that they were fed a diet rich in protein.) Sneferu’s were the first pyramids planned as such from the start. However, there was still much to be learnt. The desert surface on which the first of Sneferu’s pyramids was based was unsuitable, and, in order to prevent the collapse of the structure, its weight was reduced by decreasing the angle of the incline of the upper blocks, earning it the name ‘the bent pyramid’.
The transition from a stepped to a true pyramid was a difficult one for the builders to make. They could no longer rely on each step providing a base for the next layer. It is unclear why the transition took place, but it may have been the result of changing religious beliefs. It has been argued, for instance, that Sneferu adhered to a sun cult. He was certainly a formidable man and titles that he adopted show that he identified his authority with that of the gods. One major change in the complex surrounding the true pyramids was that the mortuary chapel was now moved to the eastern side (from the traditional northern side) so that it received the first rays of the sun. The whole shape of the pyramid can be seen as the rays of the sun coming downwards. (There is an echo of this at Heliopolis, centre of a cult of the sun god, where a stone construction roughly in the shape of a pyramid, the so-called benben, was used as a symbol of the sun.) Sneferu’s title is enclosed within a cartouche, an oblong circle that appears to signify his power over all that the sun encircled. The symbol became permanent: a cartouche remains the easiest way of spotting a king’s title among other hieroglyphics.
It was Sneferu’s son Khufu (Cheops) who emulated his father’s building and began the first of the three great pyramids at Giza. The fact that he chose a new site suggests he was determined to make his own impact, and the tradition that he was a tyrannical megalomaniac lasted for centuries. (The Greek historian Herodotus passed on the story that he even sent his daughter into a brothel to raise more money for his projects. She hit on the idea of charging each of her customers a stone and was so successful in her trade, the story went, that she was able to use the total to build a small pyramid of her own!)
Fig. 1 Plan of Giza Plateau. The plateau provided an excellent solid base for the weight of the pyramids and the stone could be brought in during the floods. Note the Valley Temples where funerary rituals were carried out before the final burial in the Pyramid. The mastaba tombs of the royal family and favoured officials were clustered close to the pyramids.
The Giza plateau held three major pyramids, the Great Pyramid of Khufu, a slightly smaller one to his son, Khafra (Chephren in Greek), and the third, about half the size of the larger two, to Menkaura (Mycerinus in Greek), whose reign was short. The burial chambers of each pyramid have been located but they were robbed in antiquity. (Khufu’s burial chamber was unusual in being in the middle of the pyramid rather than below ground.) The building of the pyramids needed great technical skills but relatively little technology. The site was important. The rock had to be firm enough to sustain the massive weight of the building yet close enough to water for the stone to be brought in during the time of inundation. (Fifty-tonne blocks of granite, used to line the burial chambers and the lower courses of some pyramids, would have had to be brought from Aswan, hundreds of kilometres distant. Limestone, the main casing stone, was much more readily accessible.)
The Great Pyramid of Khufu was built on ground that was carefully levelled round the planned edges of the pyramid with a mound of higher rock left in the middle. Each side measured almost exactly 230 metres and the whole was aligned perfectly to the north. This appears to have been done by taking the mid-point between the rising and setting position of a northern star. Within the pyramid shafts ran from the centre in the direction of important stars such as Sirius, the dog star. The accuracy and forward planning required is uncanny.
The most probable building method was by the use of ramps (pulleys were not known until Roman times). A mass of chips and mortar has been found that appear to have come from such ramps. A suggested gradient along which even a massive stone (and some pyramid stones weighed as much as 200 tonnes) could be shifted was about one in twelve. A ramp with this gradient could be built perpendicular to the pyramid base and as each level rose it would be heightened and lengthened to maintain the gradient. The stones themselves seem to have been loaded on to sledges that were then attached to ropes and pulled over timbers by gangs of men. Recent experiments at Giza with stone blocks suggest a workforce of some 25,000 would have been able to complete the Great Pyramid in twenty years.
The pyramids were only part of the funerary complex. At its fullest extent, best seen in the remains around Khafra’s pyramid, it included a mortuary temple along the eastern side of the pyramid, where the body of the king was received for the final ceremonies before burial and where later offerings could be left. Leading up to the temple was a covered causeway nearly 600 metres long, its walls carved with reliefs. It led from the valley temple, where the king’s remains were first received and probably given ritual purification before entering the final journey to the burial place.
Around Khufu’s pyramid were a large number of traditional mastaba tombs arranged in ranks to the east and west. The eastern cemetery was the most favoured. It seems to have been reserved for the royal family, while officials had to take their place in order on the west. There is no more vivid example of a king, of vastly superior status to his subjects, arranging for his comforts in the afterlife. One other important find associated with Khufu is his magnificent ceremonial boat, found dismantled into over 1,200 pieces in a pit alongside the pyramid. It took some fourteen years to reassemble into a vessel 44 metres long complete with its oars and deckhouse. It may have been the actual boat used to convey the king’s body to its burial place, or, alternatively, one for him to use in his afterlife when he would have to accompany Ra in his journey through the night.
Another famous monument of the Giza plateau is the Great Sphinx, the largest stone statue from the ancient world. (The word ‘sphinx’ is Greek, as many terms describing ancient Egypt are, probably derived from the Egyptian shesep-ankh: ‘living image’.) It was fashioned from an outcrop of rock left unquarried during the building of the Great Pyramid, possibly because of the poor quality of the stone. It probably represents king Khafra as a man-headed lion. The lion was associated with the sun god and was believed to have guarded the gates of the underworlds of both the eastern and western horizons. The monument thus
Suggests some kind of guardianship of the pyramids themselves, linked to Khafra in his role as son of Ra.
It is easy to be so overwhelmed by the sheer size of the pyramids themselves that one forgets the extraordinarily complex problems involved in managing the men and materials needed to build them. A steady supply of stone had to be quarried, shaped, moved, and put into position. The pyramid shape made its own demands. A small error in positioning in the lower layers would cause horrendous problems in the higher ones. Shaping the outside casing called for particular expertise. The whole operation, stretching, as it would have to, over many years, needed organizers of vision. It also required total confidence in the labour force. The mastermind behind the Great Pyramid was one Hemiunu, possibly the nephew of the king, and his life-size statue survives, showing him as a man of presence and confidence, just as one would expect. What incentives were needed to keep so many men toiling for so long can only be guessed at. Contrary to popular opinion, they were not slaves but ordinary peasants, presumably drafted in when their fields were under water from the annual inundation. They were also organized into smaller gangs who may have engaged in rivalry with each other to sustain morale. Each shift appears to have worked for three months and organizing the coming and going of replacements year on year was another administrative challenge. Death and injury, from being crushed to death by stones to debilitating back problems, must have been common.
The background to the building of the pyramids is well known. Their evolution can be traced from Saqqara and earlier. At Giza itself an extensive survey of 12,000 square metres to the south of the complex carried out by Mark Lehner as a Millennium Project has added enormously to the understanding of how the labour force was housed and the techniques it used. Even so the pyramids have provided a rich hunting ground for fantasists. They have been encouraged by a lack of any Egyptian references to the function of the pyramids. In the nineteenth century these fantasists earned themselves the nickname Pyramidiots for their extravagant stories in which the measurements of the pyramids were interpreted to prove everything from the origins of British weights and measures to an outline of history to come. The positioning of the pyramids has been related to star patterns, they have been given a history dating back to 12000 bc or even been said to have been built in two stages many thousands of years apart. Most of these fantasies centre on the Giza pyramids and ignore the many other smaller pyramids that fail to fit the proposed theory.
The simplest explanation for the Giza pyramids is that the pharaohs had become obsessed with the maintenance of their status for all time, an expression in fact of their divinity, and the monumentality of their burial places was the best way of achieving this. Yet the diversion of resources into such great buildings could not be sustained. By the Fifth Dynasty there is some slackening of this intense concentration on the king. Pyramids continue to be built, but these are much smaller and more human in scale. Some Fifth Dynasty kings now transferred their energies to building temples to Ra, taking as their model an original temple at an important cult centre to this god at Heliopolis at the entrance to the Delta. There is some
Evidence that the temple priests were becoming more involved in government (or possibly that leading nobles themselves were becoming priests in the service of Ra).
World History
