Step Pyramid of Djoser

Step Pyramid of Djoser

Along the west bank of the Nile on the border of the desert at Saqqara is the Step Pyramid  complex of Horus Neterikhet, known as King Djoser, credibly the 2nd  pharaoh of the 3rd Dynasty. The  constructions of the complex are significant because they are the first ones made of quarried stone, in regular courses.

The  third century BC historian Manetho confirms the Djoser complexs originality when he themes  that  Imhotep, whom the Greeks  anticipated Asclepios for his 

Cobra heads, Step Pyramid at Saqqara

The first modern exploration of the Step Pyramid was made by the Prussian general Baron von Minutoli, who recorded it with the Italian engineer Geronimo Segato through 1821. This scholars discovered 2 chambers, raised with blue faence juries, and the granite overleap, which had  already  been  void in antiquity. In the corner of a hallway they discovered what was left of a mummy with a heavy gilded skull and a couple of sandals, also gilded. These were took by von Minutoli, but then missing at sea.

Pierre Lacau and Cecil M.Firth began excavating  the complex in 1924.The first places  they  searched  were  two  mounds,  situated at the northeast corner  of  the  serious pyramid. They were greatly amazed to find 2 faades with fluted columns almost in the Greek Doric style. Firth at first considered he was excavating a Ptolemaic social organisation, but some New Kingdom hieratic composition on the walls of the entering corridors soon proved the building to date to the third Dynasty. It was in these inscriptions that the name (Zoser) was first got; contemporary texts good use the name Neterikhet, sometimes followed by the epithet golden sun.