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.

Mazghuna

Remains of the southern pyramid of Mazghuna

Mazghuna is  a  locate  south  of  Dahshur associated with the last rules of the 12th Dynasty. The pyramidal works of Akhenaten (1799-1787 B.C.E.) and Queen Sobekneferu (1787-1783 B.C.E.) were discovered at that place. They were brother and sister, and they established to renovate their dynastic claims and halt the disintegration of Egypt and the first of the Second Intermediate Period, to no help. The Hyksos and other established details were already ready in the  Delta, and  the nome  tribes were establishing their own claims to domain and power. The pyramidal tombs of these rules are in ruins.

Imhotep Museum

Model of the Step Pyramid in Imhotep Museum

Imhotep Museum at Saqqara, founded in 2006, is a place museum intentional to house artifacts from local diggings. It serves to set visitors for their inspect to the necropolis of Saqqara, which includes  the Step Pyramid of King Djoser, the Serapeum, the pyramids of Teti and King Unas, and elite tombs from all epochs of ancient Egyptian history. The museum is discovered after Imhotep, the Old Kingdom official credited with design the Step Pyramid; later deified, he became honorable as a wise man and a patron of medicine