Pyramid Quest (4 page)

The typical mastaba superstructure sat at ground level and took the form of a mud brick rectangle that could range between 130 and 200 feet long and 50 to 80 feet wide. Partitions divided the interior into as many as 20 to 45 storerooms that held grave goods of less value than those that accompanied the dead underground. The sheer mass of stuff piled into these tombs can be stunning. For example, the Saqqara tomb known as 3035 was plundered in antiquity, yet its excavation by archaeologists still yielded 901 pottery vessels, 362 stone vessels, 493 arrows, 305 flint tools, 60 wooden tools, and 45 spindle whorls, as well as various pieces of ivory and textile fragments. Timber roofing protected the storerooms; then the builders added rubble infill and packing to bring the interior up to the height of the exterior walls, which stood about 25 feet tall.

The superstructure increased the mastaba’s security by putting more material between any would-be robbers and the buried grave goods. But also, and perhaps more important, it carried religious significance. The Egyptians believed that creation emerged from chaos in the form of a mound. The mastaba’s superstructure symbolized this primal mound, creating a center of regenerative power that transported the dead to rebirth in a new and better world.

According to Günter Dreyer, director of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo, the architectural tension between the solid tumulus cresting the mastaba’s superstructure and the wall surrounding it led eventually to the pyramid. If the outside wall was so high that it obscured the tumulus, the resurrection theme was likewise obscured. In a symbolic way of speaking, death triumphed. To resolve this tension between wall and mound in the direction of eternal life, tomb builders chose to raise the height of the mound and lay a new emphasis on the resurrection of the dead. When this idea triumphed fully—in the Third Dynasty, as we shall soon see—the pyramid came to be.

Two key elements of First Dynasty mastabas indicate the disparate sources that contributed to ancient Egyptian culture. The mastabas’ exterior took the form of stepped niches known as the paneled façade design, a technique that probably originated in the religious architecture of Mesopotamia from the protoliterate period. All four sides of some Saqqara tombs boast low brick benches decorated with clay bull’s heads festooned with real horns. This decoration is strongly reminiscent of the many bull’s heads found in the ancient city of Çatal Hüyük, which flourished in the seventh millennium B.C. in what is now Turkey. The appearance of bull’s heads in Egyptian mastabas is a strong reminder of the strong mixing of cultures and civilizations that characterized the ancient Middle East.

Curiously, much less is known about the Second Dynasty (2770-2649 B.C.) than the First. Only two royal tombs, those of Peribsen (Per Ibsen, c. 2700 B.C.) and Khasekhemwy (c. 2650 B.C.), have been identified at Abydos. Apparently, the unification of the First Dynasty had unraveled, and confusion, if not war, again descended upon Egypt. Two other kings may have been buried at Saqqara, but the remaining Second Dynasty tombs in that grave ground are apparently private, probably the tombs of highly placed officials. Tunnels reaching into rock replaced the excavated pits of the First Dynasty, mounds built of solid mud brick or mud brick over a rubble core served as superstructures, and the storerooms of earlier times disappeared.

What we think of as the Egyptian pyramid began with the second pharaoh of the Third Dynasty (2649-2575 B.C.), Djoser (c. 2630-2611 B.C., also commonly known as Zoser or Zozer). Egypt had again become united and peaceful. The Two Lands extended their power outward and became increasingly wealthy in gold, copper, and fine stone quarried in the Eastern Desert. Given peace and prosperity, the pharaoh could turn his attention from subjecting the rebellious under his rule to achieving immortality through great works.

Originally Djoser followed his ancestors’ ways by constructing a mastaba of sun-baked mud brick at Beit Khallaf, a little north of Abydos. Then Djoser moved his attention to Saqqara, where he began a new mastaba with an unusual design. It was basically a square, rather than rectangular like its predecessors. And Djoser built entirely with stone, in the end erecting a monumental building constructed entirely of this material.

In achieving this milestone of history, Djoser had help. It came from Imhotep (Imouthes in Greek), who was not only an architect but also a wise man and healer on such a scale that he became a figure of Egyptian mythology. After his death, Imhotep was made into a god, often identified with the Greek deity Asclepios, who is the patron of medicine and the bearer of the caduceus used as the emblem of the medical profession.

As Djoser and Imhotep explored the new possibilities stone offered as a principal building material, the structure—today known as the Step Pyramid—was something of a work in constant progress. The first draft of the structure was built with local rock faced with Tura limestone, a fine-grained, pure-white material quarried on the east side of the Nile. Unsure just how to work with stone, the builders kept the size of the blocks small. As they were apparently pleased with the results, a second casing of limestone some 13 feet thick was added, and then, through various extensions and additions, the mound was raised to four steps, each smaller than the one before and perched atop its predecessor like stacked blocks of decreasing size. More work later added two more steps and raised Djoser’s Step Pyramid to 204 feet in height.

As in Second Dynasty mastabas, the burial chamber of the Step Pyramid lay at the end of a shaft cut almost 90 feet down into the bedrock. The top of the shaft was reached by a sloping ramp that also connected by stairs to a series of underground galleries ornamented with bas relief sculptures and tiles glazed in blue. The burial chamber itself was walled in pink Aswan granite, and a hole was cut into one of the roof slabs to allow the body to be lowered into the tomb. A 3-ton granite block sat in a room above the burial chamber, apparently ready to plug the hole after the royal burial.

A mummy that is definitively Djoser’s has yet to be discovered. In the early nineteenth century, skull fragments were found in the burial chamber, and in the 1920s splinters of foot and arm bones, but it is far from certain whether these skeletal fragments are the mortal remains of the pharaoh. Interestingly, however, in deep 30-meter shafts on the eastern façade, some 40,000 stone vessels of all types have been discovered, some bearing the names of rulers of the First and Second dynasties. Why they were buried within the Step Pyramid is unclear. Was Djoser reverently reinterring materials that his predecessors had ransacked from earlier royal tombs? Or were these vessels simply materials that had accumulated over the decades and centuries in royal storerooms and temple warehouses, and were now put into service for the deceased pharaoh?

The Step Pyramid is more than just a pyramid. It is a single component of an immense complex measuring approximately 1,640 feet by 820 feet and originally enclosed by walls over 30 feet high. The complex contained open courts, tombs, terraces, altars, underground storerooms for grain and fruit, and various ritual buildings. Apparently, the complex replicated the original pharaonic palace and recreated in death the place where the great king ruled in life. One of the structures was the
serdab,
a room that contained a seated statue of Djoser and was completely sealed except for two peepholes. In the event that the mummy were destroyed, the statue served as a secure repository for the pharaoh’s spirit.

At least two similar stepped pyramid complexes were begun during Third Dynasty. The first, ascribed to Sekhemkhet (2611-2603 B.C.), Djoser’s successor, was to consist of seven steps, but it was never completed, probably owing to the pharaoh’s short reign. Yet another incomplete step pyramid was begun well up the Nile at Zawyet el Amwat, probably by Khaba (2603-2599 B.C.), another short-lived pharaoh. His successor, Huni (2599-2575 B.C.), the last pharaoh of the Third Dynasty, may have begun the pyramid at Meidum and, like his predecessors, left the project uncompleted. That task fell to his successor.

The transition from Huni to Sneferu (2575-2551 B.C.) was more than the usual passage of royal power from one king to another. Huni was the last pharaoh of not only the Third Dynasty but also of the Early Dynastic Period. Sneferu founded the Fourth Dynasty, which led off the Old Kingdom (2575-2134 B.C.)
^c
and embodied the classic era of Egyptian pyramid building. His role in the progress of Egyptian history was so important that he went on to become not only a typical divine pharaoh but also a minor member of the wider Egyptian assemblage of gods and goddesses.

From a purely monumental perspective, Meidum may offer evidence of the transition from Huni and the Third Dynasty to Sneferu and the Fourth Dynasty. Some Egyptologists suggest that Huni built what was originally intended to be a seven-stepped pyramid and encased the structure in limestone, then decided to add another step and yet another limestone casing to the now eight-stepped structure. Workers laid the masonry of the stepped layers in courses that sloped in toward the center of the pyramid, a characteristic Third Dynasty style. Then, according to this hypothesis, Sneferu took Huni’s pyramid over as his own and filled in the steps, creating the first smooth-sided, geometrically true pyramid of ancient Egypt. The shaped stones that effected this transformation were laid in horizontal courses, a Fourth Dynasty method of stone laying. Other Egyptologists, however, believe that the Meidum pyramid was actually begun by Sneferu himself and represents his first attempt at a pyramid.

The Meidum pyramid no longer stands as it originally did; much of the external structure has collapsed. Physicist and Egyptology enthusiast Kurt Mendelssohn argues that the collapse happened during construction, as the smooth-sided pyramid neared completion, and that it produced a terrible avalanche crushing all unlucky enough to be beneath it. There is important evidence, though, that the disaster occurred later, well after the pyramid was completed. The mortuary complex typical of a pyramid was completed at Meidum, an unlikely event if the pyramid had tumbled down during construction. It looks more probable that the pyramid was completed and used as a ritual center, with the collapse coming at some later date, perhaps because of an earthquake. Or possibly there was no wholesale collapse at all, and the pyramid weathered and eroded and was vandalized by later generations.

In undertaking a vigorous pyramid-building program, Sneferu was signaling his accession to power. He moved pyramid building onto the Fourth Dynasty’s center stage, making it the primary and definitive activity of that period of ancient Egyptian civilization. With Sneferu, pyramid building wasn’t simply a pious sideline for the monarchy to dabble in. It became the principal activity of each pharaoh’s reign and the central economic engine of Egyptian society.

Sneferu demonstrated this shift by the sheer volume of his pyramid building. He did much more than simply build or rehabilitate an older structure at Meidum. He also built two massive pyramids at Dahshur, a little less than 30 miles north of Meidum and closer to the Old Kingdom capital of Memphis.

The more northerly of the two is sometimes known as the North Pyramid; it is also called the Red Pyramid, for the color of the stonework that was revealed when the original limestone casing was stripped away. The Red Pyramid stands about 340 feet tall, and when it was built, it ranked as the tallest pyramid in Egypt. However, its sides have an angle of 43° 22’, which is much less vertical than the approximately 52° characteristic of the Great Pyramid at Giza. As a result, the Red Pyramid looks more squat than soaring.

Evidence suggests that the Red Pyramid was completed before Sneferu’s rebuilding of the pyramid at Meidum and may well have been intended as the pharaoh’s burial place. A north-side entryway leads down into the pyramid, then levels out at the structure’s bottommost level and opens into three corbelled chambers. The first two are nearly identical in size, while the third is larger and may have been intended to serve as the burial vault.

Sneferu’s original, and more interesting, effort at Dahshur is the Bent Pyramid, a name that conveys the building’s unusual shape. The lower portion rises at an angle of about 54° 28’. Then, a little beyond the halfway point, the angle changes to a 43° 22’ angle like that of the Red Pyramid. The overall shape looks something like a trapezoid with a triangle on top.

Various scholars have trotted out various explanations for the Bent Pyramid’s shape. One theory is that the builders were running out of time, money, or stone, and decided to economize. The lower-angled upper portion consumes less rock and construction time than if the steeper angle had been extended all the way to the pyramid’s uppermost course, and thus it shortened building time. However, this argument is unconvincing, in that Sneferu certainly had enough time and resources to build or rebuild both the Meidum pyramid and the North or Red Pyramid at Dahshur.

Then there is the safety argument. Mendelssohn, who holds that Meidum collapsed during construction, is of the opinion that the Bent Pyramid was already under construction and a little over half finished at the time of the disaster. Fearful, the builders altered the angle to prevent another such catastrophe.

Both the speed-and-economy and safety arguments overlook a key and unique fact about the Bent Pyramid: it contains two unconnected substructures, each reached by a separate entrance, and each clearly designed into the pyramid from the beginning of construction. The first entrance opens on the north side, the usual orientation for pyramid entries, then slopes down into the bedrock and ends in a corbelled chamber. The second entrance sits higher than the first and begins on the pyramid’s west side. It leads down into another corbelled chamber built entirely in the body of the pyramid and positioned higher than, but not directly over, the bedrock chamber. Neither of these chambers has revealed any evidence of a burial or a sarcophagus.