The Pharaoh Djoser
-Chrissie

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Thanks to our UFP Associate Producer Justin Oser for the topic suggestion.

            Djoser was a pharaoh in the Third Dynasty of Egypt and is known for being the first pharaoh to have a pyramid built to serve as his tomb.

            When Djoser became Pharaoh, sometimes around 2667 BCE, Egypt had not long been unified. About a century or so earlier, the separate kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt were united under one ruler, known to Egyptian Mythology as the Scorpion King. This unification was tenuous—a series of civil wars in the Second Dynasty, alongside a famine, had destabilized the country. Djoser, in an effort to renew faith in the Pharaoh and reinforce his power as such, held the Heb-Sed festival, in which the unification of Egypt was re-enacted and the idea of the Pharaoh as holding a position among the gods was emphasized. This festival was so important to him that he included depictions of it in his tomb and an area for it to be conducted by future pharaohs in his funerary complex. He also travelled up the Nile to the First Cataract, where he rebuilt the Temple of Khrum, thereby appeasing the god and ending the famine-causing draught. With his power renewed and the people fed, he could expand the kingdom. Military expeditions pushed the northern Egyptian border into the Sinai Peninsula and secured valuable resources of copper, turquoise, and other useful and precious materials.

            The Kingdom of Egypt thrived under Djoser’s rule. It takes a strong and stable state—both politically and financially—to conduct wars of conquest and to maintain control over newly-conquered territories. However, the biggest indicator of the prosperity of Djoser’s reign was his tomb: the Step Pyramid as Saqqara. The Pyramid and its complex were designed by Djoser’s vizier, Imhotep. Its basic design is that of a mastaba, a square and flat-roofed mud-brick structure commonly used for Egyptian tombs in the era. The pyramid is composed of six such structures, not in mud brick but in carved from limestone, each smaller than the previous, creating the stepped effect. Its complex includes two temples and several small chapels, all designed for worship and attendance of the pharaoh in death.

            When the site was excavated by French Egyptologist Jean-Philippe Lauer in 1926, few grave goods and no bodies were found; it was evidence it had been robbed centuries earlier. However, the structure of the burial chambers and storerooms was mostly undamaged, as was the artwork on the walls. With this information, Lauer was able reconstruct the layout and interpret the artwork. The excavation of Djoser’s pyramid was (somewhat) overshadowed by the excavations in the Valley of the Kings, which had produced the nearly untouched tomb of Tutankhamun just a few years previously. But, Djoser’s was the first Egyptian pyramid, even if it was overshadowed by its larger and prettier successors at Giza. The existence of the pyramid indicates that Djoser and Egypt had the means not only to hire, but also to house and feed, the hundreds of workers needed to build it. It also indicates a period of stability in Egypt, as those men were not needed elsewhere to farm or act as soldiers. Djoser’s reign marked the beginning of an era of stability and wealth for Egypt that would, with some interruptions, last centuries.