Imhotep’s great creation, the Step Pyramid of Saqqara, sparked a frenzy of construction in Egypt, and a nation of farmers became a nation of builders. It is even possible that Imhotep went on to design a second step pyramid for Zoser’s successor, King Sekhem- Khet, whose pyramid was discovered in the 1950s (see Appendix II). After building several step pyramids, Egypt would go on to erect even greater monuments—and one of the strangest of these is the Medium Pyramid.

The pyramid at Medium sits isolated in the desert about fifty miles south of Saqqara. Rarely visited by tourists, it is a crucial step in Egypt’s march toward the Great Pyramid. As soon as you see the Medium Pyramid you know something went wrong. Looking more like a medieval fortress than a pyramid, it seems almost sinister. In the 1960s, Kurt Mendelssohn, an Oxford University physicist, theorized that the walls
of the pyramid collapsed during construction because the angle of the pyramid was too steep.13 He believed the mound of sand at its base hid the top of the pyramid that came crashing down. However, recent
excavations of the mound show that the collapse theory is wrong; the mound consists primarily of windblown sand.

Egyptologists now agree that the reason for the pyramid’s ruinous state was that local villagers used it as a quarry for stone, stripping it of its fine white limestone casing. But there’s still a mystery. The pyramid was never used for the pharaoh’s burial, and no one knows why. There is a temple next to the pyramid where priests would have made offerings for the dead king. On top of the temple are two stelae— round-topped stones that served as ancient Egypt’s bulletin boards. If you wanted something known, you carved it on a stela and put it where everyone could see it. The two stelae at the Medium Pyramid should have the king’s name and titles, but they are totally blank; they were never inscribed—a dead giveaway that the king never used the pyramid. The unfinished burial chamber inside the pyramid offers another clue that the pyramid was never used, but within it rests a milestone in the history of pyramid building.

The burial chamber inside the Medium Pyramid is the first above ground burial in Egypt, a radical break from the underground burial chamber concept of the Step Pyramid. The owner of the Medium Pyramid
was going to be buried in the pyramid, not under it. To be buried inside a pyramid, a major engineering problem had to be solved. If the burial chamber is inside the pyramid, then the ceiling of the chamber must support the hundreds of thousands of tons above it. Constructing a room inside a pyramid had never been tried before and the architect of the Medium Pyramid came up with an ingenious solution—a cor belled
ceiling. With a cor belled ceiling, the walls narrow as they get higher. As you build the wall out of stone blocks, each level is placed about six inches in from the one beneath it, so it overlaps and looks like an upside-down staircase. Thus, when you get to the top, the block spanning the walls and forming the ceiling is only a few inches wide. A block only a few inches wide is not going to crack under the weight above it, thus the problem of how to build an internal room is solved.

A 3300 year old tomb belonging to the mayor of Memphis, the capital of ancient Egypt has been rediscovered at Saqqara, just south of the Unas pyramid causeway.
Until it’s discovery earlier this year, the tomb had been lost since 1885, when treasure hunters first raided the tomb, removing wall panels and other items. Shortly after the Egyptian sands once again covered up the tomb, hiding it’s location for 125 years.
“Since then it was covered by sand and no one knew about it,” said Ola el-Aguizy, the Cairo University archaeology professor who led the excavation. “It is important because this tomb was the lost tomb.”
It seems difficult to imagine how such a large tomb, reported as being 70 meters long, can be ‘lost’. The desert has a hunger for tombs and can gobble up large necropolises in no time at all. In the last couple of years at Saqqara alone there have been many finds as teams of archaeologists work to remove the sand. Looking at just the pyramids, we saw the rediscovery of the pyramid of Menkauhor which Lepsius had discovered and documented in 1842 only to be lost in again under the sand. That was followed by the discovery of the pyramid of Sesheshet, then the discovery of the pyramid of Behenu. There is also the quest to find the lost pyramid of Userkare, which Lepsius may also have mapped but has since been lost under the sands.

With the tomb of Ptahmes though, there were clues scattered all over the world. Some of the artefacts that had been looted in the 19th century now reside in museums in the United States, the Netherlands, Italy, and even in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. These artefacts all contained information about the tomb, giving their own clues. Pillars that were removed from the tomb, for example are now kept in the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden.
The expedition’s spokeswoman Heba Mostapha on the damage caused by these early tomb raiders:
“Part of the destruction we found in the grave was because its pillars were used to build churches in the Christian period and it was looted in the 19th century in the period of Mohammed Ali Pasha,”
Even though the tomb was already looted in the 19th century, when the rediscovery was finally made by the team from Cairo University’s archaeology department they found a range of artefacts including several stelae, amulets including an eye of Horus, shabtis, fragments of statues of Ptahmes and his wife and/or daughter. Scenes of people fishing in boats made of bundles of papyrus reeds can be seen on the walls as well as offerings to deities and the deceased, and his family worshipping a trinity of gods, Amun, his wife Mut and their son Khonsu.
Though the tomb is very large at 70 meters in length with passages and rooms branching from it, the team have not yet found the mummy of the mayor himself. The search continues for the main burial chamber of the tomb where the team hope to find the body of Ptahmes and perhaps also the body his wife.

By the time of the early dynastic period of Egyptian history, those with sufficient means were buried in bench-like structures known as mastabas.

The first historically documented Egyptian pyramid is attributed to the architect Imhotep, who planned what Egyptologists believe to be a tomb for the pharaoh Djoser. Imhotep is credited with being the first to conceive the notion of stacking mastabas on top of each other — creating an edifice composed of a number of “steps” that decreased in size towards its apex. The result was the Step Pyramid of Djoser — which was designed to serve as a gigantic stairway by which the soul of the deceased pharaoh could ascend to the heavens. Such was the importance of Imhotep’s achievement that he was deified by later Egyptians.

The most prolific pyramid-building phase coincided with the greatest degree of absolutist pharaonic rule. It was during this time that the most famous pyramids, those near Giza, were built. Over time, as authority became less centralized, the ability and willingness to harness the resources required for construction on a massive scale decreased, and later pyramids were smaller, less well-built and often hastily constructed.

Long after the end of Egypt’s own pyramid-building period, a burst of pyramid-building occurred in what is present-day Sudan, after much of Egypt came under the rule of the Kings of Napata. While Napatan rule was brief and ceased in 661 BC, the Egyptian influence made an indelible impression, and during the later Sudanese Kingdom of Meroe (approximately in the period between 300 BC–300 AD) this flowered into a full-blown pyramid-building revival, which saw more than two hundred indigenous, but Egyptian-inspired royal pyramid-tombs constructed in the vicinity of the kingdom’s capital cities.

The shape of Egyptian pyramids is thought to represent the primordial mound from which the Egyptians believed the earth was created. The shape of a pyramids is thought to be representative of the descending rays of the sun, and most pyramids were faced with polished, highly reflective white limestone, in order to give them a brilliant appearance when viewed from a distance. Pyramids were often also named in ways that referred to solar luminescence. For example, the formal name of the Bent Pyramid at Dahshur The Southern Shining Pyramid, and that of Senwosret at el-Lahun was Senwosret is Shining.

While it is generally agreed that pyramids were burial monuments, there is continued disagreement on the particular theological principles that might have given rise to them. One theory is that they were designed as a type of “resurrection machine. ”

The Egyptians believed the dark area of the night sky around which the stars appear to revolve was the physical gateway into the heavens. One of the narrow shafts that extends from the main burial chamber through the entire body of the Great Pyramid points directly towards the center of this part of the sky. This suggests the pyramid may have been designed to serve as a means to magically launch the deceased pharaoh’s soul directly into the abode of the gods.

All Egyptian pyramids were built on the west bank of the Nile, which as the site of the setting sun was associated with the realm of the dead in Egyptian mythology

The Four Sons of Horus are most well known for their association with the mummification of the internal organs but there is more to these gods than containers of the dead king’s body parts. By focusing on the earliest records of the ancient Egyptian use of these four gods we’ll be letting the pyramids speak for themselves.
But first let’s look at the aspect for which the Four Sons of Horus are most well known.
Four Canopic Jars

For the corpse to be properly dried and free of moisture the organs needed to be removed and treated individually. The liver, lungs, intestines and stomach were dried with natron to prevent them from decaying inside the body. The heart was left in place and the brain removed and discarded.
The removed organs were individually embalmed and placed inside jars, then placed inside a funerary chest which was entombed with the body. Niches in the walls of burial chambers held the chest containing the organs and in Old Kingdom pyramids from the 6th Dynasty the canopic chest was buried in the floor of the chamber at the foot of the sarcophagus.
Each of the four organs had a god associated with them and the lids of the jars were sometimes shaped in the head of that particular organ’s god. These are known as the Four Sons of Horus.

One of the great treasures in Cairo’s Egyptian Museum is the funerary furniture and jewelry of Queen Hetepheres. Elegant furniture with beautiful gold bands of hieroglyphs are the main attraction, but there
are also spectacular silver bracelets inlaid with turquoise butterf lies, whose discovery came about under unique circumstances. Found in 1925, when Tutankhamen’s tomb was being excavated, Hetepheres’s tomb was another intact royal tomb with (hopefully) the same potential for treasures. Unlike Howard Carter’s discovery, which was the result of hard work and knowing what to look for, Hetepheres’s tomb was found by
pure luck. A photographer for the Harvard–Boston Museum team excavating at Giza was photographing the site when one of the legs of his tripod seemed to go through the bedrock on which it rested. Careful
examination revealed that the tripod leg had actually gone through ancient plaster that was covering a deep shaft. As the rubble filling the shaft was removed, it became clear that there would be a tomb at the
bottom. Thirty feet down, the excavators uncovered a sealed wall; behind it would hopefully be something rivaling Tutankhamen’s treasures.

When the wall was taken down, a small room was revealed with the remains of ancient furniture, an alabaster sarcophagus, and a few other objects. Not quite Tutankhamen, but still some wonderful things.
The inscriptions on the furniture showed that this was the burial site of Queen Hetepheres, the wife of Sneferu and the mother of Khufu, builder of the Great Pyramid. It seems as if Khufu wanted his mother buried close to him, so he had her tomb dug near the base of his Pyramid. The one piece that didn’t fit was the size of the tomb; it was rather modest for such an important queen. Then things became even more puzzling. Now all the excavators had to do was remove the lid of the alabaster sarcophagus in the tomb and they would become the first people in more than four thousand years to gaze on the face of Queen Hetepheres.

First the furniture had to be removed to create enough space to work on the sarcophagus. This was extremely difficult as the wood had deteriorated and everything had to be photographed and mapped in
place first so that if it crumbled to dust it could be recreated in modern materials. Finally the time to remove the sarcophagus lid arrived and an imposing group of officials was invited to the opening. One by one the august visitors were roped into an armchair and lowered into the tomb. The master of ceremonies was George Andrew Reisner, field director of the expedition. Reisner had asked the expedition’s artist, Joseph Lindon Smith, to be present. He later published an account of the surprising events of that day.

Reisner’s theory is highly speculative and was perhaps influenced by his addiction to mystery novels. He read hundreds and hundreds of them, which were later donated to Harvard’s Widener Library. Each
one has Reisner’s evaluation on the front endpaper. He graded them like students’ papers—many have B+ and the really bad got a C. No tomb for Hetepheres has ever been found at Dashur, so we really don’t
know if there was a robbery and reburial. It could be that like her husband, Sneferu, Hetepheres had a southern and northern burial and her second tomb containing her mummy is still to be found .