Step Pyramids

Saqqara, Egypt

From Saqqara Pyramid Complex

We got up too late to do this yesterday, so it fell on Gwen's last day in Egypt to see the first Egyptian pyramid, the Step Pyramid at Saqqara. At first, the pharaoh had only built a mastaba like all the other nobles, but then he decided it should be grander, so he built three progressively smaller mastabas on top of that. That wasn't grand enough, so he enlarged those and added 3 more mastabas on top of that.

From Saqqara you can see other pyramids built later, but before the Great Pyramids at Giza. We're talking thousands of years of tradition here, culminating in the work of Cheops, his son and his grandson, and then never repeated after that. Tombs in the Valley of the Kings were supposed to be more secure, being less conspicuous. In point of fact, not actually true, but they tried their hardest to hide their treasures up there in Luxor!