Summary
Highlights
The West Bank of the River Nile is home to the iconic pyramids of Giza, which once housed the bodies of the pharaohs. However, despite a civilization lasting nearly 3,000 years, pharaohs only built such vast tombs for a few centuries. Egyptologists like Chris Norton are still trying to understand why this tradition of constructing giant pyramids ceased, finding it incredible given their majesty.
Ten miles south of Giza lies Saqqara, considered the birthplace of pyramid building, not Giza as commonly thought. Chris Norton visits this site to find clues regarding why the Egyptians built giant pyramids for less than 500 years.
Constructed a century before the Giza pyramids, Egypt's first pyramid in Saqqara is a 200-foot-tall mausoleum with six limestone platforms, expertly engineered to spread weight. Deep inside is a 26-foot-wide, 82-foot-deep shaft, the intended final resting place of Pharaoh Djoser. This massive structure was designed to house the king's body and ensure his memory for the living, crucial for success in the afterlife.
Completed around 2650 BC, Djoser's pyramid sparked an architectural revolution, being the world's first monumental structure built in stone. Over the next century, kings along the Nile's West Bank further developed the concept, leading to structures like the Red Pyramid (the first geometrically true pyramid), the Bent Pyramid, and eventually, the iconic pyramids of Giza. However, only a few centuries after the Great Pyramid of Khufu, a new era was beginning.