We had another early start today, leaving at 7:30am for a 45 minute drive to Saqqara to see the pyramids there. Lots of things of note along the way. The most interesting of which was people riding camels on city streets. But there are also mules and horses pulling carts full of fruits and vegetables. The traffic still astounds me. I think we are on a three lane highway but I legitimately cannot tell, as the lane markings seem to be merely a suggestion. And I am again disturbed by the amount of trash piled up by the side of the streets.
On the way to Saqqara, our tour guide, Adham, gives us the history of how Egypt came to be a unified country, formed from various tribes of nomadic Bedouins who eventually settled along the banks of the Nile. He talks about the timeline for the three kingdoms of ancient Egypt, the Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, and the New Kingdom, and the ancient Old Kingdom capital of Memphis. During the New Kingdom the capital was Luxor. The Greco- Roman era began around 232 B. C. and lasted until about AD 280.
These pyramids were the necropolis for the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis. These are step pyramids, and are built this way to take full advantage of the sun. Initially Egyptians dug underground chambers called the mastafa out of the limestone bedrock for burying their dead. The pyramids were later devised as a tomb over the mastafa. The design of the step pyramid happened during the reign of King Djoser. This is an entire funeral complex with an intact entryway and courtyard.
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| The entrance into the Saqqara funeral complex |
The mythology of ancient Egypt is based on sun worship. The main god was Amun Ra. They believed strongly in the afterlife. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, therefore the people lived in the east bank of the Nile and when they died they crossed to the west. Saqqara is on the west, therefore it was significant to death and the afterlife. It contains 40 square kilometers of funeral temples, pyramids and tombs. There are 4 kilometers of tunnels underneath.
Initially Egyptians did not mummify dead bodies, but once they realized that as the body decomposed, the fingernails and hair would remain they started searching for ways to preserve their dead. They would cut into the body then use a saw to open and spread the chest. The kings, kidneys, intestines, and stomach were put in canopic jars. The heart was left inside because they would need it to determine where they would spend the afterlife. They then salted the corpse for preservation. They would fill the body with sand so it could keep its shape then sew it back closed. They would then extract the brain by injecting alcohol into the nostrils so that the brain would melt out through the nose.
Because these tombs are Old Kingdom, they contain no pyramid text. The non- royal tombs are decorated with scenes of daily life. It was a slippery and treacherous journey to get down into the tombs, there are no steps, only a ramp, and you are bent over the entire way down until at last you emerge into one of the chambers.
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