Saqqara
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Saqqara is a vast, ancient burial ground in Egypt, featuring the world's oldest standing step pyramid. It is located some 30 km south of modern-day Cairo and covers an area of around 7 km by 1.5 km.
While Memphis was the capital of Ancient Egypt, Saqqara served as its necropolis. Although it was eclipsed as the burial ground of royalty by Giza and, later, by the Valley of the Kings in Thebes, it remained an important complex for minor burials and cult ceremonies for more than 3,000 years, well into Ptolemaic and Roman times.
The most striking feature of the necropolis, however, dates from the Third Dynasty. Still visible today, is the Step Pyramid of the Pharaoh Djoser.
In addition to Djoser's, there are another dozen or so pyramids on the site, in various states of preservation or delapidation. That of the fifth-dynasty Pharaoh Unas, located just to the south of the step pyramid and on top of Hotepsekhemwi's tomb, houses the earliest known example of the Pyramid Texts – inscriptions with instructions for the afterlife used to decorate the interior of tombs, the precursor of the New Kingdom Book of the Dead.
While most of the mastabas date from the Old Kingdom, one major figure from the New Kingdom is also represented: Horemheb, the last pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty, who had a tomb built here for himself before he assumed the throne in his own right, while still serving as one of Tutankhamun's generals.
On the approach to the Serapeum stands the slightly incongruous arrangement of statues known the Philosophers' Circle: a Ptolemaic recognition of the greatest poets and thinkers of their Greek ancestors, originally situated in a nearby temple. Represented here are Hesiod, Homer, Pindar, Plato, and others.
Pictures of Saqqara:
- Pictures of Saqqara (https://classroomclipart.com/clipart/Countries_and_Cities/Egypt/Sakkara.htm)