Overview

It is one of the paradoxes of archaeological research in Saqqara, the central part of the largest royal necropolis in the world, where pharaohs and high officials of the royal court and ancient Memphis temples were buried for four thousand years, that for over more than one and a half centuries of intensive excavation works performed by missions from different countries at that cemetery of exceptional significance in the Egyptian history, no scholar showed any interest in the area which lay immediately to the west of the oldest pyramid, erected around 2650 BC for the pharaoh called Netjerykhet (later called Djoser in Egyptian sources), the so-called 'step pyramid'. Even some of the most eminent scholars involved in the study of Saqqara believed that it co-uid contain an ancient waste dump rather than a feature of any importance for history. However, the knowledge of the beliefs and funerary practices indicates that a necropolis of an exceptional prestige for the Memphite elites should have developed around the funerary centre which was a pioneering achievement of Imhotep, the architect and priest deified over millennia.

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