How it began
The Step Pyramid was built for Djoser, a king of Egypt's 3rd dynasty, at Saqqara, the necropolis overlooking the capital Memphis. The high royal official Imhotep was credited with the design and with the decision to use quarried stone. Britannica calls him the world's first named architect and dates the design to around the 26th century BCE. The tomb began as a mastaba, a flat-roofed rectangular tomb, and was gradually expanded into a pyramid of six stages of diminishing size.
Before it existed
The standard tomb of the earliest dynasties was the mastaba, with sides built at first of mud brick. Mud brick and wood were the usual materials for houses and palaces throughout Egyptian history. Britannica describes stone construction for royal buildings as emerging with little transition from these brick techniques, and the Step Pyramid as the oldest important stone building in Egypt.
How it works
The six tiers rose to about 200 feet (61 meters) and were originally covered in white limestone. Beneath lay galleries and some 400 rooms. The enclosure measured 544 by 277 meters and was surrounded by a paneled wall faced with fine limestone. Inside stood "mock" buildings, stone walls filled with rubble, gravel or sand. Masons used stone to reproduce older forms: columns in the entrance corridor resemble bundled reeds, and other columns have capitals shaped like papyrus blossoms.
What changed first
The complex required advanced quarrying, transport and stone working, and it set the pattern for royal tombs. The pyramid form matured under Snefru, who built three pyramids, and reached its largest scale in the Great Pyramid of his son Khufu at Giza, whose core is formed of huge limestone blocks.
What lasted
From the Old Kingdom onward, stone was generally used in Egypt for tombs and temples, which were regarded as eternal dwellings, while mud brick remained the domestic material. The reed and papyrus column forms first carved at Djoser's precinct continued in Egyptian temples for the rest of antiquity.
