meters long and 277 meters wide, in which are the remnants of several .
stone edifices built to supply the wants of the king in the here .
after. Towering limestone columns were shaped to mimic the sway and .
droop of leafy plants. Immovable doors hung on great carved hinges. .
Facades called false doors through which the pharaoh's ka, or vital .
force, was presumed to pass, lay recessed within walls. The interiors .
of dummy temples were packed with rubble. Everything about the place .
bespoke illusion. The Step Pyramid was a ladder. Not a symbol of a .
ladder but an actual one, by which the soul of a dead ruler might .
climb to the sky, joining the gods in immortality.
No one knows why the Egyptians created this fantastic scene, .
but some archaeologists speculate that there was an Old Kingdom belief .
that a work of art, a building, had power and utility in the afterlife .
in direct proportion to its uselessness in the real world. In this .
view, each false door, each dummy temple worked in the afterlife .
precisely because it could not function in this one. .
On the north side of the pyramid is a small stone cubicle, .
with a pair of tiny holes in its facade. When you look through these .
holes, you see two eyes retuning your stare, the blank gaze of a life .
size statue of Djoser sitting on the throne. The holes are there for .
the pharaoh to look out perhaps at the stars in the northern sky .
called the Imperishables because they never set.
Many believe that the building of Djoser's pyramid complex, .
which was accomplished by hundreds of workers from across the land, .
served to join those provinces into the world's first nation-state. .
During the Old Kingdom, which began around 2700 B.C. and lasted some .
550 years, each pharaoh after Djoser marshaled a vast portion of his .
country's manpower and wealth to build his own tomb and ensure his .
immortality.
To build such outezding monuments required a preciseness of .
