An outline, era by era

Old Kingdom

pyramids of Giza

Bronze Age · ~3300 – ~1200 BCE

The Old Kingdom is the name given to the period of Egyptian history from about 2686 to 2181 BCE, covering the Third to Sixth Dynasties. Its kings ruled a unified Egypt from the capital at Memphis, near the point where the Nile valley opens into the Delta. A centralised state, run by officials and scribes, gathered grain and labour from the whole country and put them to the service of the king.

It is best known as the age of the pyramids. King Djoser's Step Pyramid at Saqqara, designed by his official Imhotep, was among the first large stone buildings in the world. Under Sneferu and his son Khufu, builders moved from step forms to true pyramids, and Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza, with those of Khafre and Menkaure beside it, still stands. Around 2181 BCE royal power weakened, and Egypt entered the First Intermediate Period, when provincial governors held much of the real authority.

Things happened, and the rest is history

  1. Djoser's Step Pyramid at Saqqara

    Event

    What happened

    Around 2650 BCE, King Djoser of the Third Dynasty has a great funerary complex built at Saqqara, near the capital Memphis. At its centre is a six-stepped pyramid of cut limestone, raised in stages over an earlier flat-topped stone tomb, and surrounded by a walled court with chapels and ceremonial buildings. Earlier royal tombs had been built of mudbrick with stone used only in small parts. Inscriptions at the site link the official Imhotep to Djoser's reign.

    The rest is history

    The Step Pyramid is the earliest large stone building in Egypt and is usually counted among the first of its kind in the world. It shows that the state could gather quarrymen, masons and labour on a scale not seen before. Under the Fourth Dynasty, Sneferu's builders moved from stepped forms to true pyramids, at Meidum, Dahshur and elsewhere, after trial and error with the angle. This led to the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza, built about 2560 BCE, with those of Khafre and Menkaure beside it. Djoser's complex also set a model for royal tomb design that later kings followed or adapted.

    Sources

    1. BookLehner, Mark. The Complete Pyramids. London: Thames & Hudson, 1997.Covers the Step Pyramid and the development of the true pyramid.
    2. BookVerner, Miroslav. The Pyramids: The Mystery, Culture, and Science of Egypt's Great Monuments. New York: Grove Press, 2001.

  2. Sneferu's pyramids at Meidum and Dahshur

    Event

    What happened

    Around 2600 BCE, King Sneferu of the Fourth Dynasty builds more pyramids than any other Egyptian king. At Meidum he converts a stepped pyramid into a smooth-sided one by filling in the steps. At Dahshur his builders begin the Bent Pyramid, whose angle of slope is reduced partway up, and then raise the Red Pyramid, the first large pyramid with smooth sides at a constant low angle. Quarry marks and building inscriptions at these sites name Sneferu's reign.

    The rest is history

    The change of angle on the Bent Pyramid is often explained as a response to signs of instability in the structure, though scholars debate the exact reason. The Red Pyramid shows that Sneferu's builders had mastered the form of the true pyramid. His son Khufu built on this experience when he raised the Great Pyramid at Giza, about 2560 BCE, and Khafre and Menkaure added their pyramids beside it. Sneferu's reign thus links Djoser's stepped tomb to the Giza pyramids, which became the best-known monuments of the Old Kingdom.

    Sources

    1. BookLehner, Mark. The Complete Pyramids. London: Thames & Hudson, 1997.Describes the Meidum, Bent and Red Pyramids and their sequence.
    2. BookVerner, Miroslav. The Pyramids: The Mystery, Culture, and Science of Egypt's Great Monuments. New York: Grove Press, 2001.

  3. Slaves built the pyramids

    Popular belief

    The legend

    Vast gangs of slaves, driven by overseers with whips, drag the great blocks of stone across the desert to build the pyramids of Giza. The king is a cruel tyrant who works whole populations to death for his own tomb.

    The rest is history

    This picture owes much to Herodotus, who visited Egypt about two thousand years after Khufu and was told that 100,000 men laboured in shifts. Excavations since the 1990s at the workers' town below the Giza plateau, led by Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass, found bakeries, breweries, houses and cemeteries. The workers were buried in tombs beside the royal monuments, and their diet included plenty of beef and bread. Most scholars now think the builders were a skilled core crew supported by rotating labourers from across Egypt, working under a state obligation rather than as chattel slaves. A papyrus diary kept by an official named Merer, found at Wadi al-Jarf in 2013, records crews carrying limestone to Giza for Khufu's pyramid.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryHerodotus. Histories, Book 2, 124-125. Greek prose history, c. 430 BCE.
    2. BookLehner, Mark. The Complete Pyramids. London: Thames & Hudson, 1997.Survey of the pyramids, including the workers' settlement at Giza.
    3. BookTallet, Pierre. The Red Sea Scrolls: How Ancient Papyri Reveal the Secrets of the Pyramids. London: Thames & Hudson, 2022.The Merer papyri and their account of transporting stone for the Great Pyramid.

  4. Khufu the cruel king

    Folk tale

    The legend

    Khufu is a tyrant who closes the temples, forbids sacrifices and forces every Egyptian to labour for him. He is so wicked that he sends his own daughter to a brothel to raise money for his pyramid.

    The rest is history

    The story comes from Herodotus, who says Egyptian priests told it to him, and that they hated Khufu and Khafre. It is found in no Egyptian source of the Old Kingdom. A Middle Kingdom tale in the Westcar Papyrus shows Khufu as a stern but curious king who listens to his sons telling wonders, and later Egyptians honoured him with a cult. His reputation for harshness probably grew out of the sheer size of his monument. The only certain portrait of him is a tiny ivory figure, about 9 cm tall, found at Abydos in 1903.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryHerodotus. Histories, Book 2, 124-126. Greek prose history, c. 430 BCE.
    2. PrimaryPapyrus Westcar (Berlin Papyrus 3033). Egyptian tales of wonders at the court of Khufu, Hyksos period copy, c. 1600 BCE.
    3. BookLichtheim, Miriam. Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume 1: The Old and Middle Kingdoms. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.Translation of the Westcar tales.

  5. Imhotep, the sage who became a god

    Heroic tale

    The legend

    Imhotep serves King Djoser as vizier, priest and physician. He designs the first great stone tomb, and his wisdom and healing are so renowned that after his death he is worshipped as a god of medicine.

    The rest is history

    Imhotep was a real person. Djoser's statue base found at Saqqara carries his name and titles, including chief of sculptors and high priest of Heliopolis. The Step Pyramid complex, about 2650 BCE, is the earliest large building in cut stone, and it is a fair monument to his skill. His fame as a physician and sage is much later. He appears as a healing god in the Late Period, and the Greeks identified him with Asklepios. No medical text from his own lifetime is known to be his.

    Sources

    1. BookWildung, Dietrich. Egyptian Saints: Deification in Pharaonic Egypt. New York: New York University Press, 1977.Imhotep's later cult and the evidence for his life.
    2. BookVerner, Miroslav. The Pyramids: The Mystery, Culture, and Science of Egypt's Great Monuments. New York: Grove Press, 2001.

  6. Pyramids built by lost races or aliens

    Popular belief

    The legend

    The pyramids are too precise and too huge for ancient Egyptians. They must have been raised by visitors from space or by a vanished advanced civilisation such as Atlantis.

    The rest is history

    Such claims became popular in the twentieth century, notably through Erich von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods? (1968). They have no support in the evidence. Egyptian pyramids developed in stages, from mastabas to the Step Pyramid to the failed and corrected angles of Sneferu's Meidum and Bent Pyramids, which shows trial and error. Quarries, copper tools, ramps, boat harbours, and the workers' town and their tombs have all been found. The Merer papyri of about 2560 BCE even record the delivery of Tura limestone to Giza.

    Sources

    1. BookLehner, Mark. The Complete Pyramids. London: Thames & Hudson, 1997.
    2. BookVon Däniken, Erich. Chariots of the Gods? London: Souvenir Press, 1969.The best-known statement of the ancient astronauts claim.
    3. BookTallet, Pierre. The Red Sea Scrolls: How Ancient Papyri Reveal the Secrets of the Pyramids. London: Thames & Hudson, 2022.

  7. The Sphinx and the Dream Stele

    Origin story

    The legend

    A young prince hunts in the desert and falls asleep in the shade of the great Sphinx, buried to its neck in sand. The Sphinx speaks in a dream and promises him the throne if he clears the sand away. He does so and becomes king.

    The rest is history

    The story is told on the Dream Stele, a granite slab set between the Sphinx's paws by Thutmose IV in the New Kingdom, about 1400 BCE. It was a way of presenting his accession, since he may not have been the expected heir. The Sphinx itself is much older and was carved from a limestone outcrop in the Giza quarry, most likely under Khafre around 2500 BCE. It was probably meant to look like the king, and it was later worshipped as the god Horemakhet, Horus in the horizon. The stele still stands there today.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryDream Stele of Thutmose IV. Granite stele, Eighteenth Dynasty, c. 1400 BCE. Giza, between the paws of the Great Sphinx.
    2. BookHassan, Selim. The Sphinx: Its History in the Light of Recent Excavations. Cairo: Government Press, 1949.
    3. BookLehner, Mark. The Egyptian Heritage: Based on the Edgar Cayce Readings. Virginia Beach: A.R.E. Press, 1974.Included for contrast: Lehner later turned from such readings to field archaeology.

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