Architecture 150 Quiz 2 Notes 6 Egypt Architecture of the Old Kingdom After the unification of the Lower and Upper Egypt in the third millennium bce the Old Kingdom was established in the north around a capital in Memphis The Old Kingdom and its authoritarian power gave rise to the grand monuments of the pyramids that were associated with the death of a pharaoh The geography of the Nile and its predictable pattern of flooding also provided an unchanging architectural tradition in Egypt This lecture looks at the tradition of double burials in Egypt and the burial structure of the mastaba the Djoser burial complex in Saqqara a Step pyramid from the third dynasty in Meidum the Bent pyramid of Dahshur and finally the Great Pyramids at Giza Additional Notes Egyptian history begins with the unification of the lower and upper Egypt Upper Egypt is in the South and lower Egypt is in the North and is derived from the Nile s topography from South to the North Lasted roughly 1000 years Dynasties 1 8 Gave rise to the pyramids of Giza and the Saqqara Middle Kingdom had political instability and chaos New authorities and dominate rise of priesthood New Kingdom Territorial conquest and also a time of political turmoil Reforms against pharaohs and then monotheism began in Egypt which was only short lived Each year at the same time the Nile would flood leaving a rich soil deposit along the Nile Nile protected Egypt from outsiders and was a source of food for people Djoser House of the North had engaged columns columns that are part of the wall Djoser House of the Wall that was built as the same type of temple structure Ancient Egyptians had no iron tools and pulleys and no wheels Egyptians cut holes in stone faces and inserted wedges into holes and soaked wooded wedges to expand and then hit them with hammers Serdab is the pyramid Terms axis axial casing stone Great Pyramids are covered by limestone casing stones that form a smooth outer surface When the pyramid was almost finished casing blocks of white limestone were laid on top of the main pyramid blocks Each casing block was then trimmed so that the outer surface of the pyramid would be smooth and white Casing block from the Great Pyramid causeway The causeway was a long walkway that joined the valley temple and the mortuary temple Although most of Khufu s causeway is now gone some of the blocks that made up the causeway can still be seen today The causeway would have had walls decorated with painted reliefs and perhaps a ceiling with painted stars Passage as part of the burial practice connected the mortuary chapel to the valley temple by the river Body arrived by boat at valley temple and then sent to the mortuary temple for mourning and then sent underground at pyramid to be buried double burial The symbolic burial and the actual body was buried at another site The upper Egypt at Abydos The lower Egypt at Saqqara dummy temple Buildings that were used as only facades and the insides were filled with ruble and had no interior rooms mastaba The earliest tombs were built as eternal houses for the departed and were in all likelihood based on the design of the dwellings of the living The mastaba was located in upper Egypt at Abydos and was a lot simpler than the King Burial at Saqqara in Lower Egypt mortuary temple Mortuary temples or funerary temples were temples that were erected adjacent to or in the vicinity of royal tombs in Ancient Egypt The temples were designed to commemorate the reign of the Pharaoh under whom they were constructed as well as for use by the king s cult after death serdab A serdab literally meaning cold water which became a loanword in Arabic for cellar is an ancient Egyptian tomb structure that served as a chamber for the Ka statue of a deceased individual The soul of the King was Ka and the Ba could come and go between Earth and heaven Serdab was a chamber that has the statue of the king King Djoser and the chapel is right next to the Serdab sphinx A man headed lion 187 feet long and 66 feet high carved in situ out of a natural rock ledge The face of a sphinx statue was that of a pharaoh or a god The Egyptians built sphinx statues to guard important areas such as tombs and temples stela A stela is an upright monument containing information in the form of texts images or a combination of the two Stelae have been used to commemorate people or events to delineate physical spaces or as objects through which to access the dead or divine step pyramid A step pyramid or stepped pyramid is an architectural structure that uses flat platforms or steps receding from the ground up to achieve a completed shape similar to a geometric pyramid Step pyramids are structures which characterized several cultures throughout history in several locations throughout the world tomb A tomb is a place in which you are buried when you die The ancient Egyptians believed that life did not stop when you died What you did when you died was move away to another place a place they called the afterlife After the time of the Old Kingdom pyramids fell out of style valley temple The valley temple built on the edge of the desert escarpment was the place of reception for the royal body The most striking valley temple is that of Khafre a structure of massive granite blocks with huge alabaster flooring slabs starkly simple but immensely impressive Buildings and Sites Djoser Complex Saqqara Egypt ca 2630 BCE King Djoser built the Djoser Complex in Saqqara Egypt which is in lower Egypt The architect Imhotep introduced two innovations that influenced the rest of Egyptian architecture history Substituted limestone for the mud brick in royal buildings and he invented the pyramid with six stages of Mastaba Put six different layers of Mastaba and that creaded this step pyramid of Djoser The Djoser Complex is also known as the Pyramid of Djoser or Step Pyramid Djoser is known for its innovative tomb which dominates the Sawwara landscape Two stones in the plan that marked the course of this ritual race in the Heb Sed Festival A secondary tomb to bury the innards of the King the heart liver etc in separate jars the body is buried underneath the pyramid in the middle of the complex Step Pyramid Meidum Egypt ca 2610 BCE Moving to the South in Meidum Built during the reign of King Snefru This was Egypt s first true or straight sided pyramid Some believed pyramid collapsed during construction process and others believe that the monument was completed as a true pyramid and