Djoser
Djoser built the first monumental stone building in the world. He ruled Egypt around 2670 BC as the founder or second king of the Third Dynasty, and reigned for perhaps nineteen or thirty years — the sources disagree, and his own name appears in contemporary inscriptions as Netjerikhet, with Djoser attached to him only much later. His reign belongs to the beginning of the Old Kingdom, a period of consolidation after the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, and he appears to have campaigned in Sinai for turquoise and copper. His monument is the Step Pyramid at Saqqara. Egyptian royal tombs had been mastabas — flat-roofed rectangular structures of mud brick. Djoser's architect Imhotep built one in stone and then enlarged it repeatedly, adding successively smaller mastabas on top until the structure rose in six steps to about sixty metres, the tallest building then made. The whole complex covers some fifteen hectares within an enclosure wall over a kilometre long, containing courtyards, chapels and colonnades, with stone carved to imitate the bundled reeds, timber and matting of the buildings it replaced — the material was new and the vocabulary was not. Imhotep is named on a statue base of Djoser's, which is exceptional for an architect, and he was later deified as a god of medicine and wisdom. The Famine Stela, carved some two thousand years later, attributes to Djoser a seven-year famine ended by his restoration of a temple, and is a Ptolemaic-era claim rather than a record. His mummified foot was found in the burial chamber.
- Lived: 2800 BCE – 2648 BCE
- Nationality: Egyptian
- Roles: pharaoh, builder
