277 meters wide, in which are the remnants of several stone edifices built to supply the desires 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 (also 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. The Step Pyramid was an actual ladder, by which the soul of a dead ruler might climb to the sky, where he would join the gods in immortality. No one knows the true logic and reasoning behind the Ancient Egyptians traditional form of burial and means for an afterlife. Some archaeologists speculate that it derived from an Old Kingdom belief that a work of art, or symbolic building, had the power in the afterlife in direct proportion to its futility in the real world. In this perspective, it was believed that each false door, and dummy temple worked precisely in the afterlife because it could not function in reality. 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 returning 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, which were called the Imperishables because they never set. Many believe that the building of Djoser's complex pyramid, 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 BC 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 outstanding monuments required precise architectu...
