March 16, 2015 • 27 mins
The pyramids at Giza are iconic Egyptian landmarks, but they weren't the first to appear. Djoser and his vizier Imhotep are credited with starting the pyramid trend.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Steph you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Polly Crying and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Uh, and
we're going to do a little bit of ancient history today.
So almost instantly when someone mentions Egypt, uh, the image
(00:24):
of the pyramids at Giza sort of jumped to mind.
But Giza is not the only site in Egype pyramids exist,
and frankly, it was not the first place in Egypt
pyramids existed. Northwest of the city of Memphis sits the
Sakara Necropolis, and that has a an older claim to
this particular piece of history than the Giza site by
about a hundred years. So we are going to talk
(00:46):
a little bit today about Uh king yaw sir. That
is one version of the pronunciation. His name is spelled
d j O s e Er, and you will hear
it pronounced in a number of different ways. Um us
working with basically a dead language here, we have consulted
many different sources and we have gotten many different variations
(01:07):
on this name, from jos Er to desert too. You know,
I mean, you can almost pick your pronunciation. And someone
out there in some field of expertise on it has
used it. I think we're gonna go with you, Aser,
so as often as the case with ancient history. UH.
(01:27):
Similarly to we we don't have a consensus on how
to say his name. We don't have a total consistent
consensus on the biography of Yasser. Um you will, by
the way, I also see the spelling with a Z sometimes. Yeah. That,
as we say, often the further you go back, the
less consistent the information gets. And this is definitely the
(01:47):
case at this point. So keep that in mind as
we go forward. We'll try to point out the point
the parts that are really inconsistent. UH. Yasser was a
king in Ancient Egypt's third dynasty in the century BC
s so during the period that was known as sort
of the Old Kingdom. His parents were probably because of
Kimwa and Queen Tap, although that is also not entirely certain.
(02:11):
At this point. It is so long ago that I went.
I rarely feel the need to double check anything that
you've handed me, but I went, twenty seventh century b C.
Let me make sure that's right. For what it's worth.
I did that to myself several times where I went,
Did I put those numbers in wrong? It's totally right.
So the line of succession that led to Yaser's reign
(02:34):
isn't clear. There's a lot of dispute as to the
timeline of basically all of the Third Dynasty pharaohs, and
so far there's not nearly enough solid evidence to clarify
things with certainty. There's also the problem of different sources
being inconsistent with one another. So we have sources that
are sort of the official established sources we use for
(02:55):
for the uh the line of succession back that far
it they don't agree with each other. Yeah, And just
I want to do a quick signbar on the word
pharaoh's uh. I don't use it so much in this
outline because that's not a word that was actually being used.
I think it started to be used somewhere around the
um I want to say, the eighteenth dynasty. Don't quote
(03:16):
me on that. I'm going from memory. So if you're like,
why are they saying king all the time and not pharaoh,
that's kind of why. I just out of respect for
sort of that historical divide. But it is possible going
back to Yasser's ascension to the throne, that he took
the throne after Nebka, and that Nebka was in fact
his brother. However, uh now because identity and his position
(03:40):
in the chronology of ancient Egypt also remains sources of debate. However,
there is also another pharaoh, Snacht, who may have preceded Josser.
Just the muddle things further, there's also the possibility that
those two men were the same person. There are historians
say they were the same person and the historians that
say they're too different. People supporting the idea that the
(04:02):
two of them were the same person is a source
that shows his horace name or his ruler name, which
was sacked and that was followed by a name which
is partially obscured but ends the same way as Nepka.
So to give a little bit more context for that
and the quick word on names in each in Egypt, uh,
(04:25):
names were considered to be incredibly important during this time.
It was routine for a person to have and used
multiple names as various situations warranted. If you've had any
Egyptian mythology, uh, Sometimes to know a person's true name
is to have power over them. So that's one of
the reasons that names would shift a little bit, uh.
But Horace names were some of the earliest king names
(04:47):
and they were always written as part of a surrect,
which was sort of a formal rectangular framed representation um,
almost like a seal. And the idea was that this
naming convention likened the ru learn to Horace, and it
put him forth as a physical representation of that god,
and so he kind of had a godlike position that
(05:09):
entitled him to rule. So today's focus. Yasser, for example,
had the Horace name of Nigerikit. I've also consulted people
and heard it pronounced nijerik it. Very subtle but different, uh,
and that means divine of body. This is why in
the case of the Nebka and snached situation, they could
(05:30):
potentially both be naming the same person. So back to
the timeline. The Turin king list is a papyrus that
has been dated to the time of Ramsey's the second
and he reigned from twelve seventy nine to twelve their
team BC, which is during the Middle Kingdom. This place
is Navka at the beginning of the Third dynasty, with
Yaser being his successor, and another piece of evidence that
(05:56):
supports that lineage is the Abject King list. This is
also called the Abdios table, and it's carved on the
walls with the Temple of ct the first and it
lists seventy six rulers of ancient Egypt. And these three
rows of thirty eight cartouches each, so the bottom row
is kind of a repeat row with the top two
rows featured the names of kings, and it echoes the
(06:17):
turn king list in that it features Nebka first and
then Yasser. Also a pharaoh list, and it's from the
Rama Side period, and that's the period of rule that
included eleven different kings named Ramsey's in the nineteen and
twenty dynasties. This table, uh, it's different from the other two.
It names Yaser as the first pharaoh of the Third dynasty,
(06:39):
following his possible father Kasa Kumu. And there are other
various pieces of evidence and examples. These are just three
so we could kind of give you the flavor of like.
This doesn't always match up. According to the Turin king list.
For example, Yasser's reign went on for nineteen years, though
other sources suggest it may have been longer, and that
(07:01):
the ways of marking the years are not necessarily the
same from source to source. Uh. He does appear to
have extended Egypt's borders south to Oswan, and it's actually
in Oswan that the first evidence that linked the name
Yasser to the king's horace name Najarakehet was discovered. An
inscription that was found in Oswan on the island of Hell,
(07:21):
claims that the swath of land south of Oswan was
granted to the priests of the god Canoem of Elephantine
by the ruler, that ruler being Yasser, and it uses
Yasser's name in both ways, both his horace name and
the name Yasser. And it claims that the land grant
was in exchange for the priest's god ending a seven
year drought in Egypt. And this carving is a forgery.
(07:44):
Uh it is legally bunk in terms of property rights.
This is basically someone claiming that they had authority from
the king when they did not. However, uh it does
establish this historical connection between the two monikers. Regardless of
exactly how things went In terms of the timeline and
the succession of the kings, the Astor's reign does mark
(08:07):
the beginning of a period of great peace and economic
growth for Egypt. The country's resources were organized on a
really grand scale, allowing for massive projects that employed lots
of skilled laborers. Architecture became a cultural and governmental focus.
So it should be no surprise, UH that under you
Astar's leadership, major advancements were made in the area of
(08:31):
stone architecture. And this is really why he remains the
most prominent figure of the Third Dynasty and even the
Old Kingdom. He's kind of one of the most famous
of the old Old Kings of Egypt because he is
credited with the building of Egypt's first pyramid. And before
we dig into how that project came to be and
what it is, we're gonna have a quick word from
(08:51):
a sponsor. So one of the main shifts of the
Third dynasty from the Second dynasty was this move to
Memphis as a royal burial spot. This is in part
due to the fact that this was also the place
where Egypt's first known pyramid emerged UH prior to the
reign of Yasser. Though the Sakara site, which sits about
(09:13):
fifteen miles or twenty four kilometers to the southwest of Cairo,
and it's part of the Memphis Necropolis was already a
burial ground. The oldest burials in the Sakara Cemetery sit
on the north side of the site and they date
back to the earliest times of Egypt's history, although those
are not tombs of kings but of other high ranking
(09:34):
government officials. The earliest tombs are really pits that are
carved into the hard stone of the bedrock and then
covered up with other stone, and the intimate design UH
that became favorable or popular eventually evolved into what are
called mustabas. These were long, flat buildings with slightly sloped sides.
(09:57):
Mustabas had burial chambers that were dug der ground beneath them,
as well as a number of rooms that could be
entered by the living to pay respects for the dead,
and the first two dynasties of Egypt buried their kings
in mastabas. South of the oldest tombs is where the
Yasser Pyramid was built, and you'll also see it named
as the step pyramid in some sources. I think that's
(10:18):
what I remember it being called UH when it came
up in the sort of the that Egyptian pyramid overview
of school Initially, his final earthly resting place was planned
as a mastaba, in line with what earlier leaders have
been doing, but Yasser's vizier in Potep is credited with
(10:41):
the shift and design that actually wound up creating the
first pyramid. So basically, at some point in the process,
uh Emma Tip and Yasser decided that they should build
a smaller mastaba on top of the first one, and
then why not do another and a few more So
event truly, uh it looked similar to a Mesopotamian zigaratte,
(11:05):
like the mastabas that were traditional up until Yaser's rule.
There's a series of underground tunnels and shafts beneath the
base of the pyramid, and trying to sus out their
initial design had a number of challenges because, as is
so often the case, looters at some point had dug
their own tunnels to get to them, and a huge
shift in construction techniques also took place in the building
(11:27):
of Yaser's tomb. So this project marks the introduction of
true stone architecture into their record, and im Hotep is
basically credited as its inventor. So prior to this point,
most mastabas were made with a combination of primarily mud
bricks and some stone. Uh, combining the durability of an
all stone construction with the pre existing aesthetic taste. I
(11:50):
sort of love this. Uh. It's like they didn't want
to jar people's perception of it too much by making
it look completely different, even though they were using different materials.
So the rock was actually carved pretty artfully to look
like materials that were commonly used prior to that time,
So it had a softer look where they would carve
reed and wood grain and softer material tones into it,
(12:14):
so it would still have that same aesthetic transition. So
while we tend to think of pyramids as like singular
entities that are self contained within themselves, they're really more
a part of a greater grouping of buildings, their temples
and similar other structures that are part of them also,
and Yasir's step pyramid was what set this trend. Yeah.
(12:38):
By the time Yasser died in about b c E.
The pyramid that im Hotep had been building for him
was two d and four ft high, which about sixty
two It had six step layers stacked atop one another,
and this complex to give a sense of what Tracy
was talking about when saying this is not a singular
(12:59):
building had swelled to the size of a large town.
It took up about forty acres. If you do hecktears,
that's about sixteen and it included multiple supporting buildings to
serve as temples in other places of worship. A thirty
foot high, so a ten meter wall surrounds this vast complex.
(13:20):
And this wall actually is fascinating, and that it has
fourteen doors, but only one of them is a real door.
The others are presumably aesthetic. The chamber where the ruler
was buried was made of pink granite and abutted by
beautifully tiled rooms depicting the king in various rituals and ceremonies. Yeah,
(13:41):
and one of them he is apparently running a race.
And I don't know why I love that, but I do.
I think I know why. Yes, uh. And of course,
as Tracey mentioned earlier, Yasir's burial complex, like so many
in Egypt, was eventually looted at some point. The only
remaining evidence that we believed to be of the ruler
(14:02):
himself is his left foot, which was found in a tunnel.
It's mummified of course, and also found in the underground
passages UH was the body of a small child, a
mummified child estimated to be about eight years old, and
that was in an alabaster coffin uh. There were also
numerous stone bases, some with names of previous rulers etched
into them. There's also a life sized statue of the
(14:27):
ruler that was recovered in the complex during a British
exploration of the site and the early half of the
twentieth century. That statue, which was found in a limestone
cellar near the pyramid, is in the Egyptian Museum in
Cairo now and it's the oldest known life size sculpture
from the Egyptian culture. It's believed that this sculpture may
(14:48):
have been used in he Said festivals, so offerings can
be made to it. So the king's jubilee, which is
what the heb said was also called, celebrated his reign
when he was alive. This also offered him the opportunity
to reaffirm his ability to rule, sort of, that he
was still this uh fit and vigorous person that could
absolutely handle the job. And then after death, these this
(15:14):
statue presumably was still made offerings, and the idea at
that point was that the spirit of the king would
partake of the offerings in you know, a spiritual other
worldly sense, and then at the end of the day,
the attending priests to the king, to the deceased king,
would enjoy these offerings in the physical sense. The south
(15:34):
tomb of the complex, which is separate from the pyramid,
is where the king's removed pero restored. His mummy was
placed into the pyramid to the north, and one theory
about this dual placement, which was being laid to rest
in a southern and a northern tomb, was symbolic and
that it was representative of the lands of Upper and
Lower Egypt. M Hotep, who as we said, was the
(15:57):
grand architect of the tomb, had started it was a commoner,
but then had obviously risen to a very trusted position
within the government and with Yasser himself. But architecture was
not his only talent. He was also an astronomer. He
was ascribed he was a doctor. Long after his death
he was named the patron of scribes, and then even
(16:17):
later in Egypt's late period, he was deified as a
god at Memphis and a priesthood grew in service of
him there, focusing on the belief that he served as
a bridge between the gods and the healing of humans.
And we actually there's a kind of interesting side note
in that we are not sure of im Hotep's final
(16:37):
resting place. His mummy has never been located. It is
believed that he is somewhere in uh Sakara in most
likely Yasser's pyramid complex UH and there have been various excavations,
some of which think that they might have found where
im Hotep was laid to rest in. Others are not
(16:59):
sure that we found it yet. But that's sort of
an ongoing thing. We'll talk about it a little more
in the next section about sort of the precarious nature
of you know, ancient sites like this and how losing
them we're going to lose the potential to discover some
of these the answers to some of these questions that
we have. So MP's final resting place still the jury
is still out, and that's still being investigated with various
(17:21):
leads UH in various stages of development. Right what we
do know is that for two thousand years after the
death of Yassir m Hoteps design styles would be emulated, copied,
and revised. They just appear all over the tombs for
Egypt's royalty. Yeah, eventually it evolved into that smooth look
(17:42):
that we see on like the pyramids at Giza. Uh.
But he really set the standard and started that whole
architectural upheaval. And we're going to talk about kind of
what's going on in the modern day and some restoration
efforts around this step pyramid. But before we do, let's
have a word from a sponsor to return to the
world of pyramids. Because the water table has risen, there's
(18:04):
wind that just routinely sweeps through the Egyptian desert, and
there was also an earthquake that measured five point nine
on the Richter scale. In along with you know, the
ordinary passage of time, the Alser Pyramids started to show
really serious where and the Egyptian government started to explore
ways to help preserve the important historical treasure. The pyramid
(18:26):
has been closed to the public and historical experts for
decades because it's so delicate and dangerous. At this point, Yeah,
there are definitely some things falling. Uh. However, since that
earthquakes sort of put in painful focus the fact that
something needed to be done if they were gonna really
(18:47):
preserve this historic site. And there have been multiple restoration
efforts mounted to save the Ausser Pyramid, but this project
has constantly been plagued by issues um The a In structure,
as we said, has been in a really precarious state
for decades uh and multiple teams have been trying to
figure out ways that they can preserve it, and occasionally
(19:08):
engineering teams have been given access to gather information about
the status of the structure, but for the most part
there is still a lot of guessing. Every team that
has gone in has sort of found surprises that they
did not anticipate. In twenty eleven, a UNESCO report stated
that the updates to the structure didn't quote absorb any
load and that they weren't actually helping with the structural stability.
(19:32):
And at one point a Welsh engineering firm called Sintech
was called in and they specialize in anchor systems for
restoration and reinforcement of historical buildings. For example, they worked
on the restoration of Windsor Castle after a fire damage
the structure and some of the art there. During the
unrest in Egypt starting in twenty eleven, the project was
(19:54):
also plagued by looting and financial issues and all of
the work was briefly suspended. Once in Tech got back
to work, they launched this plan to buttress the structure
by using a massive balloon to support it from within,
because it was really quite dangerous for men to be
in there. Uh. And then they were able to implant
(20:14):
some anchors to give the step pyramid a little bit
of support that it hadn't had previously. A company called
Sharbondi is the most recent group contracted to manage the
reconstruction of the pyramid, and the competency of the company
has unfortunately been called into question. An advocacy group claims
that that they've never restored a historical and archaeological site
(20:37):
and thus it's just not the right group for the job.
They've also been claims the company was already other under
investigation for other jobs that weren't properly handled, and I
feel compelled to say we don't know the veracity of
those claims. There have been a lot of a lot
of accusations leveled and that is still being investigated. Uh.
(20:59):
And in more, concerns about Sharbagi were raised the work
being done on the Pyramids facade, which you can see
there are pictures of it, and will post some of
them on Pinterest. UH look too many people, to be
far too modern and really quite out of step with
the rest of the historic site. The texture and the
(21:21):
color of the new materials do not really match the
rest of the pyramid. The new sections are much smoother
and much lighter in color than the surrounding facade. And
there's concern that UH one, this is uh adding more
to the structure than is normally allowed in the sort
(21:41):
of restoration guidelines. I think it's something like five new
material can be added, and this seems like much more
than that. And there's also concern that adding the things
that they are adding are actually doing some interior damage
to the structure and once again putting too much load
on it. In September, the UNESCO World Herited Censer contacted
Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities. Concerns about the restoration led them
(22:06):
to ask if recommendations that UNESCO issued in twleven had
been followed, and UNESCO also requested a detailed report of
the project's status. Mahmoud Al the Mahdi, who is Egypt's
Antiquities Minister and has been since June. Has defended the
work of this group. Michael Gobriel Farid I maybe just
(22:26):
pronouncing that, who is executive director of the project, has
told the press that in fact the pyramid is being
restored to its original look and that things are progressing
exactly as they should. There haven't been a lot of
updates in the last several months. Uh, at the fall
of was not that long ago compared to when we
are recording this, so we don't at this point. No,
(22:49):
the fate of what the world's oldest pyramid is going
to be. Yeah, it's actually uh the oldest standing stone building.
According to some accounts, it's the oldest that we know of,
and we we don't know. So I imagine this is
one of those things where we're going to get lots
of updates in the coming years, which will be interesting
and hopefully it will be good news because if we
(23:09):
lose this sighte we lose some history that we're still
trying to uncover and understand. Uh. So that's the scoop
on the first Pyramid and King Yassir, who you may
have heard about to some degree at some point in school.
I don't think I ever got much on him because
he was new to me when I reached adulthood, so
(23:30):
there's always something new. Or I had friends that said, oh,
I kind of heard his name in relation in the
first pyramid and that was about it. So hopefully more
in depth info than you had before. And now I
also have some listener mail. This one is from our
listener Caroline, and she wrote us a really fun letter
about Hetty Green, and she says, Dear Holly and Tracy,
(23:53):
part of my job as an attorney is to conduct
legal research on a wide range of topics. Imagine my
surprise when researching the issue of domicile the state and
individual resides in for purposes of establishing diversity of citizenship
under federal law, when I came across a case involving
former podcast topic Hetty Green in the case of State
of Texas versus State of Florida three oh six US nine.
(24:17):
After Hetty's son, Edward HR. Green died, the states of Texas, Florida,
New York, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts fought among themselves
over which state Ned was domiciled in at the time
of his death. Although he died in New York. Neda
owned property and had tangible personal property in Texas, New York, Florida,
and Massachusetts when he died. The reason for this massive
(24:38):
legal battle was that each state had a rival claim
for the death taxes upon his estate of approximately forty
four million, three forty eight thousand, five hundred dollars, which
he had inherited from his mother. The case was heard
by the U. S. Supreme Court in nineteen thirty nine,
which found ned was domiciled in Massachusetts at the time
of his death. Had each of the four states been
able to claim of state taxes, is the entire forty
(25:02):
four million plus would not have been sufficient to cover
the tax bill. Hetty would like to have taken any
steps to avoid paying taxes while she was alive, but
having the entire estate taken in this way, Hetty's probably
rolling over in her grave. Knowing background of this case
made the morning research and case law analysis much more enjoyable.
That is so cool. I never would have stumbled across
(25:22):
those levels of detail and probably would have struggled to
comprehend because I will confess that when I read legal things,
I get a little glassy eyed. So thanks for breaking
that down for us, Caroline and kind of explaining it
and also just bringing it to our attention. So if
you would like to write to us about legal things
or otherwise, you can do so at History Podcast at
(25:42):
housetof works dot com. You can also connect with us
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you can do so at missed in History dot spreadshirt
(26:04):
dot com. If you would like to research a little
bit more about what we talked about today, you can
go to our parents site, how stuff works. Take the
word pyramid into the search bar and you will get
how pyramids work. Uh, it does mention this pyramid. Uh
search pyramid for a bit. And if you would like
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(26:26):
got an archive of all of our episodes. UH a
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on this and thousands of other topics. It how stuff
(26:47):
works dot com.
Welcome to Steph you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Polly Crying and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Uh, and
we're going to do a little bit of ancient history today.
So almost instantly when someone mentions Egypt, uh, the image
(00:24):
of the pyramids at Giza sort of jumped to mind.
But Giza is not the only site in Egype pyramids exist,
and frankly, it was not the first place in Egypt
pyramids existed. Northwest of the city of Memphis sits the
Sakara Necropolis, and that has a an older claim to
this particular piece of history than the Giza site by
about a hundred years. So we are going to talk
(00:46):
a little bit today about Uh king yaw sir. That
is one version of the pronunciation. His name is spelled
d j O s e Er, and you will hear
it pronounced in a number of different ways. Um us
working with basically a dead language here, we have consulted
many different sources and we have gotten many different variations
(01:07):
on this name, from jos Er to desert too. You know,
I mean, you can almost pick your pronunciation. And someone
out there in some field of expertise on it has
used it. I think we're gonna go with you, Aser,
so as often as the case with ancient history. UH.
(01:27):
Similarly to we we don't have a consensus on how
to say his name. We don't have a total consistent
consensus on the biography of Yasser. Um you will, by
the way, I also see the spelling with a Z sometimes. Yeah. That,
as we say, often the further you go back, the
less consistent the information gets. And this is definitely the
(01:47):
case at this point. So keep that in mind as
we go forward. We'll try to point out the point
the parts that are really inconsistent. UH. Yasser was a
king in Ancient Egypt's third dynasty in the century BC
s so during the period that was known as sort
of the Old Kingdom. His parents were probably because of
Kimwa and Queen Tap, although that is also not entirely certain.
(02:11):
At this point. It is so long ago that I went.
I rarely feel the need to double check anything that
you've handed me, but I went, twenty seventh century b C.
Let me make sure that's right. For what it's worth.
I did that to myself several times where I went,
Did I put those numbers in wrong? It's totally right.
So the line of succession that led to Yaser's reign
(02:34):
isn't clear. There's a lot of dispute as to the
timeline of basically all of the Third Dynasty pharaohs, and
so far there's not nearly enough solid evidence to clarify
things with certainty. There's also the problem of different sources
being inconsistent with one another. So we have sources that
are sort of the official established sources we use for
(02:55):
for the uh the line of succession back that far
it they don't agree with each other. Yeah, And just
I want to do a quick signbar on the word
pharaoh's uh. I don't use it so much in this
outline because that's not a word that was actually being used.
I think it started to be used somewhere around the
um I want to say, the eighteenth dynasty. Don't quote
(03:16):
me on that. I'm going from memory. So if you're like,
why are they saying king all the time and not pharaoh,
that's kind of why. I just out of respect for
sort of that historical divide. But it is possible going
back to Yasser's ascension to the throne, that he took
the throne after Nebka, and that Nebka was in fact
his brother. However, uh now because identity and his position
(03:40):
in the chronology of ancient Egypt also remains sources of debate. However,
there is also another pharaoh, Snacht, who may have preceded Josser.
Just the muddle things further, there's also the possibility that
those two men were the same person. There are historians
say they were the same person and the historians that
say they're too different. People supporting the idea that the
(04:02):
two of them were the same person is a source
that shows his horace name or his ruler name, which
was sacked and that was followed by a name which
is partially obscured but ends the same way as Nepka.
So to give a little bit more context for that
and the quick word on names in each in Egypt, uh,
(04:25):
names were considered to be incredibly important during this time.
It was routine for a person to have and used
multiple names as various situations warranted. If you've had any
Egyptian mythology, uh, Sometimes to know a person's true name
is to have power over them. So that's one of
the reasons that names would shift a little bit, uh.
But Horace names were some of the earliest king names
(04:47):
and they were always written as part of a surrect,
which was sort of a formal rectangular framed representation um,
almost like a seal. And the idea was that this
naming convention likened the ru learn to Horace, and it
put him forth as a physical representation of that god,
and so he kind of had a godlike position that
(05:09):
entitled him to rule. So today's focus. Yasser, for example,
had the Horace name of Nigerikit. I've also consulted people
and heard it pronounced nijerik it. Very subtle but different, uh,
and that means divine of body. This is why in
the case of the Nebka and snached situation, they could
(05:30):
potentially both be naming the same person. So back to
the timeline. The Turin king list is a papyrus that
has been dated to the time of Ramsey's the second
and he reigned from twelve seventy nine to twelve their
team BC, which is during the Middle Kingdom. This place
is Navka at the beginning of the Third dynasty, with
Yaser being his successor, and another piece of evidence that
(05:56):
supports that lineage is the Abject King list. This is
also called the Abdios table, and it's carved on the
walls with the Temple of ct the first and it
lists seventy six rulers of ancient Egypt. And these three
rows of thirty eight cartouches each, so the bottom row
is kind of a repeat row with the top two
rows featured the names of kings, and it echoes the
(06:17):
turn king list in that it features Nebka first and
then Yasser. Also a pharaoh list, and it's from the
Rama Side period, and that's the period of rule that
included eleven different kings named Ramsey's in the nineteen and
twenty dynasties. This table, uh, it's different from the other two.
It names Yaser as the first pharaoh of the Third dynasty,
(06:39):
following his possible father Kasa Kumu. And there are other
various pieces of evidence and examples. These are just three
so we could kind of give you the flavor of like.
This doesn't always match up. According to the Turin king list.
For example, Yasser's reign went on for nineteen years, though
other sources suggest it may have been longer, and that
(07:01):
the ways of marking the years are not necessarily the
same from source to source. Uh. He does appear to
have extended Egypt's borders south to Oswan, and it's actually
in Oswan that the first evidence that linked the name
Yasser to the king's horace name Najarakehet was discovered. An
inscription that was found in Oswan on the island of Hell,
(07:21):
claims that the swath of land south of Oswan was
granted to the priests of the god Canoem of Elephantine
by the ruler, that ruler being Yasser, and it uses
Yasser's name in both ways, both his horace name and
the name Yasser. And it claims that the land grant
was in exchange for the priest's god ending a seven
year drought in Egypt. And this carving is a forgery.
(07:44):
Uh it is legally bunk in terms of property rights.
This is basically someone claiming that they had authority from
the king when they did not. However, uh it does
establish this historical connection between the two monikers. Regardless of
exactly how things went In terms of the timeline and
the succession of the kings, the Astor's reign does mark
(08:07):
the beginning of a period of great peace and economic
growth for Egypt. The country's resources were organized on a
really grand scale, allowing for massive projects that employed lots
of skilled laborers. Architecture became a cultural and governmental focus.
So it should be no surprise, UH that under you
Astar's leadership, major advancements were made in the area of
(08:31):
stone architecture. And this is really why he remains the
most prominent figure of the Third Dynasty and even the
Old Kingdom. He's kind of one of the most famous
of the old Old Kings of Egypt because he is
credited with the building of Egypt's first pyramid. And before
we dig into how that project came to be and
what it is, we're gonna have a quick word from
(08:51):
a sponsor. So one of the main shifts of the
Third dynasty from the Second dynasty was this move to
Memphis as a royal burial spot. This is in part
due to the fact that this was also the place
where Egypt's first known pyramid emerged UH prior to the
reign of Yasser. Though the Sakara site, which sits about
(09:13):
fifteen miles or twenty four kilometers to the southwest of Cairo,
and it's part of the Memphis Necropolis was already a
burial ground. The oldest burials in the Sakara Cemetery sit
on the north side of the site and they date
back to the earliest times of Egypt's history, although those
are not tombs of kings but of other high ranking
(09:34):
government officials. The earliest tombs are really pits that are
carved into the hard stone of the bedrock and then
covered up with other stone, and the intimate design UH
that became favorable or popular eventually evolved into what are
called mustabas. These were long, flat buildings with slightly sloped sides.
(09:57):
Mustabas had burial chambers that were dug der ground beneath them,
as well as a number of rooms that could be
entered by the living to pay respects for the dead,
and the first two dynasties of Egypt buried their kings
in mastabas. South of the oldest tombs is where the
Yasser Pyramid was built, and you'll also see it named
as the step pyramid in some sources. I think that's
(10:18):
what I remember it being called UH when it came
up in the sort of the that Egyptian pyramid overview
of school Initially, his final earthly resting place was planned
as a mastaba, in line with what earlier leaders have
been doing, but Yasser's vizier in Potep is credited with
(10:41):
the shift and design that actually wound up creating the
first pyramid. So basically, at some point in the process,
uh Emma Tip and Yasser decided that they should build
a smaller mastaba on top of the first one, and
then why not do another and a few more So
event truly, uh it looked similar to a Mesopotamian zigaratte,
(11:05):
like the mastabas that were traditional up until Yaser's rule.
There's a series of underground tunnels and shafts beneath the
base of the pyramid, and trying to sus out their
initial design had a number of challenges because, as is
so often the case, looters at some point had dug
their own tunnels to get to them, and a huge
shift in construction techniques also took place in the building
(11:27):
of Yaser's tomb. So this project marks the introduction of
true stone architecture into their record, and im Hotep is
basically credited as its inventor. So prior to this point,
most mastabas were made with a combination of primarily mud
bricks and some stone. Uh, combining the durability of an
all stone construction with the pre existing aesthetic taste. I
(11:50):
sort of love this. Uh. It's like they didn't want
to jar people's perception of it too much by making
it look completely different, even though they were using different materials.
So the rock was actually carved pretty artfully to look
like materials that were commonly used prior to that time,
So it had a softer look where they would carve
reed and wood grain and softer material tones into it,
(12:14):
so it would still have that same aesthetic transition. So
while we tend to think of pyramids as like singular
entities that are self contained within themselves, they're really more
a part of a greater grouping of buildings, their temples
and similar other structures that are part of them also,
and Yasir's step pyramid was what set this trend. Yeah.
(12:38):
By the time Yasser died in about b c E.
The pyramid that im Hotep had been building for him
was two d and four ft high, which about sixty
two It had six step layers stacked atop one another,
and this complex to give a sense of what Tracy
was talking about when saying this is not a singular
(12:59):
building had swelled to the size of a large town.
It took up about forty acres. If you do hecktears,
that's about sixteen and it included multiple supporting buildings to
serve as temples in other places of worship. A thirty
foot high, so a ten meter wall surrounds this vast complex.
(13:20):
And this wall actually is fascinating, and that it has
fourteen doors, but only one of them is a real door.
The others are presumably aesthetic. The chamber where the ruler
was buried was made of pink granite and abutted by
beautifully tiled rooms depicting the king in various rituals and ceremonies. Yeah,
(13:41):
and one of them he is apparently running a race.
And I don't know why I love that, but I do.
I think I know why. Yes, uh. And of course,
as Tracey mentioned earlier, Yasir's burial complex, like so many
in Egypt, was eventually looted at some point. The only
remaining evidence that we believed to be of the ruler
(14:02):
himself is his left foot, which was found in a tunnel.
It's mummified of course, and also found in the underground
passages UH was the body of a small child, a
mummified child estimated to be about eight years old, and
that was in an alabaster coffin uh. There were also
numerous stone bases, some with names of previous rulers etched
into them. There's also a life sized statue of the
(14:27):
ruler that was recovered in the complex during a British
exploration of the site and the early half of the
twentieth century. That statue, which was found in a limestone
cellar near the pyramid, is in the Egyptian Museum in
Cairo now and it's the oldest known life size sculpture
from the Egyptian culture. It's believed that this sculpture may
(14:48):
have been used in he Said festivals, so offerings can
be made to it. So the king's jubilee, which is
what the heb said was also called, celebrated his reign
when he was alive. This also offered him the opportunity
to reaffirm his ability to rule, sort of, that he
was still this uh fit and vigorous person that could
absolutely handle the job. And then after death, these this
(15:14):
statue presumably was still made offerings, and the idea at
that point was that the spirit of the king would
partake of the offerings in you know, a spiritual other
worldly sense, and then at the end of the day,
the attending priests to the king, to the deceased king,
would enjoy these offerings in the physical sense. The south
(15:34):
tomb of the complex, which is separate from the pyramid,
is where the king's removed pero restored. His mummy was
placed into the pyramid to the north, and one theory
about this dual placement, which was being laid to rest
in a southern and a northern tomb, was symbolic and
that it was representative of the lands of Upper and
Lower Egypt. M Hotep, who as we said, was the
(15:57):
grand architect of the tomb, had started it was a commoner,
but then had obviously risen to a very trusted position
within the government and with Yasser himself. But architecture was
not his only talent. He was also an astronomer. He
was ascribed he was a doctor. Long after his death
he was named the patron of scribes, and then even
(16:17):
later in Egypt's late period, he was deified as a
god at Memphis and a priesthood grew in service of
him there, focusing on the belief that he served as
a bridge between the gods and the healing of humans.
And we actually there's a kind of interesting side note
in that we are not sure of im Hotep's final
(16:37):
resting place. His mummy has never been located. It is
believed that he is somewhere in uh Sakara in most
likely Yasser's pyramid complex UH and there have been various excavations,
some of which think that they might have found where
im Hotep was laid to rest in. Others are not
(16:59):
sure that we found it yet. But that's sort of
an ongoing thing. We'll talk about it a little more
in the next section about sort of the precarious nature
of you know, ancient sites like this and how losing
them we're going to lose the potential to discover some
of these the answers to some of these questions that
we have. So MP's final resting place still the jury
is still out, and that's still being investigated with various
(17:21):
leads UH in various stages of development. Right what we
do know is that for two thousand years after the
death of Yassir m Hoteps design styles would be emulated, copied,
and revised. They just appear all over the tombs for
Egypt's royalty. Yeah, eventually it evolved into that smooth look
(17:42):
that we see on like the pyramids at Giza. Uh.
But he really set the standard and started that whole
architectural upheaval. And we're going to talk about kind of
what's going on in the modern day and some restoration
efforts around this step pyramid. But before we do, let's
have a word from a sponsor to return to the
world of pyramids. Because the water table has risen, there's
(18:04):
wind that just routinely sweeps through the Egyptian desert, and
there was also an earthquake that measured five point nine
on the Richter scale. In along with you know, the
ordinary passage of time, the Alser Pyramids started to show
really serious where and the Egyptian government started to explore
ways to help preserve the important historical treasure. The pyramid
(18:26):
has been closed to the public and historical experts for
decades because it's so delicate and dangerous. At this point, Yeah,
there are definitely some things falling. Uh. However, since that
earthquakes sort of put in painful focus the fact that
something needed to be done if they were gonna really
(18:47):
preserve this historic site. And there have been multiple restoration
efforts mounted to save the Ausser Pyramid, but this project
has constantly been plagued by issues um The a In structure,
as we said, has been in a really precarious state
for decades uh and multiple teams have been trying to
figure out ways that they can preserve it, and occasionally
(19:08):
engineering teams have been given access to gather information about
the status of the structure, but for the most part
there is still a lot of guessing. Every team that
has gone in has sort of found surprises that they
did not anticipate. In twenty eleven, a UNESCO report stated
that the updates to the structure didn't quote absorb any
load and that they weren't actually helping with the structural stability.
(19:32):
And at one point a Welsh engineering firm called Sintech
was called in and they specialize in anchor systems for
restoration and reinforcement of historical buildings. For example, they worked
on the restoration of Windsor Castle after a fire damage
the structure and some of the art there. During the
unrest in Egypt starting in twenty eleven, the project was
(19:54):
also plagued by looting and financial issues and all of
the work was briefly suspended. Once in Tech got back
to work, they launched this plan to buttress the structure
by using a massive balloon to support it from within,
because it was really quite dangerous for men to be
in there. Uh. And then they were able to implant
(20:14):
some anchors to give the step pyramid a little bit
of support that it hadn't had previously. A company called
Sharbondi is the most recent group contracted to manage the
reconstruction of the pyramid, and the competency of the company
has unfortunately been called into question. An advocacy group claims
that that they've never restored a historical and archaeological site
(20:37):
and thus it's just not the right group for the job.
They've also been claims the company was already other under
investigation for other jobs that weren't properly handled, and I
feel compelled to say we don't know the veracity of
those claims. There have been a lot of a lot
of accusations leveled and that is still being investigated. Uh.
(20:59):
And in more, concerns about Sharbagi were raised the work
being done on the Pyramids facade, which you can see
there are pictures of it, and will post some of
them on Pinterest. UH look too many people, to be
far too modern and really quite out of step with
the rest of the historic site. The texture and the
(21:21):
color of the new materials do not really match the
rest of the pyramid. The new sections are much smoother
and much lighter in color than the surrounding facade. And
there's concern that UH one, this is uh adding more
to the structure than is normally allowed in the sort
(21:41):
of restoration guidelines. I think it's something like five new
material can be added, and this seems like much more
than that. And there's also concern that adding the things
that they are adding are actually doing some interior damage
to the structure and once again putting too much load
on it. In September, the UNESCO World Herited Censer contacted
Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities. Concerns about the restoration led them
(22:06):
to ask if recommendations that UNESCO issued in twleven had
been followed, and UNESCO also requested a detailed report of
the project's status. Mahmoud Al the Mahdi, who is Egypt's
Antiquities Minister and has been since June. Has defended the
work of this group. Michael Gobriel Farid I maybe just
(22:26):
pronouncing that, who is executive director of the project, has
told the press that in fact the pyramid is being
restored to its original look and that things are progressing
exactly as they should. There haven't been a lot of
updates in the last several months. Uh, at the fall
of was not that long ago compared to when we
are recording this, so we don't at this point. No,
(22:49):
the fate of what the world's oldest pyramid is going
to be. Yeah, it's actually uh the oldest standing stone building.
According to some accounts, it's the oldest that we know of,
and we we don't know. So I imagine this is
one of those things where we're going to get lots
of updates in the coming years, which will be interesting
and hopefully it will be good news because if we
(23:09):
lose this sighte we lose some history that we're still
trying to uncover and understand. Uh. So that's the scoop
on the first Pyramid and King Yassir, who you may
have heard about to some degree at some point in school.
I don't think I ever got much on him because
he was new to me when I reached adulthood, so
(23:30):
there's always something new. Or I had friends that said, oh,
I kind of heard his name in relation in the
first pyramid and that was about it. So hopefully more
in depth info than you had before. And now I
also have some listener mail. This one is from our
listener Caroline, and she wrote us a really fun letter
about Hetty Green, and she says, Dear Holly and Tracy,
(23:53):
part of my job as an attorney is to conduct
legal research on a wide range of topics. Imagine my
surprise when researching the issue of domicile the state and
individual resides in for purposes of establishing diversity of citizenship
under federal law, when I came across a case involving
former podcast topic Hetty Green in the case of State
of Texas versus State of Florida three oh six US nine.
(24:17):
After Hetty's son, Edward HR. Green died, the states of Texas, Florida,
New York, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts fought among themselves
over which state Ned was domiciled in at the time
of his death. Although he died in New York. Neda
owned property and had tangible personal property in Texas, New York, Florida,
and Massachusetts when he died. The reason for this massive
(24:38):
legal battle was that each state had a rival claim
for the death taxes upon his estate of approximately forty
four million, three forty eight thousand, five hundred dollars, which
he had inherited from his mother. The case was heard
by the U. S. Supreme Court in nineteen thirty nine,
which found ned was domiciled in Massachusetts at the time
of his death. Had each of the four states been
able to claim of state taxes, is the entire forty
(25:02):
four million plus would not have been sufficient to cover
the tax bill. Hetty would like to have taken any
steps to avoid paying taxes while she was alive, but
having the entire estate taken in this way, Hetty's probably
rolling over in her grave. Knowing background of this case
made the morning research and case law analysis much more enjoyable.
That is so cool. I never would have stumbled across
(25:22):
those levels of detail and probably would have struggled to
comprehend because I will confess that when I read legal things,
I get a little glassy eyed. So thanks for breaking
that down for us, Caroline and kind of explaining it
and also just bringing it to our attention. So if
you would like to write to us about legal things
or otherwise, you can do so at History Podcast at
(25:42):
housetof works dot com. You can also connect with us
at Facebook dot com, slash mist in history, on Twitter
at Miston History at Miston History dot tumbler dot com,
on pinterest dot com slash missed in history. And if
you want to visit our spreadshirt store to buy shirts
or bags, or phone cases or any number of other goodies,
you can do so at missed in History dot spreadshirt
(26:04):
dot com. If you would like to research a little
bit more about what we talked about today, you can
go to our parents site, how stuff works. Take the
word pyramid into the search bar and you will get
how pyramids work. Uh, it does mention this pyramid. Uh
search pyramid for a bit. And if you would like
to visit us, you can do so at missed in
history dot com. And we've got show notes there, We've
(26:26):
got an archive of all of our episodes. UH a
few other little goodies here and there, And if you
would like to research almost anything your heart desires, you
can do that again at our parents site, how stuff Works,
or visit us and Mr history dot com for more
on this and thousands of other topics. It how stuff
(26:47):
works dot com.
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Tracy Wilson
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