Around 2700 BC, the most important event in Egyptological history took place, the birth of an ancient Egyptian Leonardo da Vinci, a modern mind in an ancient body. His name was Imhotep. He was a physician, an astronomer, a priest, and all in all a polymath, all rolled into one. He served under King Zoser who founded Egypt's most charming dynasty, the third dynasty. Yes, this dynasty was a charm. It was with Zoser that the true dynastic destiny of Egypt started. Now, kinship and kingship are intertwined. We've a powerful family turning Egypt into its own household business. A business designed to endure for eternity. Was it not Zoser's worry about leading an afterlife in neglect that had him elect an architect of great intellect, Imhotep? Legend had it that Imhotep was the son of the God Ptah, the most celebrated deity of creation and creativity, who filled Imhotep with a passionate love of learning.
Like father, like son. Imhotep's ingenious inventions laid down the foundations of Egyptology. But for Imhotep, not much would have survived for a future digger to figure. Without the brainchildren of Imhotep, most of our Egyptian records would have perished. But with Imhotep, the best architect in the land, you set Egyptology in motion. Never in the field of human architecture was so much owed by so many to a single genius architect.
By building in stone, Imhotep was creating a perfectly petrified imperishable record of Egyptian architecture, freezing time in stone. Since Imhotep earned his reputation by imitation of the original into stone, it was he who allowed stone to set the tone. In sounding the sands, we discovered that Imhotep was founding an astounding edifice that defies and deifies time, an abode beyond the boundary of death in Saqqara.
In Saqqara survive the archives of kings and queens, noblemen and women in the city of the dead that Imhotep caused to live forever. There, you can gaze at gates of glory and façades of fame, doors to adore and an entrance to entrance turned into stone. There are temples lapidated and others lapidified from the core niche to the corniche. Stone baskets you find, as well as a venetian blind and a line of cobras caressing the coruscating sun. In the eureka architecture of Imhotep, time failed to erase the enticing trace of the roots of Egyptian architecture. Egypt never knew an era eradicating the typical Imhotepical architecture. That is how we learned about the inspirational sources of Egyptian structures. The habit of copying the habitat was uninhibited among the inhabitants of the Nile Valley. Imhotep transformed the palm logs that formed the ceilings of Egyptian houses, into stone. It was that palm log that granted Imhotep a log into history and gave us a passport to the past. That fossil forest of stone architecture, a symphony in stone, was the ultimate guarantor that secured for Imhotep a unique place in the library of eternity.
by Ahmed Seddik
www.AhmedSeddik.com