The Old Kingdom
The Old Kingdom spans Dynasties 4 through 8. That is a period of 495 years from 2625 to 2130 b.c.e. As leader of an increasingly wealthy country, the king commanded enormous power and riches. This was the age when the kings built the great pyramids that still stand in Egypt today. The king was also the chief priest. In this role, he controlled the Nile and the inundation, and made sure the sun rose every day. He was considered to be a god, and the rule of the god-king was absolute. He was the only person in Egypt who was expected to enjoy eternal life. Old Kingdom kings poured all of Egypt’s resources into making sure that their afterlives would be as luxurious and glorious as possible. For a few hundred years at the height of the Old Kingdom, all of Egypt’s wealth—stone, gold, and gems, every peasant’s labor, every artisan’s skill, the central government, and all the priests and religious people—was focused on a single goal: building royal tombs. Egyptians called their tombs “houses of a million years,” and around the royal tomb they built a city of the dead, where tombs were laid out like a well-planned town. Advances in architecture, astronomy, construction, stonework, sculpture, art, and hieroglyphic writing were all focused on designing, building, decorating, and maintaining the king’s tomb and vast necropolis.
Like Djoser, later kings also wanted pyramids. And now they had the wealth to build huge ones. They tried several designs. During his 40-year reign, Fourth Dynasty king Sneferu built at least two pyramids of different designs. Both were at Dahshur. Sneferu’s Bent Pyramid was an attempt to build a true, smooth-sided pyramid. The bottom part had a very wide base, and the plan was to make the pyramid quite tall. But during construction, it almost fell in on itself. So the builders had to reduce its height. To get a smaller pyramid on such a wide base, they had to change the angle of the walls. So halfway up, the walls dip in. Sneferu’s Red Pyramid is a smooth-sided structure, making it the first true pyramid. It is not as tall as the Great Pyramid and other famous pyramids in the Giza Plateau. Sneferu’s son, Khufu, was the biggest builder of all. He spent his entire 25-year reign getting ready for his afterlife. The Great Pyramid of Khufu, second king of the Fourth Dynasty, still holds many mysteries. Khufu took the art and science of pyramid building to heights it had never achieved before, and never would again. Khufu built his pyramid and necropolis at the edge of the desert. He chose a spot on the northwestern corner of the Giza Plateau, southwest of modern Cairo. No one had built there before. When the necropolis was fully developed, it stretched over four miles long. It included the Great Pyramid (surrounded by an eight-foot-high wall) and a huge.