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Anyone who has been fortunate enough to visit the great pyramids dominating the Giza plateau may also have travelled a little further south to Saqqara to admire the 4,650-year-old Step Pyramid of King Djoser. Djoser’s imposing 60-metre-high pyramid rises above an enormous mortuary and festival complex surrounded by a wall 10.8 metres high containing fourteen doors; thirteen of these are false and meant for the use of the dead, while the one in the south-east corner is real and meant for the living. Built of Tura limestone, the wall is designed to represent the mud brick construction of earlier times, and the whole is surrounded by a rectangular trench 750 metres long and 40 metres wide. Djoser’s tomb, which was the first to have been entirely built of stone, started off with a square ‘mastaba’ tomb being dug underground and rising above ground to a height of 60 metres with a vertical shaft leading to it; this tomb was conventional for the time except that it was square instead of rectangular. Later, it was enlarged all round by ten feet and then again when an extension was added at the eastern side to make it the conventional rectangle. Yet again it was enlarged and a two-tiered structure was made. To this two-step structure was later added another four tiers, making it the six-tiered pyramid we see today, though much of the polished Tura limestone with which it was faced has since disappeared. Most of Egypt’s pyramids are relatively earthquake-proof, but that of 1992 led to the partial collapse of the ceiling of Djoser’s burial chamber, and repairs must be made to prevent the interior structure from being completely destroyed. Enter then an engineering company from south Wales, Cintec, who have been commissioned to stabilise the chamber’s ceiling. They will, apparently, hoist scaffolding into the structure's chamber before pumping up specially designed inflatables to support the ceiling. They will then insert special fabric ‘socks’ into any wall fissures which will be filled with grout which will stabilise and strengthen the structure. Who’d have thought that a Welsh company would have found themselves repairing an ancient Egyptian pyramid? This company would seem to have the right experience for, apart from helping to restore Windsor Castle after its 1992 fire, it also strengthened a major bridge in Delhi last year ahead of the Commonwealth Games. Djoser’s step pyramid and its surrounding enclosure are uplifting by any standard. Now it is to be uplifted in a completely different sense.
Related Articles -
Cintec, Djoser’s Pyramid, Step pyramid, Pharaoh Djoser, Egypt’s Supreme Council for Antiquities, Saqqara, Imhotep,
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