If Giza is the climax of pyramid building, Saqqara is where the story begins. Around 2650 BC, about a century before Khufu, the architect Imhotep stacked six stone platforms one on another for King Djoser and created the Step Pyramid — the first pyramid and the world’s first large building entirely of cut stone.
Saqqara was the cemetery of Memphis for three thousand years, and it sprawls over seven kilometres of desert. Besides Djoser’s complex there are later pyramids whose chambers are inscribed with the earliest religious texts known, nobles’ tombs carved with some of the liveliest scenes in Egyptian art, and the vast underground galleries where sacred bulls were buried. It lies about 25 kilometres south of Giza.
What to see and do at Saqqara
Walk into Djoser’s Step Pyramid complex
Enter through a colonnade of stone columns carved to imitate bundles of reeds, cross the great court and walk round the 60-metre pyramid. After a long restoration, the interior passages and the deep central burial shaft reopened to visitors in 2020, on a separate ticket.
See the mastabas of Mereruka, Kagemni and Ti
Old Kingdom officials had the walls of their tombs carved with farming, fishing, hunting and feasting. The detail — a hippopotamus giving birth, a herdsman carrying a calf across a ford — is delightful, and the tombs are far quieter than anything at Giza.
Read the Pyramid Texts
The small pyramid of Unas or that of Teti, when open, has burial chambers covered from floor to ceiling in columns of blue-filled hieroglyphs: spells to carry the king to the sky, the oldest body of religious writing in the world.
Go underground at the Serapeum
A long rock-cut corridor lined with side chambers, each holding a granite sarcophagus of sixty or seventy tonnes made for an Apis bull. Dim, silent and unlike anything else in Egypt.
Stop at the Imhotep Museum
A small, well-arranged museum at the entrance to the site with finds from Saqqara and a tribute to the architect.
How to get to Saqqara
- By car: 40–60 minutes from Giza along the canal road. There is no useful public transport; hire a car and driver or take a tour.
- On a tour: Saqqara is usually combined with Memphis and either Giza or Dahshur — see our best tours.
Insider tips
- The general ticket covers Djoser’s complex and a selection of tombs; the Step Pyramid interior, the Serapeum and certain “new tombs” are extra. Decide what you want before buying, by card.
- The site is spread out; a car is needed to move between the main groups.
- Bring water and a hat — there is very little shade and few facilities beyond the entrance.
- Saqqara is still an active excavation, and new discoveries are announced most years.
Best tours & tickets for Saqqara
These top-rated experiences are the easiest way to see Saqqara:
Day trip from €65 From Cairo: Pyramids of Giza, Sphinx, Saqqara & Memphis Tour
The complete story of the pyramid age in one day: the first pyramid at Saqqara, the old capital at Memphis and the great pyramids of Giza, with an Egyptologist to connect them. Easy-going and very highly rated.
- The Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara
- The colossus of Ramesses II at Memphis
- Giza pyramids, the Sphinx and the Valley Temple
Day trip from €48 Giza: Sakkara, Memphis & Dahshur (Pyramid & Felucca Options)
A flexible tour of the pyramid fields: pick the sites you want, add Giza or leave it out, and optionally end with a felucca sail on the Nile. The best way to see the quiet, crowd-free pyramids of Dahshur.
- Bent and Red Pyramids at Dahshur
- Step Pyramid at Saqqara and the Memphis museum
- Choose one, three or all four sites
