In the Late Period, King Psamtik I began a major expansion of the Serapeum’s underground galleries, later extended into the Ptolemaic era. This investment points to Saqqara’s renewed importance in the 26th Dynasty as both a burial landscape and a center of cult activity linked to Memphis. The site’s development now included large, planned underground architecture on a scale comparable to earlier royal works.
Late Period elites again built large tombs at Saqqara, often using deep shafts leading to underground chambers. High officials such as the northern vizier Bakenrenef had substantial rock-cut tombs in the necropolis, showing how Saqqara remained tied to state power centered in the north. These tombs reshaped parts of the site by adding new monuments among much older pyramids and mastabas.
During the Late Period, Saqqara also developed extensive burial areas for sacred animals (such as ibises, baboons, and falcons) linked to temple worship. Studies suggest some animal burials began in the 26th Dynasty, with major catacomb building continuing into the following centuries. This broadened Saqqara’s function from a primarily royal/elite cemetery into a large cult landscape visited for dedications and rituals.
In the early Old Kingdom, King Djoser chose Saqqara as the location for a new kind of royal burial. His mortuary complex introduced large-scale stone construction and set a model for later royal monuments in the Memphite necropolis (the cemetery region serving nearby Memphis). This marks the start of Saqqara’s long development as a major royal and elite burial landscape.
Djoser’s Step Pyramid and its surrounding courts, walls, and ritual buildings were built as a complete funerary (burial) complex. The project showed how architecture could support royal afterlife beliefs through processional spaces and symbolic buildings. Saqqara’s identity as a planned royal landscape begins here.
Soon after Djoser, King Sekhemkhet started another step pyramid at Saqqara, modeled on the earlier innovation. The project remained unfinished, likely due to his short reign, but it shows that Saqqara had become a preferred zone for early Old Kingdom royal building. The area now held multiple royal monuments, not just one landmark complex.
At the start of the Fifth Dynasty, King Userkaf built his pyramid near Djoser’s complex in North Saqqara. This connected new royal projects to an older sacred landscape, reinforcing Saqqara’s role in royal memory and legitimacy. It also signals a broader shift toward multiple pyramid complexes spread across the Memphite necropolis.
Late in the Fifth Dynasty, King Unas built his pyramid at Saqqara and inscribed its underground chambers with the earliest known Pyramid Texts. These spells were meant to guide and protect the king in the afterlife, turning interior spaces into a written religious program. This innovation strongly influenced later Old Kingdom royal burials.
King Teti, an early Sixth Dynasty ruler, built a smooth-sided pyramid at Saqqara, continuing the royal focus on the site. His pyramid is among those that carried on the tradition of Pyramid Texts, showing that written funerary rituals had become part of standard royal design. Saqqara’s pyramid field thus kept growing into a dense royal landscape.
King Pepi I built his pyramid in South Saqqara, again placing royal burial in the Memphite necropolis. Like other late Old Kingdom pyramids, its inner chambers carried Pyramid Texts, linking architecture, writing, and religion into one funerary system. This period helped fix Saqqara as a long-term royal cemetery, even as political conditions later changed.
After the peak era of Old Kingdom pyramid building, Saqqara did not stop being used. Instead, it became a landscape where later burials and monuments accumulated around earlier royal structures, creating a layered site used by many social levels. This long reuse is key to understanding Saqqara as a “built record” of changing funerary practices over centuries.
In the New Kingdom, Saqqara expanded in a different direction with sacred animal burial. The Serapeum became the burial place for Apis bulls, sacred animals linked to Memphis and its major cults. This added a new kind of religious monument to Saqqara—catacombs and cult spaces focused on animals, not only human elites.
During the reign of Ramesses II, the prince and official Khaemweset ordered underground galleries to be cut for Apis burials. This changed the Serapeum from scattered burial spots into a more organized subterranean complex. It also shows how later rulers actively managed and redesigned Saqqara’s sacred spaces, rather than only inheriting them.
By the end of the Late Period, Saqqara had become a dense patchwork of monuments: early stone royal complexes, later Old Kingdom pyramid fields, elite shaft tombs, and major animal cult catacombs. Many new constructions reused or intersected older spaces, creating a long-term “palimpsest” (a site written over many times). This layered development is the main legacy of Saqqara from the Old Kingdom through 332 BCE.
Saqqara Necropolis: development from the Old Kingdom to the Late Period (c. 2686–332 BCE)