---
node: djoser
type: person
slug: djoser
title: "Djoser"
lead: "Djoser (r. c. 2670–c. 2650 BC) was the 3rd Dynasty king who commissioned the Step Pyramid at Saqqara — Egypt's first pyramid and among the earliest monumental stone buildings in the world."
published: 2026-07-10
updated: 2026-07-10
image_file: djoser.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Detail_of_statue_of_Djoser_from_Step_Pyramid_Complex_at_Saqqara,_2630-2611_BCE%3B_Egyptian_Museum,_Cairo_(2).jpg"
image_author: "Prof. Mortel"
image_license: "CC BY 2.0"
---

## Who they were

Djoser was a king of the 3rd Dynasty, ruling c. 2670–c. 2650 BC. His contemporary royal name was Netjerikhet; the name Djoser comes from later sources. His reign marks the start of the Old Kingdom's great age of building and centralized administration.

## What they did

He commissioned the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, a work credited to his official Imhotep: six stacked mastabas forming Egypt's first pyramid and among the earliest monumental stone buildings in the world. The pyramid stood within a vast enclosure of courts and shrines, including a court for the heb-sed festival — a full royal complex realized in stone.

## Legacy

The step pyramid form led directly to the true pyramids of the 4th Dynasty, and Saqqara remained a royal necropolis for centuries. The Famine Stela, an inscription carved over two thousand years later in the Ptolemaic era, tells of Djoser ending a seven-year famine with the help of the god Khnum — strictly a much later legend.