Wall tiles from the funerary apartments of king Djoser

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Djoser was the first king of Dynasty 3 at the beginning of the Old Kingdom. His Step Pyramid and the surrounding mostly solid dummy structures are the earliest preserved stone buildings in Egypt. They represent an attempt to create an eternal royal residence of durable materials for the afterlife. Tiles mounted between sculpted limestone ledges decorated the walls of the galleries underneath Djoser's Step Pyramid and underneath a building in his complex called the Southern Tomb. The decoration was meant to imitate the reed matting that covered the walls of his palace.

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met collection of ancient Egyptian art consists of approximately 30,000 objects of artistic, historical, and cultural importance, dating from about 300,000 BCE to the 4th century CE. A signifcant percentage of the collection is derived from the Museum's three decades of archaeological work in Egypt, initiated in 1906 in response to increasing interest in the culture of ancient Egypt.

Metropolitan Museum of Art