Imhotep

Imhotep (active about 2650 BCE) was chancellor to the Egyptian king Djoser of the Third Dynasty and high priest of the sun god Ra at Heliopolis. He is the earliest architect known by name. A statue base of Djoser, now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, carries his name and titles and is one of the few records of him from his own time. Egyptologists credit him with the Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara (about 2667-2648 BCE).

The pyramid began as a mastaba, a flat-topped rectangular tomb, and was enlarged in several stages into six stacked tiers of limestone 62.5 meters high. It is the earliest large building in Egypt made entirely of cut stone. It stands inside a funerary complex of about 15 hectares, enclosed by a limestone wall 10.5 meters high and about 1.6 km around. The complex includes an entrance hall with 40 stone columns, possibly the earliest known use of stone columns.

His tomb has never been found. More than two thousand years after his death, by the 4th century BCE, Egyptians worshipped him as a healer and called him a son of the creator god Ptah. The Greeks identified him with their god of medicine, Asclepius.