Have you heard about the Serapeum of Saqqara??
Everyone knows about the Pyramids of Giza, some have heard about the older Pyramid of Djoser, but it seems nobody talks about the Serapeum…
When I happened across the site during my day of exploring Cairo’s pyramid sites, I was completely blown away.
Basically, it’s an underground series of burial chambers for bulls that were thought to embody Apis, an Ancient Egyptian god. The site dates back over well over 2,000 years and is known to be abandoned during the days of the Roman Empire around 30 AD.
Below the seemingly empty desert, you walk down the steps at the end of the Avenue of Sphinxes into a huge tunnel (now reinforced with modern support structures and electricity for safety).
Each chamber contains a precicely cut granite sarcophagus roughly 11 ft high, 13 feet long (lid and body included), and 7.5 feet wide, weighing 62 tonnes (136,800 lbs)!! There are 21 you can see today!
There isn’t so much mystery surrounding how or why the chambers were created, with evidence of floor rollers and horizontal winches (levers 
) and fully written stories of burials on hieroglyph tablets. But that doesn’t keep the breath in your body when you walk through this impressive place.
) and fully written stories of burials on hieroglyph tablets. But that doesn’t keep the breath in your body when you walk through this impressive place.There’s so much more to learn when you visit the Serapeum of Saqqara, along with the oldest pyramid in Egypt, the Pyramid of Djoser.
Moral of the story: Don’t skip Saqqara on your next trip to Cairo! Barely any tourists visit, meanwhile, these hidden gems are just waiting to be explored and appreciated.
