The pyramid of Djoser, the oldest Egyptian pyramid - 2,600 BC - undoubtedly reveals the very first steps of what we call architecture, as a learned practice, distinct from simple construction. The place where this break takes place is a funerary monument, where symbolic function takes precedence over simple use. From the outset, architecture asserted itself not as a function but as a sign. Thirty kilometers south of Cairo, east of the Nile valley, Saqqarah was the necropolis of Memphis, the first capital of ancient Egypt, of which nothing remains except this immense cemetery dominated by the sixty-meter-high Step Pyramid of Djoser.