Just beside the slsope leading up to Saqqara, the new Imhotep Museum is situated. It was opened in December 2006 and is a natural stop on the way to or from the necropolis. We saw the foundations being laid out last time, and it was great to be able to visit the completed museum now.

The museum which got its name after Imhotep who was the architect of the Step Pyramid is modern and very well structured, in style with the Luxor museum, with no abundance of finds but well organized and all of them displayed in context. This is a site museum, the concept of which is new to Egypt. The artifacts reflect the necropolis and make a good introduction to visiting the area. .

To honor the French archaeologist Jean Phlippe Lauer, who excavated the Djoser Complex, and who spent most of his long life at Sakkara, there is a room dedicated to him where books from his library are housed, and some memorabilia. It was he who first worked for the idea of a museum here.

It´s not a very lagre museum, there are six halls altogether which each focus on different aspects of Sakkara. The main hall was for me the most interesting one, focussing on Imhotep as an architect. It housed reconstructions of the blue faience tiled walls found in the galleries of the Step Pyramid, where you could admire how well these tiles were set into the carved limestone wall . Truly amazing.

While visiting, there were mostly schoolclasses and not many tourists. Probably tours to Sakkara have limited timed and so don´t stop at the museum. That is a big, big shame. Why don´t tours look over their itineraries and try to spread out visits to include not only the most popular sites, or even skip some of them to give a wider impression of the treasures which are to be seen, it would give people a chance of some good experiences beyond boxing through a harassing mass of visitors while trying to glean some thing over each others´ shoulders.