The more substantial House of the South stands next door, on the eastern side of Zoser’s pyramid. Inside, the walls are inscribed with ancient tourist graffiti left by a starving Egyptian artist in the 12th century BC. The messages, expressing admiration for King Zoser, were hastily splashed onto the walls with dark paint, scrawled in a late cursive style of hieroglyphics. Heading north, you’ll come to the House of the North. Nearby, directly in front of the Step Pyramid’s northern face, is the most haunting spectacle at Saqqara, the Statue of King Zoser. In a slanted stone hut pierced by two tiny apertures, the pharaoh stares fixedly at you. This small structure, known as the Sardab, was designed to enable the spirit of the pharaoh to communicate with the outside world. The striking figure is a plaster copy of the original, which has been moved to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

If you have a car, you can return to the entrance of Zoser’s mortuary complex and drive around to the western portion of North Saqqara. Or you can hike five minutes across the desert to reach the Tomb of Akhti-Hotep and Ptah-Hotep, halfway between the Step Pyramid and the canopied Rest House. This remarkable double tomb housed the bodies of a father and son, inspectors of the priests who served the pyramids. The pair designed their own mortuary complex, which contains some of Saqqara’s finest reliefs. The structure is accessible through a long corridor, culminating in the burial chamber of Akhti-Hotep.

West of the Hoteps” tomb is a shady Rest House with a bathroom and a small cafeteria. Farther along the highway, where the road turns sharply to the west, an area has been cleared to reveal badly weathered Greek statues said to represent Homer (at the center), Pindar (at the west end), and Plato (at the east end).

The Serapium, a few hundred meters west of the Rest House at the terminus of the main road, was discovered in 1854. An eerie subway system with tiny lanterns, this mausoleum houses the Tombs of the Apis Bulls, where 25 sacred oxen were embalmed and placed in enormous sarcophagi of solid granite. Only one of the bulls was discovered (the rest had been stolen or roasted) and is now displayed in Cairo’s Agricultural Museum.