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Djoser's name in hieroglyphs: his serekh read sign by sign

17 October 2026

The king who built the Step Pyramid never wrote "Djoser" in a cartouche. In his own time, around 2667 to 2648 BC in the Third Dynasty, he was Netjerikhet, "divine of body", and that name stands in a serekh: a tall frame drawn as a palace front, with the Horus falcon perched on top. Three signs inside spell it.

Djoser, ḏsr, "the holy one", is the name later Egyptians remembered him by, and it reaches us through king lists and stories written centuries after his death. It needs only one main sign, an arm holding a wand.

Three signs spell Netjerikhet

The name is nṯrj-ẖt, said "netjeri-khet". The first sign is a cloth wound on a pole (R8), the word nṯr, "god", one of the oldest signs in the script. A mouth (D21), the sound r, often follows it as a reading aid. Together they give nṯrj, "divine".

The last sign is the belly of an animal with its udder and tail (F32), which stands for ẖ and for the word ẖt, "body". Read in order, the name says the king's body is divine. Above the frame, the falcon (G5) makes him the living Horus, so the full title reads Ḥr nṯrj-ẖt, "Horus, divine of body". His Two Ladies name, with the vulture and the cobra goddesses, repeats Netjerikhet.

Falcon Cloth on a pole Mouth Belly with udder

The king lists call him Djoser

The name Djoser is written with the arm holding a wand (D45), a sign for ḏsr, "holy, splendid". The Saqqara king list, carved for Ramesses II's time, gives it as the arm with the mouth (D21) below, in a cartouche. The Abydos list of Seti I has a longer form, Djoser-sa, whose first sign was cut away for an unknown reason. The Turin papyrus calls him Djoser-it and gives him a reign of 19 years.

Djoser may have been his birth name, but no inscription from his reign proves it. Only a few inscriptions join the two names. The best known is the Famine Stela on Sehel Island near Aswan, which tells how Djoser and Imhotep ended a seven-year famine. It claims to date from his reign. Its language and layout point to the Ptolemaic period, more than two thousand years later.

Arm with a wand Cartouche

The serekh came before the cartouche

Kings of the first dynasties put their Horus name above a palace façade, saying the king was Horus living in his palace. Under Djoser's successors the ring became the frame of choice, and by the Fourth Dynasty the cartouche held the king's personal name.

His name sits on the first great building of cut stone. Tradition credits the Step Pyramid to his official Imhotep, and a statue base of the king found in the complex carries the serekh of Netjerikhet and, beside it, Imhotep's own name and titles. New Kingdom visitors who came to admire the complex left notes in ink on its walls, and they wrote the king's name as Djoser.

Bread on an offering mat

Netjerikhet survives at Saqqara and in Cairo

At Saqqara, the Step Pyramid has little writing in the open air. Under the pyramid and the South Tomb, rooms lined with blue faience tiles hold relief panels of the king running his jubilee race, named as Netjerikhet. They open only at times, so ask at the site.

The Imhotep Museum at the entrance to Saqqara shows tiles from those rooms, and has shown the statue base naming Imhotep. In Cairo, the Egyptian Museum holds Djoser's seated limestone statue from the serdab, the oldest known life-size Egyptian statue. The front of its base names him Netjerikhet. A copy sits in the serdab at the pyramid, looking out through two eye holes.

A falcon tops the drawn serekh

Draw a tall rectangle, with the palace front as a row of vertical panels across its lower part. Put the falcon on the top edge, facing the same way as the signs inside. In the upper space, draw the cloth on its pole, then the small mouth, then the belly with its udder hanging down.

Draw the netjer sign

Questions

Why is there no cartouche for Djoser?

In the early Third Dynasty the king's main name was his Horus name, written in a serekh. The cartouche came into regular use a little later, in the reigns around Sneferu. Djoser's name appears in a cartouche only in later king lists.

What does Djoser mean?

It comes from ḏsr, "holy" or "splendid", so roughly "the holy one". Greek sources, after Manetho, give a form of his name as Tosorthros.

How do you pronounce Djoser?

Most people say "JOE-ser". The ḏ is a sound like the j in "jam", and older books spell the name Zoser or Djeser.

Is Djoser buried in the Step Pyramid?

The pyramid was built as his tomb, with a burial vault of granite blocks at the bottom of a shaft 28 metres deep. It was robbed in antiquity, and no body that is surely his has been found.

Glossary

birth name: The name a king was given at birth, written in the second cartouche after the title "son of Ra". Egyptologists also call it the nomen.
cartouche: An oval ring drawn around a royal name, a loop of rope tied at one end. Kings wrote their two main names in cartouches.
dynasty: A line of kings counted together, usually one family. Egyptologists number Egypt's kings in about 30 dynasties, following the priest Manetho.
Horus name: The oldest of a king's names, written in a serekh under the Horus falcon. It names the king as the god Horus on earth.
New Kingdom: Egypt's age of empire, about 1550 to 1069 BC, the time of Hatshepsut, Akhenaten, Tutankhamun and Ramesses II.
papyrus: A writing sheet made from strips of the papyrus reed laid in two crossing layers and pressed. Sheets were glued into long rolls.
pyramid: A royal tomb with four sloping sides meeting at a point, built in the Old and Middle Kingdoms. Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza is the largest.
relief: A carving on a flat surface. In raised relief the background is cut away. In sunk relief the figures are cut into the stone.
serekh: A frame showing the front of a palace, with a king's Horus name written above it and the Horus falcon on top. The oldest royal names are written in serekhs.
stela: An upright stone slab carved with words and pictures, set up in tombs and temples or to mark a border.
tomb: A burial place: a pit, a mastaba, a pyramid or rooms cut into rock. Its chapel was where the family brought offerings.