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Why are Djoser's and Sekhemkhet's pyramids and these mysterious empty rectangles so far out into the desert? If we look at the map of Saqqara with the south at the top as the ancient Egyptians viewed their world, we see that the Abusir Wadi is a natural causeway connecting the floodplain below the northern point of the Saqqara Plateau to the front of the Djoser and Sekhemkhet enclosures, and the two anonymous royal rectangles. At the mouth of the wadi there may have been a lake, perhaps forming a harbour just beside the early settlement at the foot of the escarpment.