Architecture: foundations of Egyptian buildings

Building in Ancient Egypt: foundations of stone buildings

The foundations used in the Djoser complex are simple slabs used as foundations but also as pavements. Many other early buildings, foremost the pyramids, rest on just one to three courses of stones. The pyramid of Khufu at Gizeh is built on a solid limestone rock plateau and therefore needed no special foundations.
From the late Fourth Dynasty on, the foundation blocks were placed in trenches cut into the ground and filled with clean desert sand. Buildings placed on solid rock often did not have deep foundations.
In the early Twelfth Dynasty there is attested for the first time the method of leveling the ground. A high number of smaller blocks (sometimes taken from older buildings) create some kind of underground platform on which a building was erected.

From many buildings excavated in Egypt only the foundations have survived. See the following examples.

trenches of a mastaba	the Min temple at Koptos	temple of Nebwenenef	mortuary temple at Thebes