The 12th-Dynasty king Senwosret II’s devotion to Fayoum is reflected in his choice of Al-Lahun at the entrance to the area for the site that would host his burial Pyramid. Access to the substructure, which took the site’s excavator, British archaeologist Sir Flinders Petrie, many months to locate, is several metres from the south base, shifted to the east and hidden under the tomb of a princess.
The subterranean layout is far more complicated than ever before, with a shaft leading to a horizontal corridor and then a hall with a vaulted ceiling. Used perhaps originally for transporting building materials, this was made to look like a burial chamber. A deep well at the west end of this hall drops to below the water table and has never been explored; another shaft, narrower and shallower, lies at the east end.
From here the corridor continues north, then turns west into the antechamber and burial chamber, both sheathed with granite. At the west end of the burial chamber is a red granite sarcophagus, with a calcite offering table in front. From the southeast corner of this chamber, a short passageway leads to a side room, in which Petrie found a beautiful uraeus of gold inlaid with faience and semi-precious stones. Leg bones, perhaps from the mummy of the king, were also discovered here.
A corridor runs around the burial suite, and according to German Egyptologist Rainer Stadelmann this was intended for the journey of the king’s spirit. This corridor also turns the burial chamber into an island, reinforcing its identification with both the primeval mound and the netherworld tomb of Osiris.
Against the east face of the pyramid was a small chapel, which has mostly been destroyed. North of the pyramid, eight unusual mastabas were built of bedrock covered with mudbrick. None of these have passages or burial chambers, and thus they must have functioned as cenotaphs. East of these mastabas is a small pyramid, apparently belonging to a queen.
South of the main pyramid are several princesses’ tombs. One of these belonged to a woman named Sitathoriunit. Discovered by Petrie and Guy Brunton in 1913, this contained a red granite sarcophagus and canopic jars, along with five boxes filled with jewellery.
The king’s burial complex is enclosed by a wall and a sand-filled trench meant to prevent flooding. The wall was surrounded by rows of trees, another reference to the cult of Osiris. North of this wall is a structure that has tentatively been identified as a Sed Festival chapel. The Valley Temple, which lies far from the pyramid, is badly damaged.
Meanwhile, king Senwosret III built two mortuary complexes, one at Dahshur and the other at Abydos. The Dahshur Complex was explored first by French Egyptologist Jacques de Morgan and is now being excavated by German archaeologist Dieter Arnold. The construction of the pyramid is in mudbrick without an internal framework and is cased with limestone.
De Morgan had dug through much of the pyramid before he ran across a thieves’ tunnel that led into the subterranean chambers. The real entrance is outside the base, at the north end of the west side. A passage runs east under the pyramid, then turns south to the antechamber. From here, a storeroom lies to the east, and the burial chamber is to the west. The burial chamber was built in granite, but, oddly, this was coated with plaster, while elsewhere limestone elements were painted pink with black spots to resemble granite.
At the west end of the burial chamber is a beautiful granite sarcophagus decorated with 15 niches in imitation of the enclosure wall of Djoser’s Complex. This in turn is thought to echo the walls of ancient Memphis. The sarcophagus was completely empty, and the blocking stones had never been lowered. Some Egyptologists believe that the king was never buried here, and I believe that they are correct. Arnold, in fact, thinks that the funerary apartments here were designed for a queen, not a king.
In support of this theory is another set of subterranean chambers that lie under the main pyramid and are similar in size and layout to those previously described. Reached from a shaft under a mastaba south of the main pyramid, these were found by Arnold in 1994.
Here a tunnel leads north to an antechamber, a burial chamber, and canopic chamber. At the west end of the burial chamber was a granite sarcophagus; on the floor were shards of pottery and stone, bits of wood, and some random bones. The American team carrying out the excavation found the name of Weret, thought now to be the principal wife of Senwosret III, on a canopic jar and an inscribed board. This queen’s recently discovered jewellery is now on display at the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square.
In its final incarnation, the complex had an entrance chapel (not associated with the actual entrance) against the north face of the pyramid, a small temple against the east, and an expanded temple to the south (within its own enclosure). The eastern temple consists only of an entrance chamber, an offering hall with granite false door, and magazines.
On the walls are niches with the royal name and titles, and relief decoration with offering bearers and images of the king before an offering table. The southern temple is also badly damaged but seems to be divided into two sections: a forecourt and sanctuaries to the rear. Reliefs from this area show the king in his Sed Festival cloak.
Both north and south of the pyramid are tombs for royal women. To the north, there are four superstructures, now determined by Arnold to be pyramids rather than mastabas. Below ground, a long-vaulted corridor leads to four sets of chambers for each queen’s or princess’ sarcophagus and canopic chest. Another gallery on a lower level communicates with eight niches containing sarcophagi, two of which were inscribed for princesses Merit and Senet-senebti.
These were discovered by de Morgan. Inside, he first found a chest inlaid with the name Sithathor, which contained 333 individual pieces of treasure. The next day, he found the even richer treasure of princess Merit. To the south are three more superstructures, under one of which was the shaft leading to the tomb of Weret.
The enclosure walls are decorated with niches: this, along with the north-south orientation of the complex, links its conception to Djoser’s funerary monument. Outside the southwest corner of the main enclosure was a mudbrick building, east of which were buried six wooden boats, each on its own sledge.
ABYDOS: King Senwosret Ill’s second mortuary monument lies in the desert south of the town of Abydos and is an immense complex, focusing on a stone-lined tomb carved deep into the bedrock just below the cliffs of the high desert.
About 170 metres long, it culminates in a burial chamber containing a hidden sarcophagus and canopic chest. The subterranean tomb is protected by dummy chambers, shafts, and blocks, and the entrance to the burial chamber is hidden high in its walls. However, ancient robbers found their way in and took everything of value.
Within the T-shaped mud-brick enclosure that surrounds the tomb are a number of additional structures, including a large, raised platform for cultic activities, storerooms, and four mastabas. Two of these were filled with limestone chippings; the other two have complex interiors and probably date to the 13th Dynasty.
A long dromos leads 750 metres from the tomb enclosure to a mortuary temple at the juncture between the low desert and the floodplain. Built of mud brick and limestone, this is approached through a pylon and surrounded by an enclosure wall. The central part, entered through a columned forecourt, is on a raised platform. It is decorated with scenes similar to those found in other pyramid temples of the old and middle kingdoms, but with the addition of specific references to Osiris and his cult at Abydos.
An altar or offering table was placed in the northwest part of the court. Two large, seated statues of the king in quartzite stood in the forecourt, with additional, smaller statues of calcite in the cult chapel.
Surrounding the temple were houses for its priests, magazines, rooms where offerings were prepared, and kitchens for brewing and baking. Archaeological evidence here indicates that the royal cult continued for two centuries. The current excavator, the American Josef Wegner, believes that king Senwosret III was buried here at Abydos, and that his tomb at Dahshur was a cenotaph.
Like his father, king Amenemhat Ill had two mortuary complexes, one at Dahshur and the other at Hawara at the mouth of Fayoum. The pyramid at Dahshour is of mudbrick laid in steps with no stone skeleton. The monument, stripped of its casing, now looks like an irregular mound and has been nicknamed the Black Pyramid. The grey granite pyramidion, 1.3 metres high, was found in 1900 near the eastern base of the pyramid.
There are two entrances to the pyramid substructure at the south ends of the east and west faces leading to interconnected sets of chambers. One set belonged to the king, the other to his queens. For the first time in many generations, the builders used stairways to descend below the ground. The eastern stairway leads to a small, vaulted chamber, with a niche in the south wall for a canopic chest. From here, a short stairway in the north wall accesses a series of corridors and chambers at various depths, with many barriers and shafts along the way to confuse thieves.
From part of the way along the main corridor, another passageway leads west to the king’s burial suite, which is cased with white limestone. The king’s sarcophagus is of red granite and is vaulted and niched to resemble Djoser’s Complex. A pair of eyes on the east side looks toward the rising sun.
A corridor with five niches to the south of the entrance passage is thought by some to mirror Djoser’s South Tomb and the later cult pyramids. As was seen under Senwosret III, the queens’ tombs have also been moved under the main Pyramid. These are entered from the western end of the south wall and include the burials of two queens. The complexes of the kings and queens were linked in several places through long corridors, one of which has five niches along its south wall.
Some scholars have suggested that the apartments belonging to the pyramid are meant to represent the netherworld.
The Mortuary Temple stood to the east. Although it is badly damaged, the plan can be reconstructed as a colonnaded court to the east followed by an offering chapel. An open causeway leads east to a Valley Temple, the only 12th Dynasty example to be found and excavated. This consists of two open courts placed on a series of terraces.
North of the pyramid is a series of 10 shafts, evidently prepared for royal family members. One of these was usurped a century later by the 13th-Dynasty king Auibre-Hor.
ABANDONMENT: The pyramid was completed by the 15th year of king Amenemhat Ill’s reign. However, the integrity of the substructure was threatened by the fact that it was built on compacted clay rather than bedrock, and some of the chambers began to sink.
The engineers tried to shore things up, but they were fighting a losing battle. A queen was buried in it, and then the pyramid was closed and the chambers filled with limestone blocks or mud brick. The name of Amenemhat IV was discovered in the Valley Temple, and Arnold has suggested that the pyramid was reopened during his reign or at his death so that sarcophagi for him and queen Sobekneferu could be placed inside.
Abandoning his Dahshour Pyramid in year 15 of his reign, Amenemhat III moved to the site of Hawara. Built of mudbrick, this Pyramid has a relatively simple substructure. It is entered from the south, west of the centre, through a corridor that slopes down to a room with portcullises. The interior is extremely complex, full of blind corridors leading nowhere and hidden passageways. Those who succeed in following the maze come to an antechamber, then the burial chamber itself, which is carved from a single slab of quartzite.
Inside is a quartzite sarcophagus decorated with niching, a second sarcophagus, and two canopic chests. All of this lay under the ground water, but Petrie recorded finding bits of bone, the burned wooden coffin apparently of the King, the remains of a second wooden coffin, and a calcite offering table inscribed with the name of Princess Neferuptah, suggesting that she had been buried with her father (although another pyramid for her was found in 1956, containing a sarcophagus inscribed with her name).
The burial chamber was secured with an elaborate system of blocks and sand fill, so that it could only be closed once.
The complex at Hawara is the largest of the Middle Kingdom Pyramid enclosures. The Mortuary Temple lies to the north and is
completely anomalous among such structures. Although only a foundation bed with no clearly discernable architectural features is left today, classical authors tell us that it was composed of multiple courts and shrines.
The ancient Greek historian Herodotus reports that there was a lower level of chambers or crypts dedicated to the crocodile god Sobek, patron of Fayoum. Near the south side of the pyramid, Petrie found parts of two huge granite shrines, each of which held two figures of the king; also close to the pyramid, he found a colossal granite statue of the king, and the offering hall was probably in this area.
The pyramid and its temple were surrounded by an enclosure wall, with a never-explored causeway at the southwest corner. In its orientation, complex substructure, and inclusion of multiple shrines, this monument harks back to the Djoser-type of the Third Dynasty.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 20 March, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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