15 March 2000 (afternoon, continued)

Red Pyramid as seen from the Bent Pyramid, Dashur

Next we go to the North Pyramid, also known as the Red Pyramid because of its rose-tinged limestone core blocks. Built from bottom to top at a consistent 43 degree angle, it is Egypt’s first “true” pyramid. The casing stones were looted in antiquity by Cairo builders, but remnants show they were smooth, white limestone.

Red Pyramid entrance

Scholars have long scratched their heads over the Red Pyramid because, like Meidum and the Bent Pyramid, it’s attributed to Sneferu, a man who apparently collected pyramids the way some people collect spoons.

Down into the Red Pyramid, Dashur

We can go inside the Red Pyramid: the entrance is about halfway up the sloping north face. We get to it via stairs, then descend through a steep, long, and beautifully even granite-lined passage to a place where things level out briefly before emerging into a splendid corbelled chamber.

Tidy burial chamber corbelling, Red Pyramid, Dashur

Built less than 60 years after Djoser’s Step Pyramid, the interior stone alignments and surfaces of the Red Pyramid reflect the remarkable advances in precision since even Meidum, where the entry passage was roughly cut in spite of being an “official” entrance and not a robber’s tunnel.

Red Pyramid burial chamber wall and hacked-away floor, Dashur

From the first corbelled chamber we go through a short corridor to a second corbelled space, then up a wooden staircase to a third corbelled room, presumably the burial chamber. Most of the floor is simply gone — quarried away by tomb robbers. The one good aspect of this tragedy is a chance to see some of the core blocks, so we stand on a wooden platform at one side and look down into the hole. The air is so thick and salty it’s like breathing brine.

Next stop is the “Nile School for Countryside Carpets.” A few children are sitting at looms in the downstairs weaving room, demonstrating how they knot the rugs, and one girl in particular is as cute and bright as a sparrow. She’s wearing a long skirt paired with a sweater, her dark, wavy hair braided in a tight pigtail down her back. Her thin little face breaks into a dazzling smile as she shows us what she can do, her fingers plucking the warp so fast they’re a blur.

Looking down at one end of our ridiculous rug.

Upstairs in the showroom they ply us with free Cokes and we somehow end up purchasing a 7 x 11 foot knotted camel-hair carpet in teal, red, pink, beige, blue, brown, yellow and at least half-a-dozen other colors that match nothing in our home. We’ll have it shipped.

On the ride back to Mena House we pass a volleyball game where, for lack of poles, men are cheerfully holding up the net for their friends. At various intersections, guards with rifles and machine guns leaning casually from the windows of limestone towers.

Tonight we’ll have dinner at the hotel, do a bit of laundry, and re-pack. Tomorrow will be a full day, starting with the Giza Plateau and ending with our flight to Luxor.

15 March 2000 (afternoon)

At Dashur we stop first at the Bent Pyramid which, like Meidum, belongs to Sneferu. It’s the third-largest pyramid in Egypt.

Dashur — the Bent Pyramid

The reason for the name is obvious. The builders reportedly began with a core at a slope of 60 degrees, then added a low perimeter reinforcement at 55 degrees, and then about halfway up changed the remainder to 43 degrees.

Approaching the Bent Pyramid

The upper and lower portions also have different styles. The lower blocks — both core and girdle — slope down and in as accretion layers, just like Djoser’s Step Pyramid, the pyramid of Sekhemkhet (Djoser’s successor), Meidum Pyramid, and a pyramid tentatively attributed to Khaba at Zawiyet el-Aryan. But once the angle changes the courses are set in horizontal layers for the first time.

Bent Pyramid Casing Stones

Another interesting feature: most of the casing stones are still in place and the missing ones are at top, not the bottom – just the opposite of what one might expect in a stone looting situation. The remaining casing stones give us a chance to imagine a fully finished pyramid in all its smooth, bright, limestone glory. It must have dazzled, although now the look is more like a thin layer of icing spread on an enormous scone.

Closer look at core blocks, the Bent Pyramid

The Bent Pyramid is unsafe and so we can’t go inside, but walk all the way around. (There’s a subsidiary pyramid to the south, too.)

Pyramids were built in stages and Bill, who’s an engineer, grabs a flake of limestone and kneels in the sand to illustrate. Scholars are still debating the reason for the angle change of this pyramid. Was it planned from the start or an innovation in response to subsidence problems?

The ancient Egyptians placed the Bent Pyramid directly on desert soil, not on rock. The interior chambers are shored up with cedar beams, apparently proving there were signs of instability even during construction. Most Egyptologists have thus concluded that stability issues were the reason for the change in angle — to lessen the weight of stone — but there are those who believe the angle may have been a deliberate choice arising from changing religious beliefs. The interior, which I now long to see more than ever, has two entrances (intended, not just robber’s tunnels) and three magnificent corbelled chambers.

If you’d like to read more about the Bent Pyramid and see some photos of the interior then I recommend this link: The Guardian’s Bent Pyramid

Exposed corner, Bent Pyramid

Paula Terrey

Tag Archives: Bent Pyramid,

Red Pyramid

15 March 2000 (afternoon, continued)

Bent Pyramid