Dahshur
Dahshur was the southern part of the cemetery of Memphis, the capital of ancient Egypt and it’s including Pyramids of the kings of the Old and Middle Kingdoms were erected on this hill.
King Snefru chose the rocky plateau of Dahshur to establish his first pyramid to compete with the pyramid of King Djoser in Saqqara but failed to complete it.
This first attempt turned into a broken shape, but he built a complete pyramid at a distance from it, called the Red Pyramid. Nearby, the pyramids dating to the Middle Kingdom, starting from the pyramid of King Amenemhat II, are in a bad state.
The pyramid of King Senwosret III is surrounded by the tombs of the princesses Sit-Hathor and Ment.
Black Pyramid
As for the Black Pyramid of King Amenemhat III, it is also in poor condition of conservation. Despite the erosion of its stones, it is still standing at a distance from the pyramid of Sneferu. The Egyptian Museum stores the stone pyramid, the tip of the pyramid. Several other pyramids of the 13th Dynasty were built at Dahshur.
The Bent Pyramid
The Bent Pyramid was one of the pyramids built by King Sneferu, the first king of the 4th dynasty, It was called “bent” because of its broken lines due to a change of angle, an engineering issue in its design.
Indeed, the pyramid construction began at an angle of 55 degrees but had to be adjusted to 43 degrees due to an overload of stones resulting in instability Despite their adjustments, the King’s designers made a new pyramid at a short distance, in Meidum, the Red Pyramid.
The first angle of the Bent Pyramid suggests the transition phase between the Step-pyramid design of King Djoser in Saqqara and the later smooth-faced pyramids.
The Bent Pyramid has two entrances, one on the north side, with modern wooden stairs, and the other is high on the west side Each entrance leads to a chamber with a corbelled roof, giving this gradual effect.
The northern entrance chamber is below ground level, as the western entrance chamber is built higher up in the body of the Bent Pyramid.
The Red Pyramid is the highest in Dahshur, and its name “Red” is due to the reddish rusty color of its stones. It didn’t use to be this color, but a beautiful pure white of limestone of Tura, south of modern Cairo.
All pyramids had a casing made of this white limestone, which was reused in medieval times.
It is the third-largest Egyptian pyramid after those of Khufu and Khafra at Giza.
The Red Pyramid was one of three pyramids built by King Sneferu after the Bent Pyramid, located one kilometer to the south, and the so-called Meidum pyramid.
This pyramid may have been started in the 13th year of his reign, taking 10 years to be built.
The visitor can enter the pyramid from an entrance on the northern side, leading to a passageway (a meter in height and a meter in width), and then slopes down to another gallery into a chamber with a corbelled roof, similar to an inverted stairway.
Another passage leads to a second chamber located in the middle of the pyramid, directly at the western end of that chamber, and to the south of it, a passageway leads to a third chamber, which is believed to have been the pyramid’s burial chamber.
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