 |
| The Black Pyrmiad (Pyramid of Amenemhat III) |
About 2 km to the eastside of Snefru's Bent Pyramid at Dahshur is one of a serial publications of three
Middle Kingdom pyramids, a dark ruined structure raising from the sand and seeing more like a rocky rock outcrop than the remains of a pyramid. Sometimes called the Black Pyramid, Amenemhat III's repository was built with a substance of dark unfired mudbrick, but without the instrumental stone model of other constructions of its type. Its other shape is largely due to the effects of braving out after its outer limestone layer was taken by robbers.
Amenemhat III Nimaatre, the son and successor of
Senwosret III (who had also built a pyramid at Dahshur), was one of the close great rulers of Dynasty XII. The Black Pyramid was visited by Perring and Lepsius in the mid-1800s and first inquired by Jacques de Morgan and Georges Legrain in 1894-5. It was during an review of the Dahshur site by the Egyptian Antiquities Administration in 1900 that a pretty dark basalt pyramidion was got on the eastern side of the social system, decorated with
hieroglyphic letterings on each side (now in Cairo Museum). It is not known whether the pyramidion was ever set in place on the top of the pyramid, though it appears unlikely because of its well maintained condition. The small monument evokes important questions because the name of the God Amun has been deleted from the letterings presumably during the reign of
Akhenaten, which evokes that it was not at that time in place. The Black Pyramid has been re-investigated in modern times by the "German Archaeological Institute" in Cairo, took by Deiter Arnold since 1976. The base of the pyramid has a complex plan dissenting from other Dynasty XII structures, with two entrances connected by corridors. The first entree, low on the south-east recession of the eastern side, has a coming staircase leading to a warren of passages, chambers and side-chambers at various levels on the eastside side of the pyramid. The royal burial chamber was bound east to west with a rounded roof and like most of the black chambers was clad in fine white limestone. A large white pink granite sarcophagus was found on the western side of the sepulture chamber.
The second catch, on the western face of the pyramid, mirrors the first, and leads to the burial flats of two of Amenemhats queens. The first chamber, reached from the going down corridor belongs a Queen Aat and although we do not have a name for the owner of the second apartment, it would seem that two queens were buried in the pyramid. In Aats chamber a sarcophagus was found, similar in decoration to that of the king, along with a canopic chest and several items of funerary equipment which had been left behind by robbers. A sarcophagus was also found in the second queens chamber. Different series of passageways links the kings and queens flats via an black corridor lying outside the southeastern side of the pyramid. It has been evoked that this may represent a south tomb alike to the dummy tomb improved by
Djoser at
Saqqara. The pyramid is surrounded by two perimeter walls, constructed from mudbricks and white. The inner wall, which was mounted with niches on its outer sides, bisected a easy mortuary temple on the east, which is now nearly completely finished. The inner part of the funerary temple lay of a long providing hall up to the first border wall and the outer part had a large court with a portico put up by 18 papyrus columns.
Related Posts:
