Pyramid of Unas, New Light

Pyramid of Unas

Unas causeway to the pyramid of Unas

King Unas ruled at the end of the fifth Dynasty, for a period of up to thirty years. Unas's pyramid at Saqqara, although the smallest of the Old Kingdom pyramids, shines his long reign in the in an elaborate way carved hieroglyphic palm of the inner chambers  the earliest identified example of the Pyramid Texts. Before his time, with the elision of Djoser's monuments) all of the known pyramids had been undecorated.

Unas's pyramid seems unremarkable, little more than a big heap of rubble which is shadowed by its older neighbor, the Step Pyramid of King Djoser. The body structure was first investigated by Gaston Maspero in 1881 who had been collating a corpus of texts found in other Dynasty V and VI pyramids and he was the first to enter Unas's subterranean chambers. The pyramid and part of the mortuary temple was hollowed by (Alexandre Barsanti) on behalf of Maspero at the turn of the 20th century, and investigation of the mortuary temple and causeway was later kept by Cecil Firth, Jean-Philippe Lauer and others up to the nowadays.

The Pyramid Texts:

The Pyramid Texts of Unas's Pyramid

The Pyramid Texts, which are first got on the private walls of the pyramid of King Unas (the last king of the fifth Dynasty), and earlier in the pyramids of the sixth Dynasty kings (and some queens), are a ranking source of texts from this period. That texts are in all probability to be dated no earlier than or so one hundred years before the earliest saved copy, and many of the texts are topical with the pyramids in which they are discovered. These texts were intended to aid the deceased king in his transition to and continued well-being in the hereafter. They include magical spells, whose purpose is to protect the deceased from  various  perils  (for  example,  snakes  and  scorpions),  texts  which  are  corresponding different  funerary  rituals,  and  spells  fashioned to allow  the  deceased  to  defeated  any obstacles that he might see in the next life.

Pyramid of Unas reopened in 2016:

The Egyptians reopened the Pyramid of Unas for public visitation subsequently being closed for twenty years. The repository, set within the Saqqara necropolis, about Cairo, is known for being the best to have funeral texts  in  its  inner  walls,  known  as  the  Pyramid  Texts. Before, the inner walls of these pharaonic tombs didnt have several inscriptions, as is the case of the 3 great pyramids of Giza, also based near the Egyptian capital.

The texts line rituals, prayers and anthems and were intended to guide the dead king in his way to the other world.  Unas  was  the  close monarch of the fifth Pharaoh Dynasty of Egypt, during the so named Old Kingdom. He ruled for around thirty years during the 24th century B.C.

The site of the Pyramid is set about the most famous repository of Saqqara, the  step pyramid of Djoser, considered to be Egypt first. From right, the Unas  tomb draws little care, since its in ruins. The true attractivenesses  lie inside the mortuary temple, the inscribed inscriptions, the roof that replicates a star-filled sky and other art works painted or engraved in the walls.