The Serapeum

The Serapeum

The Serapeum houses the rock-cut underground burial chambers of the Apis cops. Apis, the sacred bull of the god Ptah, was worshiped in a temple of his own, and after his dying was embalmed and buried with serious pomp. From the time of Amenophis III, and belike earlier, the Apis tombs consisted of an underground chamber recorded by a sloping shaft. In the prevail of King Ramses II, Prince Khaemweset fabricated a common burial position for all the Apis bulls consisting of an underground corridor 100 meters long flanked on both sides by chambers in

Statue of Apis at the Serapeum

which the woody coffins of the bulls were included. 20 of the chambers here settled contain the sarcophagi of processed black or red granite, each hewn from a one block where the Apis bull mummies were housed. They standard some four meters in length and are estimated to press 65 tons.

Tomb of Irukaptah

Tomb of Irukaptah

Irukaptah was the Chief of Butchers during the reign of different  pharaohs  and  was  swallowed  in  the  royal  complex  of Saqqara as a signal of his rank and faithful overhaul. Irukaptahs  fine  burial  site  held  reliefs  and  paintings showing  the  butchering  of  animals.  He  also  approved KA statues for his burial site.

The grave of Irukaptah is located in the west group, 9.5 meter under the level of the Unas causeway and 10.5 metre from its south side. It can be given by the modern staircase which runs aboard the causeway (see tb-610). The tomb was dug at the base of a small cliff in ranked limestone which overhangs it by 17 meter and the tomb also takes on a courtyard. It is one of the largest of the group (13.45 metre from north to south) and it disagrees from all others by its exceptional interior statues, carved directly into the rock. On the other hand, the radicals of the decoration are limited and banal for the era on the situation of Saqqara, similar ones can be discovered, for instance, in the identified mastaba of Ti.

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.