THE BLACK PYRAMID
The Supreme Council of Antiquities opened the site of Dahshur to the public for the first time in July 1996. This important site houses 11 pyramids ranging in date from Dynasty IV through Dynasty XIII. Three of the pyramids are known by the modern names Red, White and Black.
The Red Pyramid, named after the red graffiti that inscribes it, is the earliest at the site and is one of two belonging to Snofru - the other being the so-called Bent Pyramid. The White Pyramid belongs to Amenemhet II of Dynasty XII.
The Black Pyramid belongs to Amenemhet III. it rises like a mud-brick tower from the desert landscape. Here the French archaeologist de Morgan excavated in the late nineteenth century. Dieter Arnold of the German Institute then excavated and restored the interior between 1976 and 1983.
The interior is a complicated maze of corridors and 15 rooms that wind through the mud-brick structure - the design of a Middle Kingdom architect hoping to deceive tomb robbers. The burial chamber of this last great king of the Middle Kingdom holds a beautiful sarcophagus made of red granite.
But this pyramid houses more than the burial of the king; he is joined here by his royal family. Inside one chamber, archaeologists found the bones of a queen who died at the age of 25 years old. Her chamber also contained an obsidian vase, three alabaster boxes, jewelry, and granite and alabaster mace heads. Another chamber bears the name of a second queen, Aat. It, too, contained funerary artifacts. There is also a chamber of a third queen in which Arnold found an inlaid shrine and a fine canopic chest with four cavities holding the viscera. Each queen has a separate entrance leading to her tomb. Only one other king shared his final resting place with his queens - that king was Djoser in Dynasty III. The Black Pyramid will be opened next year so that visitors might experience the wonder of its interior just as I experienced when I entered with American Egyptologist Kelly Simpson and Dieter Arnold.
