Pyramid of Sahure: A Fifth-Dynasty Royal Funerary Complex in Egypt
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- Primary era
- Bronze Age
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- Bronze Age, Classical
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- Egyptian, Roman
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- Religious
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- Tomb
On this page16 sections
History
The Pyramid of Sahure is the funerary monument of Sahure in Egypt, at Abusir, and was built by the Fifth Dynasty during the late twenty-sixth to twenty-fifth centuries BC, around 2480 BC. Sahure was the second pharaoh of the Fifth Dynasty, a period within the Old Kingdom when royal pyramid building and associated mortuary cults reached an early peak. His pyramid was the first erected at Abusir, beginning a sequence of royal pyramid complexes there. The completed monument became a model for later Fifth- and Sixth-Dynasty complexes through its integrated east–west plan, enlarged storage areas, reduced pyramid scale, and extensive relief decoration.
Foundation at Abusir
Sahure’s selection of Abusir was associated with the nearby sun temple of Userkaf, which stood about 400 metres southeast of the pyramid’s rocky elevation. Abusir Lake gave access to the funerary complex, while the site’s relative proximity to Memphis and possibly to Sahure’s palace may also have influenced the choice. The complex was finished during the king’s lifetime, as scenes in its decoration show ceremonies connected with the completion of the pyramid.
The monument combined the principal elements of an Old Kingdom royal funerary complex. A valley temple stood beside the lake, a long causeway led inland to an eastern mortuary temple, and the main pyramid occupied the western end. A smaller cult pyramid was placed southeast of the main pyramid, within its own enclosure. The mortuary temple provided the setting for offerings and ceremonies for the deceased king, while the causeway connected this upper ritual area with the lower entrance beside the lake.
The royal funerary cult
Sahure’s funerary cult continued at least until the reign of Pepi II. Daily offerings were presented before the false door in the offering hall and at statues in the statue chapel. A false door was a symbolic doorway through which the spirit of the deceased was believed to receive offerings. Reliefs also show offering bearers, animals, butchers, porters, and more than 200 funerary domains in Lower Egypt, reflecting the organized resources assigned to the cult.
From at least the reign of Thutmose III in the Eighteenth Dynasty, the south corridor of the mortuary temple housed a cult of Sekhmet, the lioness-headed goddess associated with royal power, protection, and destructive force. The cult continued during the reign of Ramesses II and probably helped shield the temple during early dismantling in the Abusir necropolis. It later became a local cult but survived into the Ptolemaic period.
During the Twenty-Fifth and Twenty-Sixth Dynasties, Taharqa ordered copies of reliefs from Sahure’s temple and other Abusir temples for the temple of Kawa in Nubia. A later phase of dismantling affected the necropolis, although the continuing cult of Sekhmet appears to have helped preserve Sahure’s temple for a time. In the Roman period, the complex was dismantled for limestone. Millstones, lime-production installations, and workers’ shelters show how the site was reused for these activities.
Christian and modern phases
At the beginning of the Christian era, Copts established a shrine in the temple. Pottery and Coptic graffiti place this phase between the fourth and seventh centuries AD. Limestone quarrying and other exploitation of the monuments continued intermittently until at least the late nineteenth century.
John Shae Perring and Karl Richard Lepsius carried out the first modern investigations in the mid-nineteenth century. Jacques de Morgan later reopened the pyramid’s interior without making a thorough exploration. Ludwig Borchardt directed extensive surveys and excavations from 1902 to 1908, including a detailed investigation of the pyramid between 1907 and 1908. His principal two-volume study of the complex was published between 1910 and 1913. Major temple columns and architraves recovered during the excavations were divided between Germany and Egypt.
A survey by Vito Maragioglio and Celeste Rinaldi in the early 1960s refined Borchardt’s measurements but produced no major new findings. Restoration work in 1994, undertaken while the Abusir necropolis was being prepared for opening, revealed large relief-decorated limestone blocks buried in sand. Excavations led by Zahi Hawass and Tarek el-Awady subsequently exposed thirteen blocks bearing reliefs from the upper part of the causeway.
A conservation project led by Mohamed Ismail Khaled has worked to stabilize the pyramid’s substructure. During work in the antechamber, archaeologists rediscovered a low eastern passage previously noted by Perring but rejected by later investigators. The passage led to eight storage chambers for royal funerary equipment, changing earlier interpretations of Fifth-Dynasty pyramid interiors.
No subsidiary mastaba or queen’s pyramid from Sahure’s reign has been identified. Reliefs in the complex name his consort Meretnebty and his sons Ranefer and Netjerirenre. A largely unexplored necropolis entered from the southern end of the transverse corridor may contain the burials of Meretnebty and Netjerirenre. Inscriptions also mention an associated sun sanctuary called “Field of Re,” although its location near Abusir remains unconfirmed. Blocks found in the complex of Nyuserre’s pyramid and possible obelisk fragments from the mastaba of Ptahshepses may have come from it.
Remains
The complex follows a clear east–west axis and occupies a sequence from the lake-side valley temple through the causeway to the mortuary temple and main pyramid. Limestone formed the principal building material, while red and black granite, alabaster, basalt, fine limestone, and Tura limestone supplied floors, wall surfaces, columns, doorways, and architectural fittings. Approximately 10,000 square metres of relief decoration belonged to the complex, of which about 150 square metres survives.
The main pyramid and substructure
Pyramid core and exterior
The main pyramid was originally a true pyramid with a six-step limestone core. Five steps remain. Its base measured approximately 78.5 to 78.75 metres on each side, its original height was about 47 to 48 metres, and its volume was approximately 96,542 cubic metres. The slope was about 50°11′40″ to 50°30′. The pyramid stood on a platform apparently made from at least two layers of limestone blocks rather than directly on bedrock.
Roughly hewn, low-grade local limestone formed the core. The blocks were laid in horizontal courses and bonded with mud mortar, while rubble, limestone chips, pottery fragments, sand, and clay filled the spaces between them. Fine white Tura limestone covered the exterior. An error in laying out the base caused the southeast corner to extend 1.58 metres too far east. The distortion was gradually corrected along the eastern side and was largely concealed by the adjoining mortuary temple.
A T-shaped open construction trench surrounded the substructure, allowing work on the internal chambers and pyramid core to proceed at the same time. It was later filled with rubble, although changes in the masonry still reveal its former course. Stone robbing severely damaged the pyramid and its chambers. Fragments of a basalt sarcophagus found by Perring are the only identified remains of the royal burial equipment.
Internal chambers
The entrance to the substructure lies at ground level in the centre of the north face. A descending corridor about 4.25 metres long, 1.27 metres wide, and 1.87 metres high is lined with granite and slopes at approximately 24°48′. It leads to a vestibule and a granite portcullis system. Beyond the barrier, a limestone-lined passage rises for about 22.3 metres at a slope of approximately five degrees, followed by a roughly 3.1-metre horizontal section leading to the funerary apartment beneath the pyramid’s apex.
The east–west funerary apartment is estimated to be about 12.6 metres long and 3.15 metres wide, although its exact arrangement remains uncertain because of destruction. Clearance indicates an antechamber and a burial chamber, while earlier investigations could not establish whether the apartment originally contained one or two rooms. Three gabled layers of large limestone blocks formed the ceiling, transferring the pyramid’s weight to the sides of the passage. The largest blocks were approximately 10 metres long and four metres thick, and all but two were later broken.
Mortuary temple
Outer temple and courtyard
The rectangular mortuary temple occupied the eastern face of the pyramid. Its outer walls were inclined and finished with a cavetto cornice and torus mouldings. The building included an entrance hall, open courtyard, statue chapel, offering hall, storage galleries, corridors, auxiliary rooms, and passages to the pyramid courtyard and cult pyramid. Its continuous east–west arrangement brought the mortuary and offering functions into one connected plan.
The entrance hall measured approximately 21 metres long, 5.25 metres wide, and 6.8 metres high. It had a limestone floor, a red-granite dado, painted reliefs, and a stone barrel-vault ceiling with openings that admitted limited light. Beyond it, an open courtyard was paved with polished basalt and surrounded by sixteen red-granite palmiform columns supporting a roofed ambulatory. Eleven columns were recovered. Each stood about 6.4 metres high and carried Sahure’s name and titulary. Columns in the southern and northern halves also referred respectively to Nekhbet and Wadjet, the protective goddesses of Upper and Lower Egypt.
The ambulatory had a blue-painted ceiling with yellow stars. Its limestone walls carried polychrome reliefs of royal victories over Near Eastern and Libyan enemies, captured spoils, offerings, and animals. One scene gives totals of 123,440 cattle, 223,400 asses, 232,413 deer, and 243,688 sheep. An alabaster altar in the northwest corner showed sacrificial scenes and symbols of the unification of Egypt. Royal statues and possible figures of kneeling captives once stood in the courtyard, although these sculptures do not survive.
Corridors, storage, and statue chapel
Hunting scenes decorated the surrounding corridors, including an image approximately eight metres by three metres in which Sahure hunts antelopes, gazelles, deer, and other horned animals. Other reliefs show hyenas, hedgehogs, jerboas, offering bearers, precious oil vases, Syrian brown bears, and members of the king’s court. A transverse north–south corridor divided the public outer temple from the inner area reserved for priests. It connected the courtyard, pyramid courtyard, storage galleries, statue chapel, offering hall, roof terrace, and cult pyramid, and included a staircase to the roof.
Reliefs in the transverse corridor depict maritime expeditions and ships. One scene shows the king and his court watching twelve ships depart, probably toward Syria or Palestine. Another shows ships arriving with goods and people from the Near East, perhaps in a commercial or diplomatic setting. Two-story storage galleries opened from the corridor through deep niches with columns shaped like papyrus bundles. The northern gallery contained ten rooms, probably for cult equipment, while the southern gallery contained sixteen or seventeen rooms, probably for sacrificial offerings. Staircases led to the upper level, and some were cut directly into the limestone wall masonry.
The five-niche statue chapel had a white alabaster floor, red-granite dado and niche linings, relief-decorated limestone walls, and a ceiling decorated with stars. Each niche had a short staircase and originally held a statue. The central image represented Sahure as Osiris, while the two outer statues showed him as king of Upper Egypt and king of Lower Egypt. The identities of the other two statues are unknown.
Offering hall and drainage system
The offering hall measured approximately 13.7 metres long and 4.6 metres wide. Its features included a black-granite doorway, alabaster floor, black-granite dado, reliefs of divinities presenting offerings to the king, a vaulted ceiling with stars, and a low alabaster altar before a granite false door. The false door was unusually crude and lacked the names, titles, and offering formulas normally expected on such a feature. Borchardt suggested that a stolen metal casing may once have carried those inscriptions. A black-granite statue and an offering basin connected to copper drainage pipes also stood in the hall.
Approximately 380 metres of copper piping ran beneath the temple paving. Rainwater was expelled through stone lion-head spouts. Water and liquids used in rituals collected in five stone or copper-plated basins sealed with lead plugs, then passed toward an outlet south of the causeway.
Causeway and valley temple
Causeway decoration
The straight causeway connecting the valley and mortuary temples was about 235 metres long. It was slightly inclined, roofed, and built mainly of limestone. Narrow openings in the roof admitted light onto polychrome reliefs. Much of the structure has been lost, but its large limestone base remains, and buried blocks from both its lower and upper sections have been recovered.
The causeway reliefs show Sahure as a sphinx or griffin crushing enemies, enemy processions led by deities, offering bearers, animal slaughter, the transport of a gilded pyramidion to the building site, and ceremonies linked with completion of the complex. Other scenes show Sahure with Meretnebty, Ranefer, and Netjerirenre in a palace garden. An inscription was changed to give Ranefer the royal titulary of Neferirkare, the king who succeeded Sahure. This alteration informs debate about their family relationship and the Fifth-Dynasty succession.
Further reliefs depict ships returning from Punt with myrrh or other aromatic trees, people from Punt, dogs, and asses. Sahure’s expedition is the earliest recorded Egyptian voyage to Punt and is associated with aromatic resin, electrum, and wood. The trees may represent Boswellia rather than Commiphora myrrha, since the scene shows resin being extracted with an adze and the resin is yellowish brown. Another relief shows emaciated nomads. Once interpreted as evidence for worsening conditions after the Sahara’s wet phase, the figures have also been understood as workers enduring hardship while transporting high-quality stone from distant mountain regions.
Valley temple
The valley temple stood on the shore of Abusir Lake. Its rectangular plan measured approximately 32 metres from north to south by 24 metres wide. Accumulated Nile silt has left its floor about five metres below the surrounding ground, and the temple is ruined and partly buried.
The eastern entrance consisted of a ramp and a portico with two rows of four red-granite palmiform columns. A second entrance was added on the south side during a later construction phase. Reached by a canal and ramp, it had a portico with four simple, tapering, unornamented columns. Both entrances led toward passages surrounding a small central T-shaped hall with two columns. The hall had a basalt floor, a stairway to the roof terrace, a western connection to the causeway, star-decorated ceilings, a granite dado, and painted hunting scenes.
Cult pyramid
The cult pyramid occupied a separate enclosure at the southeast corner of the complex. A cult pyramid was a small pyramid within a royal funerary complex. Its exact function is uncertain, but it may have represented the king’s ka, the vital spiritual aspect of a person that could receive offerings and participate in funerary rites, or supported rituals of spiritual renewal during the Sed festival.
The structure had a base approximately 15.7 metres long, a slope of about 56 degrees, and an original height of about 11.55 to 11.6 metres. Its two- or three-step limestone core was framed and covered with fine limestone, although the pyramid is now almost entirely ruined. The enclosure included a paved courtyard reached from the transverse corridor or through a side entrance to the mortuary temple. That entrance had a portico with two granite columns bearing Sahure’s name and titulary. Reliefs showed deities, personifications of districts and estates, and fertility figures carrying emblems of life and dominion.
A bent passage descended from the north side of the cult pyramid before rising to an east–west chamber below ground level. The chamber is empty and severely damaged, and no evidence of an actual burial or cult installation was found. The structure’s possible connection with the king’s ka and with rites of burial and resurrection remains part of its interpretation.
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