With the 4th Dynasty comes an unprecedented scale of royal construction. Sneferu, the first king of this dynasty, built not one but three large pyramids, and probably the small step pyramid at Seila in the Faiyum region. These pyramids demonstrate the architectural evolution of the true pyramid design, culminating in the construction of the Great Pyramid at Giza by Sneferu’s son Khufu. Altogether, Sneferu’s three pyramids equal a mass of stone greater than that of the Great Pyramid.
Figure 6.5 Cross-section plan of Sneferu's Maidum pyramid. Source: Ahmed Fakhry, The Pyramids.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961 (2nd edn. 1974), p. 69. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, the University of Chicago Press
Sneferu’s first pyramid, which some scholars have dated to the late 3rd Dynasty, was built at Maidum (to the east of the small Seila pyramid), possibly where the court was located at the time. The pyramid began as a stepped structure with seven steps, but was enlarged to make eight steps (see Figure 6.5). Like Djoser’s Step Pyramid, the Maidum pyramid was built in accretion layers leaning inward to the center of the pyramid. The outer layer of each accretion was faced with high-quality limestone from the quarry at Tura, on the east bank of the Nile. According to German archaeologist Rainer Stadelmann, this monument was completed as a true pyramid late in Sneferu’s reign.
Today only an inner stepped structure is visible with a huge amount of collapsed stone and rubble around the base of the Maidum pyramid. Many of the outer stones were used as a source of quarried stone in post-pharaonic times, which eventually caused much of the remaining outer structure to collapse. But there is no evidence that the pyramid suddenly collapsed as it was being constructed, as was suggested by Kurt Mendelssohn.
The pyramid’s interior is relatively simple, with a descending passageway from the north face into a series of chambers carved into the bedrock. A vertical shaft leads to the burial chamber, built into the lower body of the pyramid. The ceiling of this chamber shows a new design: it is corbelled, with successively higher courses of stone projecting inward until the ceiling is closed. No sarcophagus was found there.
Sneferu’s Maidum pyramid has most of the constituent elements of later pyramid complexes. The entrance into the pyramid is via a descending passage from the north. The pyramid was walled, with a small subsidiary pyramid on its south side, traces of which were found by Flinders Petrie, who excavated there in the late 19th century. On the east side is a small chapel, and a causeway, cut into the bedrock with mud-brick paving and walls. The causeway leads down to the valley, where only a long mud-brick wall (and not a valley temple) was found. Although the original step pyramid was later renovated into a true four-sided one, probably as a kind of royal cenotaph but not the king’s actual tomb, the entire complex seems to have been left unfinished, including the two uninscribed stelae in the eastern chapel.
To the north of Sneferu’s Maidum pyramid are some of the largest known mastaba tombs, which were built for high officials, including Nerferma’at, one of the king’s sons, and his wife Itet. Several large mastabas to the west of the pyramid were left unfinished when the court cemetery was relocated to the north at Dahshur, where Sneferu built his other two pyramids. The chapel of Neferma’at’s tomb is decorated with innovative wall scenes, with figures carved into the limestone walls and filled with colored paste. Scenes of food provisioning in Itet’s chapel include the beautifully painted vignette of Egyptian geese, with intricate details of their feathers, now in the Cairo Museum. In another mastaba Auguste Mariette found seated statues of Rahotep and Nefert that were exceptionally well preserved (see Plate 6.2). With inlaid eyes, these two painted statues of plastered limestone appeared very lifelike to their discoverers. The high quality of sculpture and tomb painting in these Maidum mastabas represents the achievements of court artists working at an artistic level of great refinement.
About the middle of his reign Sneferu abandoned his Maidum pyramid for unknown reasons and began constructing two pyramids farther north at Dahshur. They are known as the North (Red) Pyramid and the so-called Bent Pyramid to the south.
In profile, the Bent Pyramid is truly that: its lower courses have a 55° angle of incline, whereas the upper courses have an incline of only 43°-44°. Although less steep than the incline of the steps of step pyramids, interior accretion layers in the Bent Pyramid’s lower part sloped inward at an even steeper angle of 60°, creating an unstable structure which had to be modified. Construction of the upper part of the pyramid was changed to courses of stone blocks laid horizontally. Thus in this pyramid the transition from a stepped form to the four-sided pyramid is seen as the royal architects experimented with a new form and began to understand the stresses involved with such a construction.
Although two corbel-vaulted burial chambers were built inside the Bent Pyramid, with passageways to the west and north sides of the pyramid and a system of portcullis blocks to foil robbers, it was not intended for the king’s tomb - possibly because of the problems that developed during its construction. Like the Maidum pyramid, the Bent Pyramid was also a cenotaph, with only a small shrine on its east side. But the Bent Pyramid’s small valley temple, the earliest one known, contained statues of the king, and on walls of the courtyard there are reliefs of the king’s agricultural estates throughout Egypt, personified as female offering bearers. This is where the king’s cult seems to have been practiced after his burial elsewhere - in the pyramid to the north.
With lessons learned from the two earlier pyramids, Sneferu’s North Pyramid at Dahshur was built much more solidly as a true pyramid. Constructed in the body of the pyramid are two corbelled antechambers connected to the passageway to the burial
Map 6.2 Plan of the three Giza pyramid complexes and nearby tombs. From J. Baines and J. Malek, Cultural Atlas of Ancient Egypt. Oxford: Andromeda, 2000. Reproduced by permission of the publisher
Chamber, also with a corbelled roof 15 meters high. A mortuary temple is on the east side, but according to Rainer Stadelmann, the site’s excavator, this temple was never finished. Traces of a causeway and a valley temple are now completely gone.
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