History of Abusir Pyramids

• 16 / 5 / 2023

The archaeological area of Abusir is located south of Giza and about 4,5 kilometers north of Saqqara. The name Abusir is derived from the ancient Egyptian name (Ber-Uzir), which means the abode of the god Osiris.

It is worth noting that these pyramids have been almost completely demolished, as the core of the pyramids was built of adobe bricks, while the temples are still standing due to their construction of stone.

The hierarchical group of King sahure The Turin papyrus mentions that King sahure reigned for 12 years and "maniton" mentions that he ruled for 13 years, while noting that it has come on a Palermo stone indicating that he ruled for at least 14 years, considering that he witnessed the seventh census of cattle in his reign. King Sahure built his pyramid in the Abusir area, which has a height of about 48 Meters, a rib length of its base of 78 meters, and an angle of inclination of 36 and 50 degrees. The pyramid was severely demolished and only some pieces of its original cladding, which was made of white travertine stone. The entrance to the pyramid, as is customary in the pyramids of the Old Kingdom, is located on the north side and at ground level. The entrance leads us to an 8-meter-long corridor and blocked the passage with a granite balustrade, then an ascending corridor with a slight gradual descent of 25 meters until it leads to the burial chamber, which takes the shape of a rectangle, and the roof of the chamber is a three-layer aesthetic form on top of each other. The entire burial chamber was built of local Tura stones.

Valley temple

The valley temple, attached to a coastal pyramid, had two harbors, one facing east and the other facing South. This temple is about 40 meters long from North to South, and 30 meters wide from East to West. The valley temple is now ruined, but the lower part of the path up to the pyramid, which reaches a length of about 235 meters, is still preserved to this day. This road connects the valley temple, which is located on a beach, to the funerary temple located right next to the pyramid.

The funerary temple, the mortuary temple of King Sahure, begins at the entrance and is completely ruined, but it is known to us that its floor and walls were of limestone. The entrance is followed by an open courtyard lit by extremely hard basalt stone, and its limestone walls were decorated with inscriptions representing the King conquering his enemies. The ancient Egyptian artist was creative in arranging the enemies; the Asians placed them on the North Side, according to their geographical location, and the Libyans on the south side

A wide corridor surrounds the courtyard, which is also tiled with basalt and decorated with carvings representing the King hunting birds, fish, and scenes of catching wild animals. On the west side of the lobby of the columns, there are ten stores distributed in two opposite rows, each row contains 5 stores, and to the south, there are 17 stores, and all the stores are built in groups of two floors. Each collection has its staircase, and each pantry is a single room, and these storerooms were likely for storing decorative utensils and gilded statues. The pyramid of neferirkare In the center of the corridor on the west side there is a passage followed by a few steps leading to a small chamber in which the five niches of statues (mihrabs), and in the southern wall of these chambers is a door, which is the only way leading to the temple and five chambers behind it, and the floor of the temple may have been covered with alabaster and at the end of the structure there is an imaginary door of granite and in front of a table offerings of Alabaster. One of the most important features of the King Sahure collection is the precise system of drainage of water that used to fall on the roof and drain into gutters in the form of lions ' heads protruding from the top of the outer walls. In the exposed parts, the rainwater that fell was discharged from a hole at the bottom of the outer walls, after reaching it through channels carved into the stones of the floor tiles. There was another way to drain the water: inside the temple buildings there are five basins lined from the inside with copper plates and a lead plug that seals their openings, two of which are in the chambers near the temple, one in the temple itself and one in the corridor leading to the temple, and the fifth is in the total of ten storerooms and their function is to drain the water used in worship rituals, considering that this water is impure and it is dangerous to touch it. From these basins came copper pipes that ran under the floor of the temple and continued on the ascending path until they emptied water on the southern side of it.