Pyramids of Dashur

After a seriously looooooooong time Kelly came out of the building. I (miraculously) was still alive and unharmed, no thanks to my embassy friend. We hopped back in our taxi and rode across town to the Dashur pyramids.

See the airhose?

 The pyramids of Dashur are a group of three pyramids clustered in roughly the same area. There is the red pyramid, the black pyramid and the bent pyramid. The bent pyramid is the oldest and is bent because they realized while halfway through building it that the incline of the sides were too steep and that it wouldn’t be stable. So instead of scrapping the whole project, they just changed the angle of the pyramid halfway up. The red pyramid is called red because of the reddish color of its blocks (didn’t used to be that way. Originally it had limestone on the outside but that was taken off and used for housing materials a while back) This is also the largest pyramid in Dashur and the only one you can go in. The third pyramid is the black pyramid. It’s called that because it was made with mud and clay instead of traditional stone. It always had issues but once the limestone was gone its disintegration accelerated. It now kinda looks like a falling apart hill. The funny thing is that this is the youngest of the pyramids of Dashur. Shows what happens when you cut corners.

Corbelled Ceiling 

Red Pyramid

We visited the red pyramid first. It is BIG. It’s actually the third largest pyramid there is, after two from Giza. We climbed up the steps outside the pyramid (not original). It’s fairly perilous; very steep. We then entered the pyramid. The corridor is extremely tiny.  I was bent in half the whole way down. The stairs are also incredibly steep (Thank god there’s a handrail). They have to pump air inside to make it breathable; but still it’s incredibly muggy/humid and the air feels thick and smells awful. Inside there were two chambers separated by a low hallway. Then we climbed up a wooden scaffold to a smaller chamber. There might have been other rooms inside, but that was all we could see. It was empty, naturally, and the most interesting part for me was the ceiling. In order to keep up the structural integrity, the roof had to be corbelled (I remember all this from my ancient art history classes) 

                                        

On our way out, we stopped at the entrance (which is pretty high off the ground)  and we could see the pyramids of Saqqara in the distance. (We didn’t end up going there, unfortunately) Next we walked over to the Bent Pyramid where we had the most fun taking pictures. In the distance we could see the Black Pyramid but couldn’t get any closer because that is a militarized zone.

Black Pyramid

On our way home we stopped and bought some dates and veggies from a guy on the side of the road. Delicious.