Northern pyramid of Mazghouna

The northern pyramid of Mazghouna is allotted by the Egyptologist Ernest Mackay to the queen Néférousobek, corégente with Amenemhat {{III}} and, after the death of this one, with Amenemhat {{IV}} to which one allots the southern Pyramide of Mazghouna. These are the innovations concerning the system of closing which make it date from the end of.

The monument was excavated at the beginning of the 20th century by Ernest Mackay under the direction of William Petrie. There remain only the undergrounds today about it.

Description

The current entry of the infrastructures is the starting point of a directed staircase following the North-South axis. Currently being at north, the form of the first steps led Mackay to affirm that another gallery perpendicular to this staircase, was to precede this passage. The overall plan of the undergrounds is similar to those of the Pyramide of Khendjer, the southern Pyramide of Mazghouna, unfinished Pyramide of southern Saqqarah and the Pyramide of Ameni Kemaou. The vault, which one discovers after having crossed several corridors and two rooms with harrow, is cut in a large monolith of quarzite. Its sarcophagus to still lie at its sides and forever rested on the tank. It is exactly of the same design than the sarcophagi discovered with the Pyramide of Ameni Kemaou and with the unfinished Pyramide of southern Saqqarah. With a very beautiful invoice, this one is covered with a fine coloured layer of red plaster whose utility or significance remains mysterious since no crack seems to affect the stone. All the blocks of quarzite which one finds in the tomb (harrows and lintels) were painted in red. Then was drawn a multitude of black vertical features, regularly spaced approximately ten centimetres, a twenty centimetres height, aligned and taken between two fine black horizontal lines. This diagram is repeated on several levels. Black vertical features are also drawn on all the walls of the funerary apartments of the unfinished Pyramide of southern Saqqarah.

The two harrows, as in almost all the pyramids protected by this system from closing, did not fulfill their function and always take place in their position of waiting. the first weighs 42 tons while the second only 24 tons.

Ernest Mackay believed to identify in the east of the infrastructures, the vestiges of a 11,50 meters length roadway on 4,30 meters broad. It is made of four parallel walls which, two to two, compose of the compartments filled with remains. It is necessary any to think that it was acted in fact of a slope intended to convey materials for the building site of the pyramid.

There remain strictly nothing the solid mass of the pyramid. The undergrounds were completed. If the solid mass actually were built if not outlined, then the absence of any brick residue implies that it was entirely built out of stone. However, without additional proof, any assumption on this subject will be purely conjecturelle.

Bibliographical references

The labyrinth, gerzeh, and mazghuneh , Kneaded, G.A. Wainwright, and E. Mackay, 1912;

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