Pyramid of Niouserrê

The pyramid of Niouserrê is the last royal pyramid to be built it on the site of Abousir. It is located between the complex of Sahourê and that of Néferirkarê. Its ancient name is “the pyramid where places are established”.

Niouserrê which reigned probably more than thirty years had time to complete its funerary complex contrary to its predecessors of which it had to complete the funerary temples in order to make them functional. It is under its reign that the architectural activity is then most intense with the construction of its own funerary complex and the installation of the Mastaba S of part of the court near its pyramid.

The funerary complex

The pyramidal complex of Niouserrê is of this complete fact with its low temple or temple of reception located downwards in the valley, its rising roadway and its funerary temple or high temple which are next to the royal pyramid.

To carry out this project, the architects of Pharaon probably used the unfinished roadway of Néferirkarê as sees practical for the routing of the construction materials of which the greatest part will be devoted to the new building site even if it is attested that it is under the reign of Niouserrê that the funerary complexes of his/her father and his brother were indeed finished. Use which was in addition prolonged since this roadway will be then " empruntée" , not to say usurped, by Niouserrê for its own funerary temple.

The temple of the valley is designed on a model close to that of Sahourê, although its proportions are less. It was appeared as a building to the walls inclined, characteristic of the pertaining to worship buildings of the dynasty, opened on its face Is by a gantry which one reached by a slope. Equipped with eight monolithic columns of style papyriformes closed out of red granite, this gantry gave access to a first hall provided with niches which sheltered certainly royal statues of great dimension. This hall was opened in north on a second hall which gave access to the rising roadway of the complex, and in the south on two parts in row whose second made it possible by a staircase to reach the roof and the first gave on the secondary access of the temple of reception, placed this time on the west coast. This access was made by a gantry with four columns in frontage of the same style and materials that the precedent.

The roadway thus was supplemented and completed in the honor of the new reigning Pharaon. To the four fifth of its course of almost three hundred meters, it forks towards north in order to join the high temple of Niouserrê. This roadway was built in blocks of limestone carefully cut and decorated with reliefs whose found vestiges make it possible to restore part of the iconographic program chooses for this part of the building. As in the case of Sahourê, or later of Ounas, which one knows well the reliefs which decorated the roadways of their respective temples, that of Niouserrê was to be decorated with scenes relating to the important facts of the reign such military forwardings against the hereditary enemies of Egypt.

The high temple presents an unusual plan in " L". It however comprises all the elements become canonical and necessary so that the worship of the king is functional. Part of reception, always reserved for the elite of the kingdom, which one knows that it bore the name of " Room of Grands" at Sahourê, a large court peristyle, with sixteen columns papyriformes of granite, surrounded by a déambulatoire, court intended for the rites of purification and the presentation of the daily offerings. Finally the intimate part of the temple, to the occident, being next to the pyramid, with its room with the five vaults and its room reserved for the false stele carries of Pharaon.

A pyramid-satellite had been arranged in the south-east of the royal pyramid girded by the wall of the peribolus. It is at this place as with the northern angle of this wall which formerly girded the pyramid and its temple that the architects innovated by building two solid masses in masonry which framed thus to some extent the royal pyramid. It would be the prototype of the pylon which one is success thereafter in the temples of the Nouvel Empire. These two monuments thus symbolize the two mountains between which the sun, replaced here by the pyramid, appears.

The other of the characteristics of this temple thus lies in its plan. Indeed, the roadway emerges the part of reception of course and the court peristyle but these elements is placed at the south of the main axis of the pyramid. This fact is variously interpreted.

It is true that a series of Mastaba exists on the east coast of the peribolus of the complex to the site where should have risen the temple. However the majority of the owners of these tombs are family members royal or courtiers of the reign of Niouserrê, which implies a contemporary installation, even posterior to that of the royal funerary complex. Moreover one knows other layouts of roadway of a royal temple funerary which were not deviated for these reasons such as for example, in the case of the Pyramide of Ounas to Saqqarah.

It would thus be advisable more to include/understand this plan according to the choice made by the architects re-use the chaussee of Néferirkarê, practical choice and can be also pragmatic. The plate of Abousir was seriously " encombré" since the reign of Sahourê, the best places being already occupied by the preceding complexes. There thus did not remain other choice for a complex of vast scale.

It will be also noted that the pyramid was built in front of the complex of Néferirkarê, and of this fact the illusion an equivalent height gave when one approached the necropolis since the valley…

The pyramid

The pyramid had a height of almost fifty meters for a base of more than seventy eight meters. It is conceived as in the preceding examples starting from a central core consisted seven degrees out of calcareous stone local and completed by a fine limestone coating of Tourah. Obviously, this coating was taken since and the pyramid of Niouserrê is presented today as a piled up stone hill which returns only very little justice to its initial aspect.

The funerary apartments are on the other hand in much better state. One traditionally reached it by the northern face pyramid. A long corridor went down in the solid mass and led to a room provided with a harrow to begin again towards the anteroom placed plumb with the pyramid. This part opened in the west on the funerary room which was found empty. Both are covered by triple arches out of rafters.

Photographs

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