Pyramid of Ouserkaf

The pyramid of Ouserkaf which is of type with smooth faces finds with the north-eastern angle of the funerary Complexe of Djéser. She was visited and explored for the first time in 1839 by John Shae Perring and identified like that of Ouserkaf in 1928 by Cecil Mallaby Firth. She belonged to an elaborate funerary complex which slices with those built by showing well a change of design in the construction of the royal monuments. This already significant tendency under the reign of the immediate predecessor of Ouserkaf, Chepseskaf, continues here with on the one hand the choice of the site of the necropolis royal which returns in the middle same of Saqqarah and on the other hand by the architecture even of the funerary complex .

The funerary complex

Ouserkaf thus chooses to approach the origins of the royalty while making build its tomb in the vicinity immediate of the pyramid of Djéser. It preserves the elaborate overall plan under including/understanding a temple of reception or temple of the valley, which one found the vestiges, not connected yet by a roadway rising to the also lost layout, with a funerary temple which is next to the pyramid and of which there remains today only the basalt pavement as of the blocks of granite which constituted the doors of the temple.

Contrary to the preceding examples the temple is not coupled with the face is royal pyramid but is built in the southernmost part of the funerary complex. It included/understood stores as well as a sanctuary with five vaults which will become the rule in all the royal funerary buildings which will follow. A vast court followed and faced the pyramid. It was surrounded on three on its sides of a peristyle of pillars with square section, in red Granite of Assouan. They carried all titulature of the king on their face giving on the court. The proportions of this vast space with open sky, are inherited large the courses ceremonial of the funerary complexes. It is of this court that comes a colossal head from granite Ouserkaf exposed today to the museum of Cairo.

The temple was built in Calcaire for its walls, with Granite for its monumental pillars and doors and of the Basalte for the pavement of spaces with open sky, while the covered parts were paved of Calcite or Albâtre. The richness of minerals used for the construction and contrasts of their color were to produce an effect seizing with the visitors who attended the building at the time of his splendor. It is this same quality which will very early attract in the Antiquité the covetousness of the carriers in the search of materials of choice, so much and so that with the time Saïte the monument was to already have an aspect ruined near to that which it presents today. Many vestiges of decoration in relief of the temple were however discovered during the successive excavations which took place at the 20th century. They are also exposed to the museum of Cairo and make it possible to deduce that the iconographic program of the temple very elaborate and was refined, with the image from what Sahourê successor of Ouserkaf will order for its own funerary temple of Abousir. For the first time in a royal monument this parietal decoration recovers almost the totality of the temple, multiplying the scenes symbolic systems in which the divinized king occupies the main role in the middle of the gods and of the men.

The difference in orientation of this funerary temple of the traditional diagram of the pyramidal complexes of the Ancient Empire variously is appreciated and interpreted by the Egyptologists. Some estimate that the architect of Ouserkaf did not have of another choice because of the broken character of the ground in the east of the pyramid, others think that Ouserkaf sought to thus affirm the solar character of the dynasty, making profit from the kind its temple of a maximum sunning in the course of the day. It is true that he is the first Pharaon to build a solar temple apart from Héliopolis with Abousir, site which will be chosen besides by its successors to build their necropolis royal and other solar temples (see in particular that of Abou Ghorab). But the solar buildings, which are not funerary buildings, do not seem to answer this singular architectural plan with Saqqarah. It is quite as probable that Ouserkaf deliberately chooses to extend its funerary complex towards the south to the image of the funerary complex of Djéser which presents to him also a development on a North-South axis, and which the imitation was until sparing the access to the temple in the south-east of the enclosure of the complex as for the funerary Complexe of Djéser, even that there never was low temple nor of roadway of access what would explain why one found no trace until now of it. Another characteristic of the funerary complex, for the first time it pyramid-satellite is integrated into the royal funerary temple whereas before it appeared in the funerary complexes of only as an element even annexes isolated from the complex.

Finally in the south of the funerary temple a secondary pyramid was, allotted to Néferhétepès, girl of the Pharaon Djédefrê and probable Grande royal wife of Ouserkaf. This small very degraded pyramid comprises an access to the funerary apartments of the queen, located on the northern face. The funerary room today with the free air still comprises part of its cover made up of a vault out of rafters. Because of the extreme dilapidation of the funerary complex of Ouserkaf it is difficult to recognize on the spot how this pyramid of queen was accessible. So in the beginning of its excavation Cecil Mallaby Firth articulated in the funerary temple of the king the later excavations carried out by Jean-Philippe Lauer then Audran Labrousse believed it revealed that it comprised an independent access by a small temple joined to its face is, today disappeared, thus identifying a small pyramidal complex which will be used as model thereafter.

The pyramid

Of modest size, with a base of approximately soixante-treize meters and an initial height of almost fifty meters, the pyramid itself is built in cut blocks of low-size limestone laid out in regular bases.

One reaches the funerary apartments of the king by an entry located on the northern face of the pyramid which was formerly dissimulated by the limestone coating Tourah now disappeared. A corridor is inserted in the ground and leads to a room with harrows which distributes two whole of perpendicular rooms. In the North-East were the stores who were to shelter the funerary furniture of the king, in the axis of the pyramid was the anteroom with immediately in the west the royal funerary room which still contains the sarcophagus of Ouserkaf like its trunk with canopes. No inscription was raised neither in the underground apartments nor on the sarcophagus.

The method of construction and the proportions of the monument slice there still with the buildings of. It seems that Ouserkaf carried its efforts of manufacturer on other projects whose its solar temple of Abousir would be a witness. The fact that the royal funerary complex is not any more the object of a titanic building site as previously it was the case with Dahchour, Gizeh or Abou Rawash disorder the majority of the writers of the history of the ancient Egypt at the point to work out assumptions of a degradation of technologies or an economic crisis due to a generalized shortage of the means exhausted by the expensive projects of the preceding reigns. This assumption tallies badly with the history of the Egyptian Ancient Empire and that of Ouserkaf inaugurates, and who then does not present any distinguishing mark of a possible decline of means and to be able. More reasonably, and in the absence of concrete evidence of one or the other of the advanced assumptions, it is appropriate to just like include/understand these characteristics with the ell of the convergence points with the complex of Djéser founder of Ouserkaf is at the origin of a new dynasty of kings.

Photographs

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