Pyramid of Téti

The pyramid of Téti is a Pyramide with smooth faces located at the north of Saqqarah in Egypt. It is, historically, the second Pyramide with texts. The excavations revealed a satellite pyramid, two pyramids of queens accompanied by pertaining to worship structures, as well as a funerary temple. The pyramid was opened by Gaston Maspero in 1882 and the complex explored during several programs being spread out 1907 with 1965.

The funerary complex

The pyramidal complex of Téti follows a model from now on established since the reign of Djedkarê Isési, whose fitting is inherited the funerary complexes of Abousir.

A low temple or temple of the valley, disappeared, probably destroyed today in Antiquity because in its place with the Low Time a temple devoted to Anubis was built there. A high temple or funerary temple better known, put at the day by James Edward Quibell starting from 1906 connected to the precedent by a covered roadway. In oneself the plan of the temple of Téti is also comparable on many points with that of Ounas which is its immediate predecessor. The part of reception however presents a a little particular plan because of a deviation of the roadway which traditionally should have been in the axis of the temple but is here for an unknown reason off-set towards the south. One thus reaches the temple by the means of a first hall of a North-South development in frontage and joining the East-West axis of the monument. In this main axis a second hall followed of which the thickness of the walls suggests an arched cover. It was to probably be the Chambre of Large the , on the walls of which the family members royal and the most influential members of the court were to be represented, attending the voyage eternal of their sovereign. This hall opened on a court with open sky bordered on its four with dimensions of colonnades and whose main object was the presentation of the offerings and the ritual drinkings which took place with the temple daily. Its single exit is centered in the west and gives access to the intimate part, the sanctuary.

Included in the peribolus of the royal pyramid, this crowned part was reserved to the priests of the king. Was there a vault with five niches which were to contain the five naoi sheltering five statues of the king appearing under the aspect of the five principal divinities of the kingdom. This intimate part included/understood in addition to a room sheltering the false stele carries of the king, true liturgical object funerary, a double series of stores rejected on both sides of the axis of the temple. The first series frames the part of reception and is accessible by a long corridor developing over all the width from the building, corridor which emerges in the south and north inside the peribolus of the pyramid. The second series frames the sanctuary and the room of the divine statues and was accessible only since the latter.

Finally last essential component with the funerary worship, it pyramid-satellite or pertaining to worship pyramid girded in its own peribolus is in the south-east of the royal pyramid and was thus accessible only by the corridor which distributes stores and rooms of worship. This small pyramid of ten meters height recovered an underground device made up of a short descending shaft leading to a single underground room. Placed in the middle of the court formed by his peribolus, one found in front of his face is and western two granite basins arranged in the ground of the court. Their destination remains discussed by the Egyptologists but the site of these basins, which follow the race of the sun, seem to indicate ritual practices which somewhat clarify the role of this monument annexes systematically present in the complex pyramidal Egyptians and whose no source up to that point makes it possible truly to seize the direction of them.

The pyramid

The orientation of the pyramid is not aligned on the four cardinal points. On the other hand, the proportions and the plan of the pyramid follow the same model exactly as that of the Pyramide of Djedkarê Isési. Dimensions and the slope are the same ones and the internal plan is also very similar.

The access to the funerary apartments is inside the vault joined against the northern face of the pyramid. The entry leads to a corridor going down 18,23 meters length, formerly blocked by a granite stopper now disappeared, but probably also over all its length by large blocks of limestone. The corridor going down follow one another a horizontal corridor, a hall, another corridor, a room with the harrows, a last a granite corridor and passage.

The room with the harrows extends on more than six meters and was designed by alternating limestone and the granite. The three granite harrows, in the beginning lowered, are now broken in several pieces leaving the free track to the visitors.

The horizontal corridor carries out right to the funerary apartments made up of a serdab, an anteroom and a funerary room all the three aligned along the East-West axis. The only characteristic of the serdab is the size of one of the blocks ensuring its cover, 6,72 meters length for a mass of forty tons. The anteroom and the funerary room are covered with an enormous vault out of rafters. They are connected by a passage whose walls are covered with engraved inscriptions and whose access was prevented by a door to two casements. The funerary room comprises a sarcophagus in unfinished Grauwacke, a fragment of the lid and a tank with canopes which is not other than a simple hole dug in the ground. For the first time, a royal sarcophagus comprises inscriptions, engraved here in light hollow inside the tank.

At the time of the first excavation of the monument which had been plundered as of Antiquity, of the remainders of funerary furniture were found. Composed primarily of materials lithic these objects had been given up by the plunderers, undoubtedly considered to be useless or without value. Thus a series of heads of bludgeon to the names of Téti were always stored there like one of the vases canope still containing part of the internal organs of the king. The most disconcerting element found is the plaster mould of a death mask. The moulding reproduced gives us the face of a man the closed eyes, the slightly half-opened mouth. The expression is seizing and it is proposed to see the portrait of Téti there what would be thus the only true royal portrait which reached us of the Ancient Empire.

Photographs

With the Nouvel Empire of other tombs are arranged near the funerary complex of Téti, which is sometimes designated as a true divinity. Under the reign of Ramsès {{II}}, Khâemouaset, royal prince, Large priest of Ptah, will even make restore the pyramid of the sovereign distance, taking the care to re-register his name on one of the faces of his pyramid.

Finally with the Low Time, popular enthusiasm for the gods of Saqqarah increased so much so that a temple devoted to Anubis is built on the funerary complex of Téti whose pyramid continued to dominate the whole of the valley and was to remain a monument crowned for all the excessively pious people who then borrowed length driving Dromos from the Sérapéum and which skirted the worthy pyramid of Téti.

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