Pyramids of Hawara

Hawara is an archaeological site of Ancient Egypt, south of the site of Crocodilopolis (Arsinoe) at the entrance to the depression of the Faiyum oasis. The first excavations at the site were made by Karl Lepsius, in 1843. William Flinders Petrie excavated at Hawara, in 1888, finding papyri of the first and second centuries, and, north of the pyramid, a vast necropolis where he found 146 portraits on coffins dating to the Roman Period, famous as being among the very few surviving examples of painted portraits from Classical Antiquity, the "Fayoum portraits" illustrated in Roman history textbooks.

The entrance to Amenemhat III's pyramid.

Amenemhat III was the last powerful ruler of the 12th Dynasty, and the pyramid he built at Hawara is believed to post-date the so-called "Black Pyramid" built by the same ruler at Dahshur. It is this that is believed to have been Amenemhat's final resting place. At Hawara there was also the intact (pyramid) tomb of Neferu-Ptah, daughter of Amenemhat III. This tomb was found about 2km South of the king's pyramid.

In common with the Middle Kingdom pyramids constructed after Amenemhat II, it was built of mudbrick round a core of limestone paassags and burial chambers, and faced with limestone. Most of the facing stone was later pillaged for use in other buildings, a fate common to almost all of Egypt's pyramids and today the pyramid is little more than an eroded, vaguely pyramidal mountain of mud brick, and of the once magnificent mortuary temple precinct formerly enclosed by a wall there is little left beyond the foundation bed of compacted sand and chips and shards of limestone.

The entrance to the pyramid is today flooded to a depth of 6 metres as a result of the waters from a canal built nearby.

The huge mortuary temple that originally stood adjacent to this pyramid is believed to have formed the basis of the complex of buildings with galleries and courtyards called a "labyrinth" by Herodotus (see quote at Labyrinth), and mentioned by Strabo and Diodorus Siculus. (There is no historicity to the assertion of Diodorus Siculus that this was the model for the labyrinth of Crete that Greeks imagined housed the Minotaur,) The demolition of the "labyrinth" may date in part to the reign of Ptolemy II, under whom the Pharaonic city of Shedyt (Greek Crocodilopolis, the modern Medinet el-Fayum) was renamed to honour his sister-wife Arsinoë; a massive Ptolemaic building program at Arsinoe has been suggested as the ultimate destination of Middle Kingdom limestone columns and blocks removed from Hawara, and now lost.

Queen Sobekneferu of the 12th Dynasty also built at the complex. Her name meant "most beautiful of Sobek", the sacred crocodile.

Among the discoveries made by Flinders Petrie were papyrus manuscripts, including a great papyrus scroll which contains parts of books 1 and 2 of the Iliad (the "Hawara Homer" of the Bodleian Library, Oxford).

Pyramid of Amenemhat III at Hawara

Amenemhat's pyramid at Hawara was built with a base length of 105m and a height of 58m, rising with a slope of 48°45'.

The Hawara pyramids was thus built at a much lower slope than Amenemhat's Dahshur pyramid, which had been abandonned because its lack of stability. The fear of collapse is probably what caused the builders of the Hawara pyramid to lower the slope with as much as 9°30".

The Pyramid of Amenemhat III at Hawara, view from the east. The limestone casing is missing, revealing the inner limestone core. Heavy erosion from rain is evident has vertical channels cut in the face.

The pyramid's core was built entirely of mudbrick stones with only an outer mantle in limestone. The limestone encasing has been pillaged by stone robbers centuries ago, but the limestone core still remains, giving the modern-day visitor the impression of a mudbrick mountain.

The substructure of the Hawara pyramid is a lot less complex that that of its Dahshur counterpart. An interesting find that was buried in the floor of the valley temple of the Dahshur complex was an architect's model of a pyramid's substructure very similar to that of the Hawara pyramid.

The entrance to the substructure is located on the west side of the south face of the pyramid. It descends down into a first chamber, from where it appears to continue to the north, leading to a dead end. A short passage in the ceiling of the first chamber, running east, then angling north and west eventually leads to an antechamber from which the actual burial chamber can be entered.

The burial chamber is often rightly described as a technical marvel. It is carved from a single piece of hard quartzite into a rectangular, unroofed room measuring 7 by 2.5 metres and a height of 1.83m, which was sunk into an open trench. Before the roof was placed over the burial room, the king's quartzite sarcophagus, a second, smaller sarcophagus and two canopic chests were lowered into it.

The roof was composed of some quartzite slabs supported by stone blocks resting on the sand next to the outer walls of the burial chamber. Once the royal burial was done, the sand next to the burial chamber was allowed to move into pits next to it, lowering the roof on top of the chamber, closing it. The ceiling blocks extended beyond the walls of the vault, resting on a ledge cut into the trench into which the vault had been sunk.

Limestone beams leaning against eachother covered this trench and made sure that the pressure of the pyramid above would not press down on the burial chamber. A second, mudbrick vault separated this construction from the pyramid's substructure.

When the burial vault was opened, some bone fragments were found inside the coffins. Several objects, among them an alabaster offering table, bearing the name of princess Neferuptah, were also found in the burial vault, but it is not known why they were there, since a tomb for this princess was found at some distance to the southeast of Hawara.

The 'Labyrinth'

The pyramid lay in the north of an elaborate complex enclosed by a wall measuring 385 by 158 metres. This makes the Hawara complex the largest Middle Kingdom funerary complex.

The entrance to the complex was located at the southern corner of the east wall. A causeway appears to have led up to it.

Unfortunately, almost nothing remains of this vast complex which Greek and Roman visitors, many centuries after it was built, described as a vast labyrinth of open courts, chambers, chapels and hidden crypts. The Greek traveler Herodotos said it had 12 main courts and that the visitor was guided from courtyards into rooms into galleries into more rooms and from there into more courtyards.

An interesting comparison can be made between the layout of the Hawara complex and the complex of Netjerikhet at Saqqara. Both complexes are long rectangular structures oriented north-south. Both have their pyramid located in the north of the complex, be it that with Netjerikhet, there was also a court to the north of the pyramid.

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