Amenemhat III built his second pyramid closer to the area he seemed to love, Fayoum. Hawara Pyramid of Amenemhat III was not the only building he did there. He also constructed a temple in Kiman Faris (Faras) to the Fayoum’s chief divinity, the crocodile god Sobek. Kiman Faris was known to the Greeks as Crocodilopolis or Crocodilopolis. Nearby, close to the modern village of Biahmu, he also constructed two colossal 12-meter-high quartzite statues with enormous bases.
Location of Hawara Pyramid
The Pyramid of Hawara was made for Amenemhet III of the 12th Dynasty of ancient Egypt and is located about 9 kilometres east of the oasis of Faiyoum.
Construction of Hawara Pyramid
After the failure of his Black Pyramid of Amenemhat III after almost 15 years of work, he more or less wholly abandoned that pyramid and started with a new pyramid near the modern village of Hawara el-Makta, not far from Senusret II’s pyramid at el-Lahun (Kahun). The pyramid stood on a long spit of low desert and was built differently than his pyramid at Dahshur. The name of this pyramid has never been discovered, but it might have been called “Amenemhet Lives”.
Excavations
The Lepsius expedition attempted to enter the pyramid in 1843. In about 1883, Luigi Vassalli tried again, but it was not until Petrie in 1889 that the interior was investigated. Petrie was working with Wainwright and MacKay then, and it took him two difficult seasons to finally reach the burial chamber.
Petrie investigated the pyramid reasonably thoroughly and closely examined the massive mortuary complex associated with the pyramid. Modern and not-so-modern travellers call this the labyrinth because of the complex but splendid mortuary temple on the pyramid’s south side. Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo and Pliny all refer to this structure. According to Diodorus, Daedalus was so impressed by the temple that he built his labyrinth for Minos in Crete based on Amenemhet III’s temple.
Pyramid Complex
A valley temple was connected with the pyramid by a causeway leading to the complex’s enclosure wall. The causeway appears to enter the enclosure wall near its southwest corner. However, for the most part, the valley temple and the causeway have been investigated seriously.
Regrettably, the structure is mostly in ruins today, and the floor plan can no longer be precisely determined. It was quarried for material since Roman times, and all that is left is a foundation bed of sand and limestone chips. The inner part of the mortuary temple, particularly the offering hall, was probably located in the back, as would be customary, near or up against the pyramid. In front of it was a system of columned halls, courtyards, porticos, colonnades, chambers and passageways.
To the south, there was another extensive open courtyard. The entire complex covered some 28,000 square meters. Strabo tells us there were as many halls as there were provinces in Egypt, of which there were 42. He also tells us that each honoured the divinities of the various regions. Herodotus speaks of 12 central courtyards and notes that the visitor was “from courtyards into rooms, rooms into galleries, galleries into more rooms, hence into more courtyards”. Herodotus and Piny the Elder mention the lower rooms or crypts devoted to the sacred crocodiles representing Sobek. Petrie could only find the statues of Sobek and Hathor, along with one unusual palm goddess. He also found a statue of Amenemhet III in a nearby irrigation canal that probably belonged to the temple.
The pyramid was built in typical 12th Dynasty fashion with a mudbrick core and a casing of fine white limestone. The entrance to the subterranean levels was located in the actual face of the pyramid on the south side, very near the southeast corner. Within the pyramid, a descending corridor with a stairway first leads north. This corridor, which descends to a lower level than the burial chamber, was sheathed in fine white limestone, continued until reaching a small chamber and continuing straight led to a blind dead end. However, the builders used an elaborate device first seen in the Abydos tomb of Senusret III.
A second corridor is hidden within the ceiling of the small chamber. It was initially meant to be blocked by a 20-ton quartzite slab. Very shortly, this corridor arrived at a second chamber. From this chamber, two corridors depart, one north and another to the east. The northern passage appears to be a dead end, but exploring it was challenging and could lead to a “Southern Tomb” like that built within his Dahshur pyramid. This corridor was filled with mud that was probably the remains of mudbrick used to fill this corridor and seal it.
Once closed by a wooden door, the eastern passage skirted the east side of the burial chamber before again arriving at a small chamber with another hidden ceiling corridor that was supposed to be blocked by a barrier portcullis. However, this barrier was in place; after this, another 90-degree turn back to the left (north) through a short corridor led to a final wall with the same design. After the last 90-degree left, turn back to the west one, finally arriving at the northern side of an antechamber and then the burial chamber. The burial chamber is just off the vertical axis of the pyramid.
After the disastrous results of Amenemhet III’s pyramid at Dahshur, the builders took more precautions this time. The substructure was much less complex than the pyramid at Dahshur, with fewer corridors and chambers. To ensure the burial chamber was stable, they dug a rectangular hole in the rock subsoil and lined it with limestone blocks, thus forming the side walls of the burial chamber.
Of course, this also meant that the burial chamber was not as deep below the pyramid. Next, they lowered a vast quartzite monolith that weighed 110 tons into the chamber. It filled the burial chamber, and they carved out a rectangular hole to receive the quartzite sarcophagus decorated with niches. Inside it was a second sarcophagus. The builders also carved out niches in the monolith for two canopic chests. Three more quartzite slabs surmounted the Quartzite monolith. One was propped up on smaller blocks to leave a space to introduce the king’s mummy and coffins. So that this slab could be lowered, the builders constructed the first known sand-lowering device. The blocks or small pillars that the raised slab rested on, in turn, on sand-filled shafts to either side of the vault.
When the sand was removed through side galleries, the blocks descended along with the ceiling slab. To reduce the weight of the burial vault, these three huge slabs extended beyond the sides of the vault and rested on the sides of the bedrock trench that was dug for the burial chamber. We see the exact construction and sarcophagus in the probable later pyramids at Mazghuna.
They also took precautions with the ceiling of the burial chamber. Over the flat ceiling composed of the limestone monolith slabs, they added a saddle vault, also of enormous limestone monoliths weighing more than 50 tons, and over them another massive brick vault about seven meters high. They had finally constructed a burial chamber capable of supporting the enormous pressure of the pyramid’s mass. But the entire pyramid was also built with a less radical slope than his pyramid at Dahshur, so there was less mass atop the burial chamber.
While they may have managed to secure the structural integrity of the underground chambers, they did not deter the tomb robbers, who managed to make their way to the burial chamber and burn the ruler’s wooden coffin anyway.
However, Petrie managed to find, within the antechamber of the pyramid, duck-shaped bowls, a second wooden coffin and an alabaster offering table inscribed with the name of Princess Neferuptah, one of Amenemhet III’s daughters. Therefore, it was thought that Princess Neferuptah had been interred with her father for some time, but that was later shown to be inaccurate. In 1956, Naguib Farag unearthed another destroyed pyramid about two kilometres southeast of Amenemhet III’s pyramid. In it, a pink granite sarcophagus that also bore the name of this princess was found, along with traces of two wooden coffins and fragments of mummy linen. Her name was also on other funerary equipment within this pyramid, leading archaeologists, to their great surprise, to presume that the princess was buried in this pyramid instead of Amenemhet III’s. However, not everyone is convinced due to the offering table found in Amenemhet III’s pyramid.
The whole complex, including the mortuary temple, the pyramid, and a small North temple, is surrounded by a rectangular, north-south-oriented enclosure wall. This was the giant enclosure wall of any Middle Kingdom pyramid.
