The pharaoh Senusret III of the Twelfth Dynasty (Middle Kingdom of Ancient Egypt) built a giant pyramid complex at Dahshur northeast of the Red Pyramid of Sneferu. The pyramid of Senusret III included several smaller pyramids and tombs for his female relatives. It is unclear whether the pharaoh was buried here, as he also built a burial complex at Abydos.
The pyramid of Senusret III was erected on the levelled ground and composed of a mudbricks core covered with a casing of white Tura limestone blocks resting on foundations. It was first excavated in 1894 by the French Egyptologist Jacques de Morgan, who managed to reach the burial chamber after discovering a tunnel dug by ancient tomb robbers. Dieter Arnold led a more recent campaign in the 1990s.
Location of Pyramid of Senusret III
The pyramid of Senusret III (Lepsius XLVII) is an ancient Egyptian pyramid located at Dahshur and built for pharaoh Senusret III of the 12th Dynasty (19th century BCE). It is the northernmost of Dahshur and stands around 1.5 km northeast of Sneferu’s Red Pyramid.
Pyramid complex
The original project included the main pyramid, a northern chapel, and a small eastern mortuary temple surrounded by an enclosure wall. Outside this enclosure were seven tombs belonging to Senusret’s queens and princesses, and an outer wall again surrounded the whole complex; this wall was enlarged during the works to accommodate a large temple on the southern side and a causeway. The remains of six sacred barques were excavated outside the outer enclosure on the south side.
The now-demolished eastern temple was very small, perhaps a sign of the decline of the traditional funerary cult, as Arnold suggested. The remaining reliefs depicted conventional scenes of offerings to the enthroned Senusret III. The southern temple was likely demolished during the New Kingdom, and according to its foundations, it consisted of a collonaded courtyard and an inner shrine. The valley temple has not been discovered.
Many shaft tombs belonging to the royal women were discovered on the northern and southern sides of the main pyramid; it was believed that mastabas topped these shafts until Arnold 1997, which demonstrated that these consisted of the intricate rock-cut hypogea of seven small pyramids. Explorations of the northern tombs led to the discovery of the treasures of princesses Sithathor and Mereret (among these objects, the famous pectorals with the names of Senusret II, Senusret III and Amenemhat III, now exhibited at the Cairo Museum), as well as the sarcophagi of princesses Menet and Senetsenebtysy and queen Neferthenut. Among the southern tombs, the easternmost was discovered in 1994, and its hypogeum led to a burial chamber under the main pyramid. Here, a granite sarcophagus was found, along with some objects bearing the name of Khenemetneferhedjet I Weret, Senusret III’s royal mother.
Hypogeum
De Morgan struggled for months to find the original entrance; after digging several tunnels towards the monument’s centre, he finally found the thieves’ tunnel. One of the passages was covered by graffiti, which was somewhat alien to the Egyptian canons. The most famous among these represents a human head with a unique hairstyle. De Morgan argued that Semitic grave robbers made the tunnels and the graffiti during the Hyksos occupation. From the thieves’ tunnels, de Morgan could trace the original entrance.
From the entrance, located on the western side of the pyramid, a long descending hallway leads to an antechamber, which connects a storeroom on the west wall to the king’s chamber on the east wall. The latter is made from granite and provided with a granite sarcophagus on the western side and a niche for the canopic chest on the southern one. The king’s chamber contained pottery and a dagger, while the granite sarcophagus was empty. The granite walls of the burial chamber were whitened with gypsum.
Above the section, Arnold found three relieving vaults made from granite (the bottom one), limestone (the middle one) and mudbricks (the top one), which were meant to discharge the weight on the underlying chamber’s walls to prevent a roof collapse. It is possible that Senusret III was never buried there and that he might have preferred his Abydene tomb as his final resting place, as suggested by the lack of a blocking system within this hypogeum.
