The pyramid of Unas (Egyptian: Nfr swt Wnjs “Beautiful are the places of Unas”) is a smooth-sided pyramid built in the 24th century BC for the Egyptian pharaoh Unas, the ninth and final king of the Fifth Dynasty. It is the smallest Old Kingdom pyramid, but significant due to the discovery of Pyramid Texts spells for the king’s afterlife incised into the walls of its underground chambers. Inscribed for the first time in Unas’s pyramid, the tradition of funerary texts carried on in the pyramids of subsequent rulers, through to the end of the Old Kingdom, and into the Middle Kingdom through the Coffin Texts that form the basis of the Book of the Dead.
Unas built his pyramid between the complexes of Sekhemket and Djoser in North Saqqara. Anchored to the valley temple at a nearby lake, a long causeway was constructed to access the pyramid site. The causeway had elaborately decorated walls covered with a roof which had a slit in one section allowing light to enter, illuminating the images. A long wadi was used as a pathway. The terrain was difficult to negotiate and contained old buildings and tomb superstructures. These were torn down and repurposed as an underlay for the causeway. A significant stretch of Djoser’s causeway was reused for embankments.
Tombs on the path had their superstructures demolished and were paved over, preserving their decorations. Two Second Dynasty tombs, presumed to belong to Hotepsekhemwy, Nebra, and Ninetjer, from seals found inside, are among those that lie under the causeway. The site was later used for numerous burials of Fifth Dynasty officials, private individuals from the Eighteenth to Twentieth Dynasties, and a collection of Late Period monuments known as the “Persian tombs”.
The causeway joined the temple in the harbour with the mortuary temple on the east face of the pyramid. The mortuary temple was entered on its east side through a large granite doorway, seemingly constructed by Unas’s successor, Teti. Just south of the upper causeway are two long boat pits. These may have contained two wooden boats: the solar barques of Ra, the sun god.
The temple was laid out similarly to Djedkare Isesi’s. A transverse corridor separates the outer from the inner temple. The entry chapel of the inner temple has been destroyed, though it once contained five statues in niches. The inner temple featured a single quartzite column contained in the antechamber carrée. The room is otherwise ruined. Quartzite is an atypical material for architectural projects, though examples of it being used sparingly in the Old Kingdom exist. The material is associated with the sun cult due to its sun-like colouration.
The underground chambers remained unexplored until 1881, when Gaston Maspero, who had recently discovered inscribed texts in the pyramids of Pepi I and Merenre I, gained entry. Maspero found the same texts inscribed on the walls of Unas’s pyramid, their first known appearance. The 283 spells in Unas’s pyramid constitute the oldest, most minor and best-preserved corpus of religious writing from the Old Kingdom. Their function was to guide the ruler to eternal life and ensure continued survival even if the funerary cult ceased functioning. In Unas’s case, the funerary cult may have survived the turbulent First Intermediate Period until the Twelfth or Thirteenth Dynasty, during the Middle Kingdom. This is a matter of dispute amongst Egyptologists, where the competing idea is that the cult was revived during the Middle Kingdom rather than having survived until then.
Location
The pyramid is situated on the Saqqara plateau and lies on a line running from the Pyramid of Sekhemkhet to the Pyramid of Menkauhor. The site required the construction of an exceptionally long causeway to reach a nearby lake, suggesting the site held some significance to Unas.
Excavation
The pyramid was briefly examined by John Shae Perring and soon after by Karl Richard Lepsius, who listed the pyramid on his pioneering list as number XXXV. Entry was first gained by Gaston Maspero, who examined its substructure in 1881. He had recently discovered a set of texts in the pyramids of Pepi I and Merenre I.
Those same texts were discovered in Unas’s tomb, making this their earliest known appearance. From 1899 to 1901, the architect and Egyptologist Alessandro Barsanti conducted the first systematic investigation of the pyramid site, succeeding in excavating part of the mortuary temple and a series of tombs from the Second Dynasty, the Late Period.
Later excavations by Cecil Mallaby Firth, from 1929 until he died in 1931, followed by those of the architect Jean-Philippe Lauer from 1936 to 1939, were conducted with little success. The archaeologists Selim Hassan, Muhammed Zakaria Goneim and A. H. Hussein mainly focused on the causeway leading to the pyramid while conducting investigations from 1937 to 1949.
Hussein discovered a pair of limestone-lined boat pits at the upper end of the causeway. In the 1970s, Ahmad Moussa excavated the lower half of the causeway and the valley temple. Moussa and another archaeologist, Audran Labrousse, conducted an architectural survey of the valley temple from 1971 to 1981. The pyramids of Unas, Teti, Pepi I and Merenre were the subjects of a significant architectural and epigraphic project in Saqqara led by Jean Leclant.
From 1999 until 2001, the Supreme Council of Antiquities conducted a major restoration and reconstruction project on the valley temple. The three entrances and ramps were restored, and a low limestone wall was built to determine the temple’s plan.
Mortuary complex
Layout
Unas’s complex is between the pyramid of Sekhemkhet and the southwest corner of the pyramid complex of Djoser. It is in symmetry with the pyramid of Userkaf located at the northeast corner of Saqqara. Old Kingdom mortuary complexes consist of five essential components: (1) a valley temple, (2) a causeway, (3) a mortuary temple, (4) a cult pyramid, and (5) the main pyramid.
Unas’s monument has all of these elements: the main pyramid constructed six steps high from limestone blocks; a valley temple situated in a natural harbour at the mouth of a wadi; a causeway built using the same wadi as a path; a mortuary temple similar in layout to that of Unas’s predecessor, Djedkare Isesi’s, and a cult pyramid in the south of the mortuary temple. The pyramid, mortuary temple and cult pyramid were enclosed by a 7 m (23 ft; 13 cu) tall perimeter wall. The perimeter wall from the northeast to northwest corner is about 86 m (282 ft; 164 cu) long and stretches 76 m (249 ft; 145 cu) from north to south.
Main pyramid
Unas’s reign lasted around thirty-three years, but his pyramid was the smallest in the Old Kingdom. Time constraints cannot be considered a factor explaining the small size, and it is more likely that resource accessibility constrained the project. The monument’s size was also inhibited due to the extensive quarrying necessary to increase the size of the pyramid. Unas chose to avoid that additional burden and instead kept his pyramid small.
The pyramid’s core was built six steps high, constructed with roughly dressed limestone blocks that decreased in size with each step. Ideally, the construction material for the core would have been locally sourced. This was then encased with fine white limestone blocks quarried from Tura. Some of the casing on the lowest steps has remained intact. The pyramid had a base length of 57.75 m (189.5 ft; 110.21 cu), converging towards the apex at approximately 56°, giving it a height of 43 metres (141 ft; 82 cu) on completion. It had a total volume of 47,390 m3 (61,980 cu yd). The pyramid was smooth-sided. Due to its poor construction and materials, the pyramid has been ruined, as have all others of the Fifth Dynasty. The pyramids of the Fifth Dynasty were further systematically dismantled during the New Kingdom to be reused in the construction of new tombs.
Unas abandoned the practice of building pyramids for his consorts; instead, Khenut and Nebet were buried in a double mastaba northeast of the main pyramid. Each queen was accorded separate rooms and a separate entrance, though the layout of the tombs was identical. Khenut owned the western half, and Nebet owned the eastern half. Their chambers were extensively decorated. The chapel for Nebet’s mastaba contains four recesses. One bears a cartouche of Unas’s name, indicating that it may have contained a statue of the king, whereas the others contained statues of the queen. Directly north of the mastaba were the tombs for Unas’s son Unasankh and daughter Iput. Another daughter, Hemetre, was buried in a tomb west of Djoser’s complex.
Substructure
A small “north chapel” or “entrance chapel” was adjacent to the pyramid’s north face. It consisted of a single room with an altar and a stela bearing the hieroglyph for “offering table”. Only trace elements of the chapel remain. These chapels had a false door and a decoration scheme similar to the offering hall, which the archaeologist Dieter Arnold suggests the chapel was a “miniature offering chapel”.
The entrance into the pyramid’s substructure lay under the chapel’s pavement. The pyramid’s substructure is similar to that of Unas’s predecessor, Djedkare Isesi. The entry leads into a 14.35 m (47.1 ft) long, vertically sloping corridor inclined at 22°, leading to a vestibule at its bottom. The vestibule is 2.47 m (8.1 ft) long and 2.08 m (6.8 ft) wide. From the vestibule, a 14.10 m (46.3 ft) long horizontal passage follows a level path to the antechamber and is guarded by three granite slab portcullises in succession. The passage ends at an antechamber, a room measuring 3.75 m (12.3 ft) by 3.08 m (10.1 ft), located under the centre axis of the pyramid.
To the east, a doorway leads to a room – called the serdab – with three recesses. The serdab measures 6.75 m (22.1 ft) wide and 2 m (6.6 ft) deep. To the west lay the burial chamber, a room measuring 7.3 m (24 ft) by 3.08 m (10.1 ft), containing the ruler’s sarcophagus. The roof of the antechamber and burial chamber were gabled similarly to earlier pyramids of the era.
Near the burial chamber’s west wall sat Unas’s coffin, made from greywacke rather than basalt as was initially presumed. The coffin was undamaged, but its contents had been robbed. A canopic chest had once been buried at the foot of the southeast corner of the coffin. Traces of the burial are fragmentary; all that remains are portions of a mummy, including its right arm, skull and shinbone, and the wooden handles of two knives used during the opening of the mouth ceremony. The mummy remains have been displayed in the Egyptian Museum of Cairo.
The walls of the chambers were lined with Tura limestone. At the same time, those surrounding Unas’s sarcophagus were sheathed in white alabaster incised and painted to represent the doors of the royal palace facade, complementing the eastern passage. Taken as symbolically functional, these allowed the king to depart the tomb in any direction. The burial chamber ceiling was painted blue with gold stars to resemble the night sky. The ceiling of the antechamber and corridor were similarly painted. Whereas the stars in the antechamber and the burial chamber pointed northward, the stars in the corridor pointed towards the zenith. The remaining walls of the burial chamber, antechamber, and corridor parts were inscribed with vertically written texts, chiselled in bas-relief and painted blue.
Valley Temple
Unas’s valley temple is situated in a harbour that naturally forms where the mouth of a wadi meets the lake. The same wadi was used as a path for the causeway. The temple sits between those of Nyuserre Ini and Pepi II. Despite a complex plan, the temple did not contain any significant innovations. It was richly decorated – in a fashion similar to the causeway and mortuary temple – and the surviving palm granite columns that stood at the entrance to the temple evidence their high-quality craftsmanship.
The main entrance into the temple was on the east side, consisting of a portico with eight granite palm columns arranged into two rows. A narrow westward corridor led into a rectangular north-south-oriented hall from the entry. A second hall was to the south. Two secondary hall entrances were built on the north and south sides. Each had a portico with two columns. Narrow ramps approached these. West of the two halls was the primary cult hall. It had a second chamber with three storerooms to the south and a passageway leading to the causeway to the northwest.
Causeway
The causeway connecting the valley temple to the mortuary temple of Unas’s pyramid complex was constructed along the path provided by a natural wadi. The Egyptologist Iorwerth Edwards estimates the walls to be 4 m (13 ft) high and 2.04 m (6 ft 8 in) thick. The passageway was about 2.65 m (8 ft 8 in) wide. It had a roof constructed from slabs 0.45 m (1 ft 6 in) thick projecting from each wall toward the centre. Between 720 m (2,360 ft) and 750 m (2,460 ft) long, the causeway was among the longest constructed for any pyramid, comparable to the causeway of Khufu’s pyramid. The causeway is also the best preserved of any from the Old Kingdom. Construction of the causeway was complicated and required negotiating uneven terrain.
Older buildings were torn down, and their stones were appropriated as an underlay. The causeway was built with two turns rather than in a straight line. Around 250 m (820 ft) worth of Djoser’s causeway was used to provide Unas’s causeway embankments and plug gaps between it and the wadi. South of the uppermost bend of the causeway were two 45 m (148 ft) long boat pits of white limestone, which might originally have housed wooden boats with curved keels representing Ra’s day and night vessels, the sun god. The boats lay side by side in an east-west orientation.
Tombs in the causeway path were built over, preserving their decorations but not their contents, indicating that they had been robbed before or during the causeway’s construction. The superstructures of the tombs were demolished, allowing the mortuary temple and the upper end of the causeway to be built over the top of them. Two large royal tombs dating to the Second Dynasty are among those that lie beneath the causeway. The western gallery tomb contains seals named Hotepsekhemwy and Nebra, and the eastern gallery tomb contains numerous seals inscribed with the name Ninetjer, indicating probable ownership.
The interior walls of the causeway were highly decorated with painted bas-reliefs, but records of these are fragmentary. The remnants depict a variety of scenes, including the hunting of wild animals, the conducting of harvests, scenes from the markets, artisans working copper and gold, a fleet returning from Byblos, boats transporting columns from Aswan to the construction site, battles with enemies and nomadic tribes, the transport of prisoners, lines of people bearing offerings, and a procession of representatives from the nomes of Egypt. A slit was left in a section of the causeway roofing, allowing light to enter, illuminating the brightly painted decorations on the walls. The archaeologist Peter Clayton notes that these depictions were more akin to those found in the mastabas of nobles.
The Egyptologist Miroslav Verner highlights one particular scene from the causeway depicting famished desert nomads. The scene had been used as “unique proof” that the living standards of desert dwellers had declined during Unas’s reign due to climatic changes in the middle of the third millennium BC. The discovery of a similar relief painting on the blocks of Sahure’s causeway casts doubt on this hypothesis. Verner contends that the nomads may have been brought in to demonstrate the hardships faced by pyramid builders bringing in higher-quality stones from remote mountain areas. Grimal suggested that this scene foreshadowed the nationwide famine that struck Egypt at the onset of the First Intermediate Period. According to Allen et al., the most widely accepted explanation for the scene is that it was meant to illustrate the generosity of the sovereign in aiding famished populations.
A collection of tombs were found north of the causeway. The tombs are conjectured to belong to Unas’s viziers, except for Mehu’s tomb, which is associated with Pepi I. The tomb of Akhethetep, a vizier, was discovered by a team led by Christiane Ziegler. The other mastabas belong to the viziers Ihy, Iy–nofert, Ny-ankh-ba and Mehu. Another tomb belonging to Unas-ankh, son of Unas, separates the tombs of Ihy and Iy-nofert. It may be dated late into Unas’s reign.
Ahmed Moussa discovered the rock-cut tombs of Nefer and Ka-hay – court singers during Menkauhor’s reign – south of Unas’s causeway, containing nine burials and an exceptionally well-preserved mummy found in a coffin in a shaft under the east wall of the chapel. The tombs belonged to two palace officials – manicurists – living during the reigns of Nyuserre Ini and Menkauhor in the Fifth Dynasty, named Ni-ankh-Khnum and Khnum-hotep. The Chief Inspector at Saqqara, Mounir Basta, discovered another rock-cut tomb just south of the causeway in 1964, later excavated by Ahmed Moussa. A highly decorated chapel for the tomb was found the following year. The chapel was inside a unique stone mastaba connected to the tombs through an undecorated open court.
Mortuary temple
The mortuary temple in Unas’s pyramid complex has a layout comparable to his predecessor, Djedkare Isesi’s, with one notable exception. A pink granite doorway separates the end of the causeway from the entrance hall. It bears the names and titles of Teti, Unas’s successor, indicating that he must have had the doorway constructed following Unas’s death. The entrance hall had a vaulted ceiling and a floor paved with alabaster. The walls in the room were decorated with relief paintings that depicted the making of offerings.
The entrance hall terminates in an open columned courtyard, with eighteen – two more columns than in Djedkare Isesi’s complex – pink granite palm columns supporting the roof of an ambulatory. Some columns were reused centuries later in buildings in Tanis, the capital of Egypt, during the Twenty-First and Twenty-Second Dynasties. Other columns have been displayed in the British Museum and the Louvre. Relief decorations formerly in the courtyard have also been reused in later projects, as shown by the reliefs of Unas in Amenemhat I’s pyramid complex in El-Lisht.
North and south of the entrance hall and columned courtyard were storerooms. These were regularly stocked with items for the royal funerary cult, which had expanded influence in the Fifth Dynasty. Their irregular placement resulted in the northern storerooms being twice as numerous as the southern. The rooms were used for burials in the Late Period, as noted by the presence of large shaft tombs. At the far end of the courtyard was a transverse corridor creating an intersection between the columned courtyard at its east and the inner temple to its west, with a cult pyramid to the south and an enormous courtyard surrounding the pyramid to the north.
The inner temple is accessed by a small staircase leading into a ruined chapel with five statue niches. The chapel and offering hall surrounded storerooms, as elsewhere in the temple, there were more storerooms to the north than south. The antechamber carrée – a square antechamber – separated the chapel from the offering hall.
The room measures 4.2 m (14 ft; 8.0 cu) on each side, making it the smallest chamber from the Old Kingdom but primarily destroyed. It was originally entered through a door on its eastern side and contained two other doors leading to the offering hall and storeroom. The room contained a single column made of quartzite – fragments found in the southwest part of the temple – quarried from the Gabel Ahmar stone quarry near Heliopolis. Quartzite, a hard stone – a seven on the Mohs hardness scale – was not typically used in architectural projects but was used sparingly as a building material at some Old Kingdom sites in Saqqara.
The hard stone is associated with the sun cult, a natural development caused by the sun-like colouration of the material. Remnants of a false granite door bearing an inscription concerning the souls of the residents of Nekhen and Buto mark what little of the offering hall has been preserved. A block from the door has been displayed in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
Cult pyramid
The purpose of the cult pyramid remains unclear. It had a burial chamber but was not used for burials and instead appears to have been a purely symbolic structure. The chamber may have hosted the pharaoh’s ka or a miniature statue of the king. It may have been used for ritual performances centred around the ka spirit’s burial and resurrection during the Sed festival.
The cult pyramid in Unas’s complex has identifiable remains but has otherwise been destroyed. The preserved elements suggest that it had a base length of 11.5 m (38 ft; 22 cu), a fifth of the main pyramid. The pyramid’s covering slabs were inclined at 69°. This was typical for cult pyramids with a 2:1 ratio-ed slope and thus a height equal to the length of the base, i.e. 11.5 m (38 ft; 22 cu). Perhaps a small channel was dug in front of the pyramid entrance to prevent run-off from entering the pyramid. The first slabs of the descending corridor declined at 30.5°. The pit measures 5.15 m (17 ft; 10 cu) north-south and 8.15 m (27 ft; 16 cu) east-west.
The burial chamber was cut 2.03 m (7 ft; 4 cu) deep into the rock, sits 2.12 m (7 ft; 4 cu) beneath the pavement and measures 5 m (16 ft; 10 cu) by 2.5 m (8 ft; 5 cu).
The “great enclosure” of the main pyramid and inner temple has an identifiable anomaly. Four m (13 ft; 8 cu) from the cult pyramid’s west face, the wall abruptly turns to the north before receding for 12 m (39 ft; 23 cu) toward the main pyramid. It stops 2.6 m (8.5 ft; 5.0 cu) from the main pyramid and returns to its original alignment. The only explanation for this is the presence of the Second Dynasty Hotepsekhemwy’s large tomb, which spans the width of the whole temple and crosses directly under the recess.
The pyramid architects have preferred the enclosure wall to run over the tomb’s passageway rather than the top of the subterranean gallery. The cult pyramid has a secondary enclosure that runs along its north face and half of its west face. This secondary wall was about 1.04 m (3 ft; 2 cu) thick and had a double-door 0.8 m (2.6 ft) wide built close to its start.
Later history
Evidence suggests that Unas’s funerary cult survived through the First Intermediate Period and into the Middle Kingdom, indicating that Unas retained prestige long after death. Two independent pieces of evidence corroborate the existence of the cult in the Middle Kingdom: 1) A stela dated to the Twelfth Dynasty bearing the name Unasemsaf and 2) A statue of a Memphite official, Sermaat, from the Twelfth or Thirteenth Dynasty, with an inscription invoking Unas’s name. The Egyptologist Jaromír Málek contends that the evidence only suggests a theoretical revival of the cult, resulting from the valley temple as a helpful entry path into the Saqqara necropolis, but not its persistence from the Old Kingdom.
Despite renewed interest in the Old Kingdom rulers at the time, their funerary complexes, including Unas’s, were partially reused in constructing Amenemhat I’s and Senusret I’s pyramid complexes at El-Lisht. One block used in Amenemhat’s complex has been positively identified as originating from Unas’s complex, likely taken from the causeway, based on inscriptions containing his name appearing upon it. Several other blocks have their origins speculatively assigned to Unas’s complex.
The Saqqara plateau witnessed a new era of tomb building in the New Kingdom. Starting with the reign of Thutmose III in the Eighteenth Dynasty and up until possibly the Twentieth Dynasty, Saqqara was used as a site for the tombs of private individuals. The largest concentrations of tombs from the period are found in a large area south of Unas’s causeway. This area came into prominent use around the time of Tutankhamun. Unas’s pyramid underwent restorative work in the New Kingdom. In the Nineteenth Dynasty, Khaemweset, High Priest of Memphis and son of Ramesses II, had an inscription carved onto a block on the pyramid’s south side commemorating his restoration work.
Late Period monuments, colloquially called the “Persian tombs”, thought to date to the reign of Amasis II, were discovered near the causeway. These include tombs built for Tjannehebu, Overseer of the Royal Navy; Psamtik, the Chief Physician; and Peteniese, Overseer of Confidential Documents. The Egyptologist John D. Ray explains that the site was chosen because it was readily accessible from Memphis and the Nile Valley. Traces of Phoenician and Aramaic burials have been reported directly south of Unas’s causeway.
