Hawara is an archaeological site of Ancient Egypt, south of the area of Crocodilopolis (‘Arsinoë’, also known as ‘Medinet al-Faiyum’) at the entrance to the depression of the Fayyum oasis. It is the site of a pyramid built by the Pharaoh Amenemhat III in the 19th century BC.
Location of Hawara
The site of Hawara lies in the south-eastern Fayoum region, about 100km south of Cairo, Egypt. It is located at the western end of the Lahun Gap, a natural depression between the Fayoum and the Nile Valley. It is the burial place of Amenemhat III (c. 1855-1808 BC), the sixth Pharaoh of the 12th Dynasty.
History
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” created by the same ruler at Dahshur. This is believed to have been Amenemhet’s final resting place. At Hawara, there was also the intact (pyramid) tomb of Neferu-Ptah, daughter of Amenemhet III. This tomb was found about 2 km south of the king’s pyramid.
In common with the Middle Kingdom pyramids constructed after Amenemhat II, it was built of mudbrick around a core of limestone passages 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. Today, the pyramid is little more than an eroded, vaguely pyramidal mountain of mud brick. Little is left beyond the foundation bed of compacted sand, chips, and limestone shards of the once magnificent mortuary temple precinct formerly enclosed by a wall.
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 Arsinoë has been suggested as the ultimate destination of Middle Kingdom limestone columns and blocks removed from Hawara, and now lost.
Pharaoh Sobekneferu of the Twelfth Dynasty was also built at the complex. Her name meant “most beautiful of Sobek”, the sacred crocodile.
Pyramid
From the pyramid entrance, a sloping passageway with steps runs down to a small room and a further short horizontal passage. On the roof of this horizontal passage, there was a concealed sliding trapdoor weighing 20 tons. If this were found and opened, a robber would find himself confronted by an empty path at a right angle to the passage below, closed by wooden doors, or by a passage parallel to the course below, carefully filled with mud and stone. He would assume that the blocking concealed the entrance and wasted time removing it (thereby increasing the likelihood of detection by the pyramid guardians).
There was a second 20-ton trapdoor in the roof of the empty passage, giving onto a second unobstructed passage at a right angle to the first. This, too, had a 20-ton trapdoor passing onto a passage at a right angle to its predecessor (thus, the pyramid’s interior was circled by these passages). However, this passage ended in a large mud and stone blocking that presumably concealed the burial chamber.
However, this was blind and merely filled a wide but shallow alcove. Two blind shafts in the floor, carefully filled with cut stone blocks, further wasted the robbers’ time, for the actual entrance to the burial chamber was even more carefully concealed and lay between the blind shafts and opposite the alcove.
Despite these elaborate protective measures, Petrie found that none of the trapdoors had been slid into place, and the wooden doors were open. Whether this indicated negligence on the part of the burial party, an intention to return and place further burials in the pyramid (when found, there were two sarcophagi in the quartzite monolith described below and room for at least two more), or a deliberate action to facilitate robbery of the tomb, we cannot know.
The burial chamber was made of a single quartzite monolith lowered into a larger chamber lined with limestone. This monolithic slab weighed an estimated 110 tons, according to Petrie. A course of brick was placed on the chamber to raise the ceiling, and then the chamber was covered with three quartzite slabs (estimated weight of 45 tons each). Above the burial chamber were two relieving chambers. This was topped with 50-ton limestone slabs forming a pointed roof. Then, an enormous arch of brick 3 feet thick was built over the pointed roof to support the pyramid’s core.
Today, the entrance to the pyramid is flooded to a depth of 6 metres due to the waters from the Bahr Yussef (Joseph’s) Canal, which flows around two sides of the site and passes within 30m of the pyramid.
Excavations
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 1st and 2nd centuries CE. And north of the pyramid, a vast cemetery where he found 146 portraits on coffins dating to the Roman period, famous as among the few surviving examples of painted portraits from classical antiquity, the “Fayum” mummy portraits from Roman Egypt. Among the discoveries made by Petrie were papyrus manuscripts, including an excellent papyrus scroll, which contains parts of books 1 and 2 of the Iliad (the “Hawara Homer” of the Bodleian Library, Oxford).
