Dahshur is quiet. Partly because its further out and lesser-known than Saqarra and Giza, but its also quiet because its really on the edge of true desert. There are just two Tourism Police guards for the entire site and no trinket sellers, no touts, no camels or horse rides offered, nothing really. Its beautiful and calm. The two pyramids that comprise the visitable areas are the “Red” pyramid and the “Bent” pyramid. The former is named for the now-crumbling stones that are thought by some to have a slight pinkish-red caste to them (undetectable to my eye), and the latter due to its very peculiar shape. The Bent pyramid literally changes angle of ascent a little over half-way up. You’ll see this pyramid below here as well; its quite obvious. There are two prevailing theories for its odd shape. It could be that the Pharaoh died sooner than expected as they were constructing it, and the builders changed the angle of ascent to finish the job in a hurried-up fashion. But its also possible the architect(s) realized a fault in the angle that may have led to instability over time and changed the angle to assure greater permanence. The Red pyramid resembles those at Giza, and Djoser’s (to a degree) at Saqarra, in that the facing is rough and stepped by blocks that create its shape. Its known that these pyramids previously each had a limestone facing, making their sides smooth and bright; allowing them to shine in the dessert like beacons, lit from within. They must have been stupendous to see that way.
So why aren’t they limestone-faced now? Where did it all go? There certainly aren’t any rubble piles of any size around their collective bases to account for the lost stone. The answer is, of course, that the stone facing was removed, block by block, over time by inhabitants of the surrounding areas for re-use in the construction of their homes, mosques and other buildings. Giza is so close to Cairo, the city having grown right up to its edges, that the poor Sphinx gazes not into eternity as intended, but into a Pizza Hut not half a kilometre away. In fact, I am told that its actually possible to discern from aerial imaging of Cairo a slight lighter caste of colour to the city in the area that creeps up on the Giza plateau – the re-used stone over time finding its new place in ways the pharaonic architects never imagined. Which brings me to the Bent pyramid.
Even the most ingenuous observer will note that the Bent pyramid still retains most of its limestone sheathing. Its smooth and clean (for the most part), and largely intact. Why so? Its the only one on the entire plateau to have remained this way. The answer is ingenious, and damned clever. With the other pyramids, the sheathing blocks were shaped and slid into place on the structures in a horizontal fashion. It remained for subsequent parties interested in their re-use to simply slide the blocks back out and cart them off. I say “simply”, but of course it should be realized that it could have been no easy matter at all as the sheathing stones would have weighed between 1 and 5 tons each. Now, the architect of the Bent pyramid perhaps saw some of this theft elsewhere – or imagined its happening – and devised a way to insert the sheathing blocks so as to make this sliding out of the individual stones virtually impossible. They are placed at a slight angle down and in. Anyone reading this who may have hefted multi-ton blocks in their time will know that horizontally-sliding out one such block is an entirely different thing from lifting such a block to get it to a point where it can slide out. It is orders of magnitude more difficult and elementary physics will tell the remover to abandon the idea altogether – which is exactly what they did. It was too damned hard to get them out. Is that a cool solution to theft or what? I have included a photo below of the profile of this pyramid and some lower-down tumble that sort of shows this slight angle down and in of the blocks’ insertions.
Being on the edge of true desert, there is little around the Dahshur Group to detract from the pristine view. There is a military base exactly right beside the Red and Bent pyramids, necessitating I presume the Tourist Police at the site who follow you around either discretely or overtly (pointing out obvious features in an attempt to extract some Pounds from you afterwards). But my goodness its lovely and open and clear there. Well, the air isn’t clear, or wasn’t the day we visited there (the day before yesterday now as I write on my couch in Newcastle!). It was thick and hazy and slightly peach-coloured. The pyramids loomed up before our approaching van like ghosts and yet seemed eternal and permanent. Our visit was quite different, atmosphere-wise, than that I experienced 12 years ago, but lovely nonetheless.
We stopped at Giza once again on the way back from Dahshur. Our visit there had allowed for only an hour or so’s visit. The Plateau closes at 4pm and we’d reached it in early December at 3pm or so, climbed down into the interior of the Great Pyramid of Khufu and headed back to the van. We had wanted more time there (and Mum wanted to visit the “Solar” boat museum again, having first seen it in 1995 during her first visit to Egypt), and I was keen to try out some time-lapse photography. This is a technique wherein the camera is set on a tripod and set to take images by itself in a single direction over a specified period of time. This tool in the camera is called an intervalometer. I set the camera to take one picture every two seconds (for example), and set a limit of 300 pictures. This entailed 600 seconds total or ten minutes worth of imaging in real time. The camera just sits on its tripod going click, click, click by itself until it’s taken 300 pictures. Its a very cool feature and I set it this way six times during our visit to Egypt, with three setups happening at Giza on our last day (can you guess my anxiety at leaving and not having covered things properly with my camera? 🙂 ). I’ll see if I can add a sample movie to the end of this last post.
And so thank you for following us along on our sojourn, if you have. Its been a dry and dusty ride; often cold, sometime fractious, always interesting. I hope I go again.
