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<< Text Pages >> Djedefre's Pyramid - Pyramid / Mastaba in Egypt in Lower Egypt (North)

Submitted by AlexHunger on Sunday, 16 May 2010  Page Views: 8652

Multi-periodSite Name: Djedefre's Pyramid Alternative Name: Abu Rawash Pyramid
Country: Egypt
NOTE: This site is 11.579 km away from the location you searched for.

Region: Lower Egypt (North) Type: Pyramid / Mastaba
Nearest Town: Cairo  Nearest Village: Abu Rawash
Latitude: 30.032142N  Longitude: 31.074849E
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
2 Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
3 Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
2 Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
4

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Pyramid in Lower Egypt (North). Unfinished pyramid of Khufu's immediate successor Djedefre, half brother of Khafre. For unknown reasons, he chose to built his pyramid about 8 Km north of Giza. He however only ruled for about 6 to 22 years, possibly leaving the pyramid and temple unfinished.

In fact only the chamber built into the bedrock and the shaft where survived, as the site was extensively quarried by the Romans. The rest was hastily done up with mud bricks after his death. The area is closed for normal tourism and special permission as well as an off-road vehicle is required to access this area.

Note: Could Djedefre's Pyramid be a Solar Temple? Not according to research by Baud at the Louvre Museum
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Nearby Images from Flickr
Rawash_14_bw_tx_P1140023
Rawash_9_bw_tx_P1140028
Rawash_10_bw_tx_P1140037
Rawash_11_bw_tx_P1140051
Rawash_12_bw_tx_P1140025

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 7.9km SE 137° Giza Plateau* Pyramid / Mastaba
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 22.1km SE 143° Ptah Hotep Mastaba* Chambered Cairn
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"Djedefre's Pyramid" | Login/Create an Account | 3 News and Comments
  
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Sails set for eternity by Andy B on Friday, 05 April 2013
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Situated eight kilometres northwest of the Giza plateau, Abu Rawash contains vestiges of archaeological remains that date back to various historical periods ranging from the prehistoric to the Coptic eras.

Abu Rawash displays exclusive funerary structures relating not only to the different ancient Egyptian periods but also their places of worship until quite late in time.

There at the prehistoric necropolis dating from the archaic period and located at the northern area of Mastaba number six (a flat-roofed burial structure), Egyptologists from the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology in Cairo (IFAO) have uncovered 11 wooden panels of a funerary boat used by ancient Egyptians to transport the soul of their departed king to the afterlife right through eternity. It is the earliest such boat ever found.

"The boat is in a very well-preserved condition and is almost intact, thanks to the preservation power of the dry desert environment," Minister of State for Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim said. He added that each panel was six metres tall and 1.50 metres in width.

Ibrahim continued that early studies of the panels revealed that the boat belonged to King Den of the First Dynasty, who was not buried in Abu Rawash but whose tomb was found at the royal necropolis of the Early Dynastic kings in the Upper Egyptian town of Abydos.

Because of his young age, King Den shared the throne with his mother, Meritneith. It was said that Den was the best archaeologically attested ruler of his period. He brought prosperity to the land, and many innovations were attributed to his reign. He was the first to use granite in construction and decoration, and the floor to his tomb is made of red and black granite.

During his reign Den established many of the patterns of court ritual and royalty used by his successor kings.

The newly-discovered panels of the boat have been transported to the planned National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation (NMEC) for restoration and reconstruction in the museum's laboratories. Once the museum is opened next year, the funerary boat will be exhibited in the Nile Hall.

King Den's boat is far from the first funerary boat to be discovered. In 1954 historian and archaeologist Kamal El-Malakh discovered the two solar boats of the Fourth-Dynasty king Khufu intact inside two pits beside the pyramid. One of these boats was restored and reconstructed by the renowned restorer Ahmed Youssef and was put on display in a special exhibition hall near the Great Pyramid, while the second one remained in the pit until 1992 when a Japanese archaeological team carried out research on the boat inside the pit. In 2011, the Japanese-Egyptian mission began the first stage of a three-phase project to lift the cedar panels, reconstruct the boat and place it on display at the side of its twin in the planned Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) overlooking Giza plateau, which is planned to be open in 2015.

The Abu Rawash site was described in the early 19th century by European travellers including Howard Vyse and John Shae Perring. Four decades after Karl Lepsius published the results of his research on the pyramid complex of King Djedefre, son of the Great Pyramid builder King Khufu, in 1842, Flinders Petrie -- renowned as the father of Egyptology -- conducted a survey on the funerary complex between 1880 and 1882.

In 1901 and 1902, the IFAO was the first mission to begin in-depth archaeological excavations at the eastern fa³ýade of the pyramid at Abu Rawash. The dig was led by the IFAO Director Emile Chassinat, who discovered several archaeological complexes including the remains of a funerary settlement, an empty boat pit and numerous statuary fragments that bore the name of King Djedefre, which allowed for the identification of the tomb owner. Under the direction of Pierre Lacau, the IFAO continued the excavation work and found new structures to the east of the pyramid of Djedefre.

Howe

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Re: Could Djedefre's Pyramid be a Solar Temple? Not According to New Research by Baud by frogcottage42 on Thursday, 20 May 2010
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It has been widely reported that far from being unfinished this monument was completed and excavation has demonstrated that the mortuary temples attached to it were maintained for at least a thousand years.
Records show that hundreds of tons of high quality masonry were being exported from the site until at least the end of the 19th century and had been quarried continuously since first being dismantled by the Romans.
The choice of site is not so strange either, in a climate where the labours of building the larger monuments at Giza had left the population weary, building at altitude allows the structure at this site to share the same overall elevation without the huge mass.
The elevated position also allowed followers of Djedefre's mortuary cult to see the ritual landscape as they climbed to what is believed to have been a solar temple and pyramid.
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Could Djedefre's Pyramid be a Solar Temple? Not According to New Research by Baud by Andy B on Sunday, 16 May 2010
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Dr Michel Baud of the Louvre Museum in Paris gave an interesting lecture last week about his excavations of a pyramid at Abu Roash. The monument was badly preserved and its stone had been quarried in Roman times, but the certain details, such as its apparent solar connections, were still discernable. Earlier, Vassil Dobrev stated that the pyramid may actually be a solar temple. However, Baud dismisses these claims....

Nearly 4,500 years ago, in the time of the Old Kingdom, the pharaoh Khufu built one of the greatest monuments on earth - the Great Pyramid. His pyramid was actually a complex of monuments at Giza. Using up 2.7 million cubic meters of stone, it incorporated three queens’ pyramids, a satellite pyramid and hundreds of mastaba tombs for his officials. At a height of nearly 147 meters it was the tallest human-made monument in the world – up until the construction of the Lincoln Cathedral in the 14th century AD.

So what did Khufu’s successor do? The person who succeeded him as pharaoh would have had a tough act to follow. We know that the person who succeeded him as pharaoh was a man called Djedefre (also spelled Radjedef). He was Khufu’s son and, like his father, would have had access to the vast resources of the Egyptian state.

More, with photos at
http://heritage-key.com/blogs/owenjarus/could-djedefres-pyramid-be-solar-temple-not-according-new-research-baud
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