The Bent Pyramid at Dahshur changes angle partway up its sides. Built for Sneferu in the Fourth Dynasty, it rises steeply near the ground and becomes shallower above, producing the outline that gives it its modern name.
The change in slope
Egypt’s antiquities ministry gives the lower angle as about 55 degrees and the upper angle as 43 degrees. It describes the change as an engineering response to instability under the load of the blocks.
An older explanation connected the adjustment with a sudden collapse at Meidum. The ministry’s Meidum record instead describes layered debris consistent with gradual destruction. That account changes the basis for linking the two events.
Sneferu also built the Red Pyramid, about a kilometre to the north. The ministry lists it as Egypt’s third-largest pyramid.
Two entrances, two chamber levels
The Bent Pyramid has an entrance on its north side and another high on its west face. Each leads to a chamber with a corbelled roof. The northern chamber lies below ground, while the western chamber sits within the pyramid’s masonry.
The temple beyond the pyramid
The monument was part of a larger religious complex. The German Archaeological Institute’s temple project is studying the finds Ahmed Fakhry recovered in and around its temple in the 1950s. The corpus includes roughly 4,000 objects, with more than 1,500 relief fragments and over 300 statue fragments.
DAI excavations also found a transport route made largely of reused limestone temple blocks. Reliefs on some of those stones preserve elements of the building’s original decoration, giving researchers evidence to reconstruct its scenes and the changing activity around it.
The wider Dahshur project places the pyramid within a landscape of royal monuments, officials’ tombs and settlements. Sneferu’s cult continued through the Old Kingdom. Dahshur later became a royal burial ground again during the Middle Kingdom.
Related Curiosmos coverage: the Pyramid of Meidum.
