The pyramid of Unas (Egyptian: Nfr swt Wnjs, lit. 'Beautiful are the places of Unas') is the funerary monument built for the Egyptian pharaoh Unas, the ninth and final king of the Fifth Dynasty, in the 24th century BC. 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 subterranean chambers. Inscribed for the first time in Unas's pyramid, the tradition of these 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 provide access to 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 underlay for the causeway. A significant stretch of Djoser's causeway was reused for embankments. Tombs that were 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 in a similar manner to Djedkare Isesi's. A transverse corridor separates the outer from the inner temple. The entry chapel of the inner temple has been completely destroyed, though it once contained five statues in niches. A feature of the inner temple was a single quartzite column that was contained in the antichambre carrée. The room is otherwise ruined. Quartzite is an atypical material to use in 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 coloration.
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, smallest and best preserved corpus of religious writing from the Old Kingdom. Their function was to guide the ruler through to eternal life and ensure his continued survival even if the funerary cult ceased to function. In Unas's case, the funerary cult may have survived the turbulent First Intermediate Period and up until the Twelfth or Thirteenth Dynasty, during the Middle Kingdom. This is a matter of dispute amongst Egyptologists, where a competing idea is that the cult was revived during the Middle Kingdom, rather than having survived until then.
Location and excavation
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.
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, as well as a series of tombs from the Second Dynasty and the Late Period. Later excavations by Cecil Mallaby Firth, from 1929 until his death 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 their 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 major 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 built to demarcate the temple's plan.
Mortuary complex
Layout
Unas's complex is situated between the pyramid of Sekhemkhet and the south-west corner of the pyramid complex of Djoser. It is in symmetry with the pyramid of Userkaf situated at the north-east corner, in 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 constructed 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 north-east to north-west corner is about 86 m (282 ft; 164 cu) long, and stretches 76 m (249 ft; 145 cu) from north to south.
Main pyramid
Though Unas's reign lasted for around thirty to thirty-three years, his pyramid was the smallest built 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 core of the pyramid was built six steps high, constructed with roughly dressed limestone blocks which decreased in size in each step. The construction material for the core would, ideally, 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 an angle of approximately 56°, giving it a height of 43 metres (141 ft; 82 cu) on completion. The pyramid had a total volume of 47,390 m3 (61,980 cu yd). The pyramid was smooth-sided. The pyramid has since been ruined, as have all others of the Fifth Dynasty, a result of its poor construction and materials. 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 north-east of the main pyramid. Each queen was accorded separate rooms and an individual entrance, though the layout of the tombs is 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 chapel, called the "north chapel" or "entrance chapel", was situated 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 indicates that the chapel was a "miniature offering chapel".
The entrance into the substructure of the pyramid lay under the chapel's pavement. The substructure of the pyramid 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° that leads 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 both the antechamber and burial chamber were gabled, in a similar fashion 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 originally presumed. The coffin was undamaged, but its contents had been robbed. A canopic chest had once been buried at the foot of the south-east corner of the coffin. Traces of the burial are fragmentary; all that remain are portions of a mummy, including its right arm, skull and shinbone, as well as 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, while 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 walls appear to contain blocks reused from one of Khufu's constructions, possibly his pyramid complex at Giza, as an earlier scene of the king (identified by his Horus name Medjedu) fishing with a harpoon was discovered beneath those carved for Unas, and can be seen under specific lighting angles and in dim or dark conditions.
The ceiling of the burial chamber 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 parts of the corridor were inscribed with a series of vertically written texts, chiselled in bas-relief and painted blue.
Pyramid Texts of Unas
The inscriptions, known as the Pyramid Texts, were the central innovation of Unas's pyramid, on whose subterranean walls they were first etched. The Pyramid Texts are the oldest large corpus of religious writing known from ancient Egypt. A total of 283 such spells, out of at least 1,000 known and an indeterminate number of unknown ones, appear in Unas's pyramid. The spells are the smallest and best-preserved collection of Pyramid Texts known from the Old Kingdom. Though they first appeared in Unas's pyramid, many of the texts are significantly older. The texts subsequently appeared in the pyramids of the kings and queens of the Sixth to Eighth Dynasties, until the end of the Old Kingdom. With the exception of a single spell, copies of Unas's texts appeared throughout the Middle Kingdom and later, including a near complete replica of the texts in the tomb of Senwosretankh at El-Lisht.
Ancient Egyptian belief held that the individual consisted of three basic parts; the body, the ka, and the ba. When the person died, the ka would separate from the body and return to the gods from where it had come, while the ba remained with the body. The body of the individual, interred in the burial chamber, never physically left; but the ba, awakened, released itself from the body and began its journey toward new life. Significant to this journey was the Akhet: the horizon, a junction between the earth, the sky, and the Duat. To ancient Egyptians, the Akhet was the place from where the sun rose, and so symbolised a place of birth or resurrection. In the texts, the king is called upon to transform into an akh in the Akhet. The akh, literally "effective being", was the resurrected form of the deceased, attained through individual action and ritual performance. If the deceased failed to complete the transformation, they became mutu, that is "the dead". The function of the texts, in congruence with all funerary literature, was to enable the reunion of the ruler's ba and ka leading to the transformation into an akh, and to secure eternal life among the gods in the sky.
The writings on the west gable in Unas's burial chamber consist of spells that protect the sarcophagus and mummy within. The north and south walls of the chamber are dedicated to the offering and resurrection rituals respectively, and the east wall contains texts asserting the king's control over his sustenance in the form of a response to the offering ritual. The offering ritual texts continue onto the north and south walls of the passageway splitting the resurrection ritual which concludes on the south wall. In the rituals of the burial chamber, the king is identified both as himself and as the god Osiris, being addressed as the Osiris Unas. The king is also identified with other deities, occasionally several, alongside Osiris in other texts. The Egyptologist James Allen identifies the last piece of ritual text on the west gable of the antechamber: