Bent Pyramid

Interesting facts

The pyramid has two separate entrances, one low on the north face and one about 33 metres up the west face, each leading to its own chamber system.

Its upper passage was sealed by stone portcullises that slid down 45-degree ramps; one is still held up by a prop of ancient cedar wood.

A block in the upper chamber bears Sneferu's name in hieroglyphs, the inscription that ties the pyramid to him, though no sarcophagus was ever found.

Its ancient name is usually translated as 'Sneferu Shines in the South' or 'The Southern Shining Pyramid'.

Had the lower 54-degree slope continued to the top, the pyramid would have reached roughly 129 metres instead of its actual height of about 105 metres.

One engineer has suggested the casing survived because its blocks were set with wider gaps, which worked as expansion joints against the desert's heat cycles.

Original cedar beams still span parts of the interior chambers, and scholars still debate whether they were structural supports or part of the funerary installation.

Archaeologists Nicole Alexanian and Felix Arnold found that the plateau around it was artificially levelled and trenched, making the setting itself a designed landscape.

A channel linked the pyramid complex to a harbour, and traces of a garden enclosure in the desert may have served funerary rites.

Red quarry marks and graffiti in its temple and enclosure date from Sneferu's reign, confirming when the complex was built.

Why it is worth it

Look at the Bent Pyramid's silhouette and you're watching an engineering crisis happen in stone, frozen mid-decision. The lower two-thirds rise at a steep 54 degrees; then, abruptly, the angle flattens to about 43 degrees for the rest of the climb. Sneferu's builders, working around 2600 BCE on what was meant to be Egypt's first true smooth-sided pyramid, apparently saw cracking and settling in the structure as it rose and changed the design mid-construction rather than risk a collapse. It's the clearest physical evidence anywhere of ancient architects improvising under pressure.

That mid-build panic left an unexpected bonus for anyone visiting today: because the upper section is shallower and lighter, the Bent Pyramid kept most of its original polished white Tura limestone casing, the smooth outer shell that has long since been stripped from Giza's pyramids for later building projects. It's the best surviving impression anywhere in Egypt of what a pyramid actually looked like when new, rather than the stepped, exposed core stone most visitors picture.

Sneferu didn't treat the scare as a failure and move on — he treated it as data. He had a small satellite pyramid built alongside the bent one, and, still not satisfied, commissioned an entirely separate structure a couple of kilometers away built correctly from the start at the gentler 43-degree angle: the Red Pyramid, Egypt's first successful true pyramid. Dahshur is effectively a father's three-part experiment in getting the geometry right, laid out on the ground for anyone willing to walk between them.

Getting there

9 km from Al Badrashayn. Cairo International Airport (CAI) is about 40 km away.

Plan your visit

We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.

From the encyclopaedia

The Bent Pyramid is an ancient Egyptian pyramid located at the royal necropolis of Dahshur, approximately 40 kilometres (25 mi) south of Cairo, built under the Old Kingdom Pharaoh Sneferu. A unique example of early pyramid development in Egypt, this was the second of four pyramids built by Sneferu.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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From the encyclopaedia