A team of Egyptian-German archaeologists discovered eight storage chambers, known as magazines, during the restoration of the interior of the Sahura pyramid in the Abusir Necropolis, south of Giza.
Archaeologists say this will alter the way the architecture of the Fifth Dynasty, 25th and 24th centuries BC, is understood.
Sahura was the second pharaoh of the Fifth Dynasty and his storage chambers are larger and more numerous than those of his predecessors. “This suggests that additional storage space was needed in the pyramid to accommodate the large amount of royal funerary equipment,” said archaeologist Mohamed Ismail Khaled.
Also worth noting, says Khaled, is that Sahura is possibly the only Old Kingdom king to have witnessed the completion of his pyramid complex and the storage of his funerary equipment.
The pyramid, which is 50 meters high and relatively small, was visited by archaeologists in the 1960s and again in 2006, when a project supported by Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities reached the entrance to the vestibule. It was ultimately canceled due to the danger of falling blocks.
When this latest effort (funded by the American Research Center in Egypt) began in 2019, the passages remained covered in rubble and the pyramid's substructure was in danger of collapsing.
Led by Khaled, an Egyptologist at the University of Würzburg, the team focused on cleaning the interior corridors, replacing severely damaged walls and creating a 3D digital copy of the pyramid's interior. Over the course of three archaeological seasons, typically spring to autumn in Egypt, the team managed to reach and clear Sahura's antechamber. It was there that archaeologists found traces of a passage that agreed with the long-disputed claims of 19th-century British explorer John Perring, who entered and began clearing the pyramid in the late 1830s.
Perring recorded the discovery of a low passage, which he believed would lead to an area of deposits, but was unable to pursue it due to the danger involved in clearing the pyramid - in doing so several members of his team were seriously injured. . Khaled's team managed to clear the entire passage and prove Perring right by discovering the magazines.
“This exceptional number of magazines, as well as the exceptionally long passage, can be considered a new architectural feature of the Old Kingdom pyramids,” Khaled wrote in an article describing the archaeological work.
In addition to securing the space by installing a ceiling of rods and beams, the team used a portable LiDAR scanner to create a comprehensive map of the pyramid's corridors and chambers. The magazines inside the Sahura pyramid will soon be opened to scholars for future research purposes.
“This modern technology has enabled comprehensive mapping and created a lasting record of exploration efforts,” Khaled wrote. “The discovery and restoration of the journals is expected to revolutionize our understanding of the pyramid’s history and architecture, challenging existing paradigms in the field.”
Source: Artnet News