The Reign of Snefru

The Reign of Snefru

The Pyramid Age begins around 2640 BC, with the long reign of Snefru, first king of the Fourth Dynasty; this was the most magnificent and magical period of Egyptian culture. In addition to architecture, the arts of relief sculpture and painting reach their absolute high points. Moreover, in the natural sciences and medicine, the foundations of
knowledge and practice were laid that would remain valid for centuries, right into the Greek era. The belief in the sun god Re, creator of all things, dominated Egyptian religion, ethics, state, and society, which became open and receptive to those with the skills to work on great projects. These individuals formed the new class of “scribes” who were
trained in the practical and theoretical management of the state. This group admitted princes alongside those who had risen by their merits. As guarantor of this system, the sun god Re gives power to the king, whose divinity consisted not in himself; but in his role as ruler. He is the “benign God,” the god of the necropolis that it is his task to construct. Snefru’s Horus name means “Lord of the world order,” a title that later applies only to the sun god Re. Snefru’s son Cheops identified himself with the sun god to such an extent in his pyramid complex and tomb that his sons and successors referred to themselves by the new royal title, “Son of Re.”

Contemporary sources for Snefru’s ancestry and character are rare. His mother Meresankh was probably a secondary queen of Huni, last king of the Third Dynasty, but the male ancestors of kings of the Old Kingdom are never mentioned directly because the king is by nature of divine parentage.
Besides his large pyramid structures, the principal achievements of the reign of Snefru were the campaigns in Nubia and Libya that brought substantial booty in both cattle and men. These were settled in thirty-five new royal estates in the Faiyum and in the Delta. Additional achievements that can be linked to this period include the construction of a new royal palace, possibly near Dahshur, with tall gateways of cedar wood, intensive ship building, the manufacture of life-sized royal statues in copper and gold, and an extremely large wooden harp.
Astonishingly, the building of the pyramids is not mentioned in contemporary documents, although it must have been the main event that took place during a king’s reign. The building of a pyramid, along with the temple ceremonies, the performance of daily rituals that guaranteed the rising and setting of the sun, the passage of the seasons and the arrival of the Nile floods, is such a fundamental part of the king’s natural lifetime task that it hardly needed mentioning. Besides, Snefru was without doubt the most impressive builder of the ancient world, constructing three large and two smaller pyramids in his long reign, using more than 3.6 million cubic metres of stone: one million more than his son Cheops used in his Great Pyramid at Giza. Nonetheless he is known in Egyptian tradition as a good, indeed excellent king, who addressed his subordinates, according to folk tales, as “friend” or even “brother.”

The shape of the pyramid complex changed, under the influence of sun worship, from being a north—south-oriented rectangle into a square east—west complex, directed towards the rising sun. The east- west siting emphasizes a new element in the layout of the pyramid complex: the long causeway. It leads from the east, the land of the living, up to the pyramid tomb, ending at the mortuary temple that from this time onwards lies to the east of the pyramid. The entrance gate to the causeway develops into a valley temple, cult center of the pyramid town, in which the goddess Hathor and the king were worshipped as local deities.


The Pyramids of Snefru

Snefru built his first two pyramids, still in the form of step pyramids, at Meidum. A small, solid step pyramid formed a towering landmark above his palace at Seila, on the eastern edge of the Faiyum. His first full pyramid complex, 10 km to the east, includes a huge step pyramid, which was enlarged in a second building phase to the tremendous height of 85 m, and still dominates the view of the Nile Valley. Toward the end of his long reign Snefru “modernized” this pyramid, changing its form into that of a true pyramid.
Just as the form of the step pyramid had its roots in the preceding Third Dynasty, there were other innovations influenced by the orientation of the pyramid complex toward the sun’s course, mentioned above, and in the system of tomb chambers. Among the cult buildings of the new pyramid complex the only reminders of the Djoser complex are the mortuary temple and the south tomb, which was constructed like the king’s tomb as a small step pyramid directly to the south of the main pyramid. Certainly there is no true mortuary temple in Meidum, since the king was not to be buried there, but to the east of the pyramid lies a stela shrine with two stelae, which replace and physically represent the king. The tomb chamber system in the pyramid also differs from those of the Third Dynasty. The tomb chamber is no longer sunk deep into the subterranean shaft, but lies raised above the rock in the body of the pyramid. The entrance, or exit, on the other hand lies on the north side from now on, and remains in this position throughout the Old Kingdom. Through the tomb corridor leading up from the rock deep underground, the king would ascend to the everlasting stars in the northern sky, in order to meet the sun god in his barque there. The beginnings of a three-chamber system can be seen in the tombs of the First Dynasty: a tomb chamber proper, as well as two subsidiary chambers, which initially served to store the most important offerings for the deceased king. In the tomb of Djoser, the ante- and side-chambers were already conceived as having a religious function. Thus the ascent to the stars begins from the antechamber, and it is for this reason that the portcullis stones are decorated with stars. The eastern galleries of the “blue chambers” are the model palace for the afterlife. In the Fourth Dynasty the horizontal arrangement of the chambers is replaced by a vertical system, of which the Pyramid of Cheops provides the ultimate example.

At Meidum a trend was set by laying out a royal cemetery in regular rows to the northeast of the pyramids with the double mastabas of Snefru’s Sons and their wives. A huge single mastaba stands right by the northeast corner of the pyramid complex and thus in an important position. This was apparently built in a hurry and contains the burial of a nameless prince, probably the crown prince who died young in the early years of Snefru’s reign. We can only speculate as to the reasons why in the fifteenth year of his reign Snefru should have abandoned his palace and the nearly complete pyramid at Meidum, and begun again nearly 50 km north, building a palace and a pyramid near Dahshur. Possibly it proved difficult to control the colonization of the Nile Delta and the trade routes from far away Middle Egypt. The new site near Dahshur, on the other hand, was very convenient. A natural basin for the harbor ensured the development of the region. To the east a trade route led to Sinai, and a wadi led to the western oases, and to the Faiyum. Conveniently sited limestone quarries for building material lay on both sides of the Nile.

A new opportunity was found for the now-idle workers and specialists in a bold undertaking that was to build a towering pyramid without steps, and with a gradient almost as steep as that of the stepped pyramid, to the extraordinary height of about 150 m.

It needs emphasizing here that the development from a step pyramid to the pure geometrical form of the pyramid proper is absolutely not inevitable. None of the other ancient cultures that built step pyramids made this advance. The progression from assembling step- shaped masses to form an artificial hill to the abstract geometrical form of the pyramid is a remarkable intellectual achievement that was the result of an extraordinary and unique gamble in the time of Snefru. Bold improvements were also made in the tomb chambers in the new pyramid, which because of its present form is known as the “Bent Pyramid.” These were to have corbelled vaults, conceived at Meidum and perfected here, up to a height of 15 m. The ensuing alterations necessitated by subsidence and damage during construction resulted in a chamber system in this pyramid that is extraordinarily complicated and difficult to follow.

According to earlier religious descriptions of the king’s afterlife, this took place deep in the underworld. For this reason the lowest of the three tomb chambers had to lie deep into the rock, as in the tomb of Djoser. The upward slope of the tomb corridor is also determined by the requirement for an undeviating passage up to the circumpolar stars. It therefore needed to begin deep in the rock below ground in order to lead to the desired exit, a short distance up the north face of the pyramid. The middle chamber is connected with the king’s ascent to heaven, which is in turn represented by the tomb chamber above, although the ascent also actually lies in the direction followed by the tomb corridor.

In order to facilitate the excavation of a shaft of about 7 by 7 m and
22.5 m deep, a layer of marl and slate was put down first as at Saqqara.
However, this was not adequate to support the weight of the stones.
As the pyramid grew upward sizeable cracks appeared in the three
chambers and in the corridor, and initially it was felt sufficient to repair these by filling. It became clear very quickly, however, that both the lower chambers and the entrance corridor were seriously damaged and could not be saved by any further alterations. Eventually all attempts at repair — even giving up the lower chamber and reducing the pyramid’s angle of slope—proved useless. After fifteen years of building work the boldest of all pyramid projects had to be abandoned. Snefru began work on building a third pyramid.

The step pyramid at Meidum was modernized at the same time, and altered into a true pyramid. For the third of Snefru’s great pyramids, the “Red Pyramid” at north Dahshur, the ground underneath was probably first tested, and the area increased to 220 m along the sides, and it was decided to employ a flatter angle of slope (45 The method of building in layers, which in the construction of a true pyramid brought no economy of labor, was rejected and replaced by horizontal courses of stone. After the pyramids of Cheops and Chephren, the “Red Pyramid” is still the third largest, reaching 105 m in height. Everything about this building contributes to a harmonious, reserved and majestic effect. The system of chambers is also harmonious and easy to follow because they are laid out one behind the other. They are set only just below ground, and reached by an exit in the north wall nearly 30 m above ground, something that must have greatly inconvenienced the introduction of the funeral ceremony and the final blocking off of the corridor.

The foundations of a hastily completed mortuary temple in front of the east side of the pyramid, and the sad remains of a mummified corpse that were found in the tomb chamber, suggest that Snefru was eventually buried in this pyramid. The princes and princesses of the last years of Snefru’s reign are buried in great stone mastabas in the eastern area in front of the two pyramids at Dahshur. These are massive rectangles of stone with smooth exterior walls. Only the east side seems originally to have had two niches, the more southerly of which bore the names of the deceased and perhaps a false door panel. In a small court to the front were possibly displayed two stelae with names and titles. Even the principal queen of this period, probably queen Hetepheres, had only a modest undecorated mastaba. She was, however, not buried in Dahshur but later in Giza, in her son Cheops’
cemetery.

Under Snefru a period of construction lasting nearly fifty years brought remarkable advances in building techniques: in masonry, tunneling, the transport of stone and in structural engineering. The bitter experience of catastrophic collapse due to unstable ground led to extreme caution in the choice of sites. The organization and logistics of a building site profited from the experience of twice relocating the pyramid-building towns. The need for building materials, special types of stone, wood and copper for tools and equipment stimulated expeditions and trade with countries to the north. This brought greater awareness of the surrounding area. The civil service also grew in experience through its varied tasks and became an efficient instrument of central government.