The interior chambers of the “Bent Pyramid” can be entered either from the north or west.
From the northern entrance, high up on the north face of the pyramid, a long passageway slopes down to the bedrock. Here an antechamber was built and roofed with a corbelled vault. Above this is the burial chamber, which must have been reached by stairs or a ladder. It also has a corbelled roof. The entrance in the western face of the pyramid slopes down to a point above the bedrock and ends in another passage leading to another corbelled chamber. At some point, somebody who knew exactly where both chambers were, hacked out a rough passage between the two.
A very strange discovery was made by British archeologists John Perring and Richard Howard Vyse who excavated this pyramid in the 1830s. Their workmen were clearing the interior passages and suffering greatly from the interior heat. On October 15, 1839, they opened a tunnel that led to one of the interior chambers. Suddenly, they were greeted by a refreshing draft of cool air, so strong that it blew out their torches. The wind continued for 2 days and then stopped as suddenly as it had started, leaving the archeologists completely mystified as to its source. The only reasonable explanation is that there is a connection between this room and the outside of the pyramid. We know that it could not have come through the western tunnel, as this was not opened until 1951, by Ahmed Fahri.
Fahri, during his work in Dahshur, made another strange discovery. Sometimes, as the wind blew through the pyramid, it could make an eerie wailing, clearly audible inside the pyramid, especially from the western end of the passage. The noise would continue for 10 second and then stop. The only explanation Fahri found satisfying was that some parts of the interior have not yet been discovered, and that these parts connect with the outside.
I recently took twelve of my students from the American University in Cairo to explore the interior chambers of the unique pyramid. We climbed up to the northern entrance, then climbed down the passage 80m long and only 1.1m high. We had to hunker to make our way to the first corbelled chamber. From there we had to climb 6.25m up some rather rickety wooden stairs to reach the level of the lower burial chamber. Inside we found two tunnels leading from the south wall to a shaft: they did not seem to continue. We saw another tunnel, about 12m long which led to another tunnel, oriented east-west. We headed west and found the second burial chamber. We could see the ancient cedar beams that Snefru’s expedition to Byblos had brought back millenia before, still in good shape. We could also feel cold air coming from the exterior of the pyramid via some indeterminate source. One clue that this pyramid still holds mysteries to be solved.
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(My own guess would be that by clearing the passage, Perring’s workers suddenly unlocked an area of heat-compressed air, which, expanding, caused wind; and, as any expanding air, felt cool. It still is a — er — cool story all the same).
Zahi Hawass, Mountains of the Pharaohs: The Untold Story of the Pyramid BuildersLink opens in new window
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