An enjoyable account of a visit to some of the "other" pyramids - examples of the lesser known pyramids at Meidum, Dashur and Saqqara that pre-date the great three at Giza. Daniel Sprott is the author of the Ptolemies Quartet.
Eventually, we reach the sleepy village of Meidum, where goats loiter in the street, and we can see Snofru’s weird three-stepped tower sticking up above the palm trees. Snofru was trying to put up a true pyramid here, with smooth sides, but his experiment failed when the outermost layer of stones collapsed. What is left is an imposing ruin with a mound of debris at the base, hence the name: the Collapsed Pyramid. Near the top, pigeons flutter into a hole, their nesting place for 4,000 years. At the entrance for humans, 65ft off the ground, I take my last gulp of fresh air and crawl down a long, sloping passage barely one yard wide. Then I’m in a horizontal corridor, grateful for the invention of electric light and praying like mad for no power cuts. Before long, I’m standing in the burial chamber, admiring a fine vaulted and corbelled roof 50ft high. In the heart of the pyramid, it’s stiflingly hot, totally creepy but totally wonderful, literally breathtaking, and again we have it all to ourselves. The pigeons stayed at Meidum, but Snofru abandoned his rather big mistake and went back to the drawing board. In fact, he moved his entire outfit back up the road to Dahshur, where he built “the city of the two pyramids”.
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