Deadly BOOBY TRAP Hidden in an Ancient Egyptian Pyramid

This is the first pyramid to be built in Egypt after the turbulent first intermediate period that ended the Old Kingdom. It's a pyramid that incorporates masonry from the famous Old Kingdom pyramids of Khufu, Khafre, Yusakath, Unas, Pepi and more. And amazingly, it's a pyramid fitted with a somewhat sophisticated booby trap. Imagine dozens of granite drums rushing towards you, set up to crush anyone that thinks they've outmanoeuvred the powerful god-king of Egypt. This is exactly what was planned for this now ruined pyramid, the only Egyptian pyramid fitted with a trap, and in this video I'll tell you all about it. Hello everybody and welcome to Ancient Architects. Please subscribe to the channel for regular content on ancient architecture as well as all the latest news from the world of archaeology. A recent guide by the brilliant researcher Keith Hamilton, looked at the pyramid of Amenemhat I at Lisht, a structure not often discussed on YouTube, being overshadowed by the size and splendour of its Old Kingdom counterparts. But it's a structure with some very curious details. Amenemhat I was the first pharaoh of the 12th dynasty, ruling during Egypt's Middle Kingdom. The beginning and end of the Middle Kingdom, when Egypt came out of the first intermediate period and then into the second, were both transition periods spanning many years. Generally speaking, the Middle Kingdom includes the 11th, 12th and 13th dynasties, a time period sandwiched between two periods of chaos, with a fragmented Egypt and no unifying rule. But the founder of the Middle Kingdom, 6th ruler of the 11th dynasty was Mentuhotep II. He reunified the country and set Egypt on course for a new period of prosperity. While the 11th dynasty came to an end we don't know with any certainty, the reign of the last king Mentuhotep IV is somewhat of a mystery and it coincides with what records say were 7 empty years. How the 12th dynasty began is also unknown, whether the king died or there was some kind of palace coup, because the new king, Amenemhat I is not believed to be a royal lineage, but experts believe it was actually the previous vizier, another word for prime minister. Either way, the 12th dynasty turned out to be a period of stability and development in Ancient Egypt, a time when the pharaohs would honour their ancestors and begin building pyramids once again. Amenemhat moved the capital to a place called Idjetawe, which is still an unknown location today, but it is thought to be near the Fayum region, close to where he built his pyramid at Building a pyramid was likely a way to legitimise his rule by aligning himself with the kings of Yesteryear, a promise to the people that the glory days of the old kingdom would return. His Horus name was Wehemesu and this means renaissance or rebirth, an allusion to the old kingdom period whose main cultural icon was of course the pyramid. Under Amenemhat, Egypt saw a steady return to a more centralised government and the cult of the king rose once again. It was therefore fitting that he recommence pyramid building, but unsurprisingly, his structure at Lisht was nothing compared to what we saw in the old kingdom. There was more than a century of turmoil, generations of lost knowledge and no pyramid had been built in Egypt for around 200 years. The pyramid had a core made of rough limestone blocks with gaps plugged with sand, debris and mud brick. But what is most unusual is that inside the core and inside the substructure and also in the pavement, we find many examples of decorated blocks and they were pilfered from the monuments of the old kingdom. There are many examples of decorated blocks from Khufu's Great Pyramid Complex and we also find stonework from Khafre, Unas and Pepi II. There are nautical scenes, agricultural scenes, sacred gods and images of Egypt's said festival and these are just the blocks we know about. There could be many more from other old kingdom pyramid complexes. And we have to ask why? Why go to so much trouble to scavenge blocks from these specific pyramid complexes? Giza is 29 miles downriver. He didn't need to go that far for blocks from ruined structures. There would have been plenty in Dashur and Saqqara and these are both closer to Lisht. Amenemhat seems to have taken stone from these specific sites for a reason. It is another mystery of ancient Egypt and one I'll discuss in a forthcoming video. Because first we need to look at the pyramid structure itself and somehow, even in 2025, we don't know a great deal. But what we do know is it is worthy of more attention because there's a feature inside this pyramid that's not seen anywhere else. At Lisht there are two pyramids, a north and a south. The southern one belonged to his son, Senesret I and it's believed that a co-regency existed between father and son. Today both pyramids are off the tourist path, they're not spectacles that dazzle us with their beauty but look like eroded mounds of rubble. You also can't go down into the substructure and that's because of the level of the groundwater. The pyramid of Amenemhat was explored by Pering in the 19th century, Lepsius also documented it, but it was Gaston Maspero in 1883 who found a way into the substructure which was found to be partly underwater. Gautier and Jekier would document the pyramid in 1894 and there was more exploration from 1906 to 1922, although nothing major was published regarding the findings. It was Dieter Arnold that published the most in-depth study into the pyramid in 1991. There are two volumes titled The Pyramid Complex of Amenemhat I at Lisht. There wasn't much new excavation work in the 1990s. The water was planned to be pumped out of the submerged passages and chambers, but this was abandoned due to technical difficulties. An underwater robot was sent into the submerged vertical shaft in 1994, but we still don't know how deep it was and also what it leads to. The fact is very little work has been done on this pyramid and basically nothing in the past 30 years, but I strongly believe we should turn our attention to it. In this video, I won't go into the finer details of the pyramid complex, I won't be discussing the layout and associated structures, but for those that want to know more, you have to check out Keith Hamilton's fantastic guide linked below. In this video, I really want to focus on one specific aspect of the pyramid's substructure. You enter the pyramid on the northern side in a central position. Reliefs found by the entrance would suggest there was once a chapel here, as envisioned by Keith Hamilton in this diagram. Today the entrance is filled with debris, with the granite ceiling stone shown here in a photo from 2018. The angle of the passage is quite shallow at 12 to 14 degrees and because of the removal of stone from the pyramid for modern builds, some 6 to 8 metres of the passage are missing. Originally, the entrance would have been around one cubit above ground. The passage is 75 cm wide and 86 to 96 cm in height and it extends for 40.5 metres before it levels out. There we reach what is called the well chamber, a small space that once had a slab covering the floor. Beneath the slab is a vertical shaft with an opening that measures just 70 by 75 cm in size. These early diagrams show the descending passageway and well shaft at the end and although more schematic than accurate, it's worth mentioning the inset picture showing a limestone block from the old kingdom. Another block, possibly from the pyramid of Usserkath is also further towards the entrance. The walls, floor and ceiling of the descending passageway are all made of granite and it was plugged up along its length and this plugging mechanism is unlike anything else we've seen before. In fact, I would go as far as to call it an ancient booby trap. It may sound far-fetched, like a scene from The Mummy or Indiana Jones, but this is what the evidence says because many of the plug blocks are in fact cylindrical in shape. This is a schematic diagram by Keith Hamilton showing standard squared granite plug blocks closest to the entrance. Any tomb robbers finding the entrance would likely think the same kind of plug blocks would fill the entire passage, but beyond the squared plugs are large round granite drums, each with a diameter of 85 cm. These are then followed by smaller drums, around half a diameter, and these are made of gneiss, a hard heavy metamorphic rock. The well chamber at the end of the passage had a cover stone on the floor and there were stacks of irregular blocks of gneiss on top, likely filling the entire chamber. So, in profile, the security mechanism looks something like this. As Hamilton points out in his guide, the whole plugging mechanism is set up like a booby trap. On finding the entrance to the pyramid, the robbers would think the passage is filled with standard squared plug blocks and so they would likely dig around the granite line descending passageway, tracing its path until they reach the end, which is where we find the well chamber. Smashing into it from the side, they'd find a small room that was filled with irregular stone blocks. If they moved the irregular blocks of gneiss, maybe placing them into their crude robber's tunnel they'd just dug, well, this would cause the drums to roll towards them. It's one thing removing a number of irregular blocks of stone via the robber's tunnel, but it's another removing 32 granite drums, each with a diameter of 85 cm, not to mention the fact that the robbers could have been crushed by the rolling drums during the robbery. The well chamber contains a vertical shaft, but to get inside, you need to somehow figure out a way to remove the heavy blocks of stone and also stop the drums from rolling down. Only then can you lift up the slab of rock that covers the well. Armin Emhack created an intricate, multifaceted security mechanism and one that he hoped would force any tomb robber to simply give up. But they didn't, and it seems that tomb robbers outwitted the pharaoh and his architect. Robbers did tunnel around the granite line descending passageway as expected, but they also tunneled beneath, once at around 6 metres and again at around 11, probably to check if the passageway was plugged for its entire length. At 6 metres, a granite floor block was brought down as they tunnelled into the limestone below, and at 11 metres, a floor block as well as drums were brought down. Realising the entire passage was likely plugged with these round drumstones, they dug along the length of the descending passage for a total of 35 metres, breaking into it at the position of the smaller, nice drums. Knowing that there were hard drumstones blocking much of the passage, they excavated quite a large area, bringing down drums and building stone, and this would stop the security system from working. There was enough structural damage to the passageway to stop the drums from rolling. It seems as though some of the heavy, irregular, nice blocks from the well chamber were pushed up the passage in front of the drums as well, to ensure they were firmly wedged inside the damaged passage. The robbers were clearly tenacious, committed to the task of gaining access, and they understood how to thwart the Pharaoh's plan by excavating the limestone and destabilising the floor of the passage. We also have a rough date for the robbery. Experts dated the oil lamps that were found inside the pyramid to the 13th dynasty, meaning the pyramid was violated in the second intermediate period of ancient Egyptian history. There were no finds that indicated a burial chamber had ever been looted, and Dieter Arnold even suggested the structure may not have been for a burial, that it was in fact a cenotaph structure. The granite drums were described as nicely round, maybe repurposed from Old Kingdom columns. The drums and blocks made from gneiss were likely also pilfered stone. The quality of the rock inside the passage led Arnold to believe they came from a monument of great importance. Some of the gneiss blocks at the end of the passage were huge, and they also had neat drill holes cut into them. This is Keith Hamilton's diagram of how he believes the tomb was sealed after construction, with the gneiss stone blocks filling the well chamber. Then the gneiss drums would have been added behind, followed by the granite drums and then the large granite plugs. I guess the thinking by the Pharaoh and his architect was that if robbers burrowed through the limestone, tracing the granite walls of the descending passageway all the way to the well chamber at the end, that would be the point they'd break in. Then they would have had to remove the gneiss blocks into their tunnel, to allow them to lift up the stone slabs that covered the well shaft. But removing the gneiss blocks would trigger the rolling drum stones, and that is the ancient booby trap, skilfully avoided by the 13th Dynasty robbers. They dug beneath the passage, and this caused the floor blocks to buckle and some of the drums to drop down. But what was being guarded by the booby trap? What's at the bottom of the well shaft? Unbelievably, it's still never been explored and there's no evidence the robbers ever went in. And in my next video on this subject, I'll tell you a very exciting possibility about what may lie at the bottom of the well. Thank you very much for watching this episode of Ancient Architects. If you enjoyed the video, please subscribe to the channel, please like the video and please leave a comment below. Thank you very much!