Before Giza: the Forgotten Pyramids of Dahshur (Bent and Red Pyramids of King Sneferu, C. 2600 BC)

Today I'm here at the Red Pyramid, actually the world's first true pyramid. Kind of nice because it's not as crowded as the Giza Pyramid Complex. But wow, this is pretty impressive. Let's go take a look. But before we do that, let's learn a bit about the fascinating history of this place and the man responsible for the monumental structures we see today. You've probably heard of Khufu, the Egyptian king who built the Great Pyramid of Giza, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. But Khufu and his architects couldn't have built that monument without the groundwork laid by the king who came before him, a ruler who commanded more stone to be moved than any other king in Egyptian history, and whose architects, after more than one spectacular failure, eventually built the world's first true pyramid. That king was Sneferu. Sneferu came to the throne around 2613 BC as the founder of Egypt's fourth dynasty, what many Egyptologists consider the beginning of the Old Kingdom's Golden Age. His origins are complicated. The last king of the third dynasty was a ruler named Huni, and whether Sneferu was truly Huni's son is a question Egyptology has never quite settled. What does seem clear is that he secured his position by marrying a princess named Hetepheres, binding himself to the legitimate royal line. Like pretty much every Egyptian king before him, Sneferu spent the early years of his reign projecting power. The Palermo Stone, one of Egypt's oldest surviving royal annals, records campaigns into Nubia and Libya, bringing back thousands of captives and vast numbers of livestock. Expeditions were sent east to the turquoise mines of the Sinai. In a single year, he imported 40 shiploads of cedar from the port of Byblos in what's now Lebanon. He was building ships, palaces, and monuments on a scale Egypt had rarely seen. All of it seems to have pointed toward one overwhelming ambition, to build a pyramid unlike anything that had come before. The idea probably didn't start with Sneferu. His predecessor, Djoser, had built the famous Step Pyramid at Saqqara around 2650 BC. A magnificent structure, but not a true, smooth-sided pyramid. Sneferu wanted to go further. His first attempt was at Meidum, about 45 kilometers south of the capital Memphis. The pyramid there began as a seven-step structure, later converted into a smooth-sided form by filling the steps with an outer casing. At some point, it gave way, and the whole thing collapsed, leaving the eerie, truncated tower that we see today. A scribe who visited the site wrote that he found it, as though heaven were within it, and the sun rising in it. Whatever this building actually looked like, it wasn't enough for Sneferu. And so, his architects tried yet again, here at Djoser. This time, they planned a true pyramid from the ground up. They started with an ambitious slope angle of 54 degrees. Steep, dramatic, and, as it turned out, pretty dangerous. The pyramid was founded on a soft shale and clay substrate rather than solid bedrock, and as the structure rose, the immense weight caused the internal chambers to settle and crack. A radical redesign was ordered mid-construction. The angle was sharply reduced to just 43 degrees for the upper half, dramatically lightening the load. This is exactly why the profiled bends distinctly halfway up. We call it the Bent Pyramid, and that kink in the silhouette tells you precisely where the crisis occurred. It also has two completely separate internal substructures. One entered from the north side, and the other from the west, believed to have been added at different stages as engineers scramble to stabilize the building and protect the burial chambers. Despite all these errors, the Bent Pyramid retains more of its original fine white Tura limestone casing than almost any other pyramid in Egypt. Which is why it still gleams in the desert sun in a way that the Giza pyramids no longer do. But Sneferu wasn't convinced that it was a safe place to keep his body after death, and so construction began on a second pyramid at Dashur, two kilometers to the north. This time, the architects applied everything they had learned. They built on solid ground, used a consistent angle of 43 degrees from base to peak, and laid the core blocks horizontally rather than inward sloping, a structural improvement that gave the whole building far greater stability. The result rose to a height of 104 meters on a base of 220 meters square, with three spectacular corbel chambers inside. It is today generally recognized as the first true pyramid ever built. In later literary works, Sneferu's called the Beneficent King, an epithet given to no other Egyptian ruler. In the text known as the Prophecy of Neferti, he's called an Excellent King. In the Weskar Papyrus, he appears playful and warm, having a magician part the waters of a lake to retrieve a lost pendant for one of his rowers. His funerary cult lasted well over a thousand years, and graffiti left at Dashur around 1475 BC, over a millennium after his death, reads, May it drip with incense upon the roof of the temple of King Sneferu. So that's a little background on the man whose pyramids we'll be exploring today. So without further ado, let's begin. Let's go walk up there. What a view. Can we go inside? Huh? I have the ticket, yes. Mitabachan, Shahrukh Khan, Amir Khan. Okay, now we're going to go down the pyramid. Gotta watch our head. I should've brought the other camera. It's better with the light. Just here. So I'm inside the Red Pyramid, and looks like we have a long way to go down. It's gonna be fun. Watch your head. Pretty amazing. Still going down. Halfway there. Okay, almost there. It's a bit dark. Inside the Red Pyramid. This is amazing. Inside the Red Pyramid. Amazing. We've reached the end of the road in the Red Pyramid. What an interesting smell. Now it's time for the climb back up. This is gonna be fun. Watch your head. The Bent Pyramid, the Black Pyramid, the Bent Pyramid, and the Red Pyramid. This site is really underrated. I mean, when I went to Giza, I mean, it was so crowded I could barely walk. Here. This is amazing. Let's go a little closer. Look at this. Look at this. Look at this. This is... I guess this would have been the casing. Thanks for watching. I'd also like to thank the channel's patrons for making videos like this possible. 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Thanks again, and if one day you're able to go inside the Red Pyramid, watch your head, and stay safe.