Amenemhat's pyramid
A mud-brick pyramid.
Roland Unger — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Roland Unger — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Axel Seedorff (user Aoswch) — CC BY-SA 2.0 de · Pyramid_of_amenemhet_hawarra_01.jpg: Markh at en.wikipedia derivative work: JMCC1 (talk) — Public domain · Unknown — CC BY-SA 2.5 · Einsamer Schütze — CC BY-SA 3.0
The pyramid of King Amenemhat III of the Twelfth Dynasty, Middle Kingdom, in the nineteenth century BC, the king whose reign tied Fayoum to great irrigation and land-reclamation works. It was built of mud brick and cased in limestone, but its casing was stripped over the centuries, leaving a dark, eroded mass. South of the pyramid stood its huge mortuary temple, which the Greek historian Herodotus described as the Labyrinth and said surpassed the pyramids in grandeur with its many halls and passages; today only foundations and stone fragments remain, scattered over a wide area. In the Hawara cemetery the British archaeologist Petrie found in 1888 many of the famous Fayum portraits, painted likenesses of the faces of Roman-era mummies, now shown in museums worldwide. A foreign visitor's ticket costs about a hundred and fifty Egyptian pounds according to the ministry list, and it opens from eight to five. The pyramid cannot be entered because groundwater floods its passages, and the visit is short, suited to history lovers.
A mud-brick pyramid.
Herodotus's great temple.
Found in its cemetery.
Hawara, about seven kilometres south-east of Fayoum city
No, groundwater floods its inner passages, so the visit covers the outside and the Labyrinth ruins around it.