Unas' Pyramid
| Unas’s pyramid (XXIX century BC), the last king of the V dynasty is
near the Djoser complex. Inside a corridor leads to an antechamber and to
a sepulchral chamber with the royal sarcophagus in black basalt, found
empty. The importance of this pyramid comes from the wall decorations. For
the first time the funeral texts called “of the Pyramids” were engraved,
discovered by the archaeologist Maspero in 1881. The “Texts of the
Pyramids” document, with the funeral architectural development, the
conception of afterlife and the following ritual. On the western side of
the pyramid there are still solid remainders of the covering, while on the
south one the rests of the hyerogliphic inscriptions are seen, put by
ramses’s II son, Khaemuset, and shows the interest for the restore of
ancient monuments. On the eastern side there are the remainders of the
funeral temple, of a small satellite pyramid and the impressive ones of a
processional ramp that led to the temple downhill of the funeral one. Over
700m long and 2,60 wide, it formed a kind of paved limestone tunnel sided
with two walls of limestone from Tura with a star decorated covering, that
through thin slits let the light come in. Inside the walls were originally
decorated in bas-relieff, of which the few that remain, of a great
artistic prestige, show a remarkable descriptive skill (scenes of the
market) and an unusually raw realism ( a famine). At south of the ramp two
great pits, in the shape of boats, are excavated in the stone, side by
side, a little longer than 40m with a covering of fine limestone.
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