Red Pyramid
Description: 'The Shining Pyramid' is the variant of translation of the Pyramid’s name suggested by Mark Lehner, a famous American Egyptologist. It is the largest one of the pyramids located at the Dahshur necropolis. The other name is the Red Pyramid, which comes from the reddish-coloured limestone as the main building material. The Red Pyramid has the least angle of slope among other pyramids in Egypt. It is very similar to the Great Pyramid on the Giza Plateau, not only on the outside, but in terms of internal features as well. The similarity comes with the perfectly smooth-sided walls, passages and chambers, with the unique geometry standards, and enormous roofing blocks. Also, the chamber’s corbelled vaulting looks similar to the Grand Gallery of the Great Pyramid. We cannot say for sure if it might be a burial site or not. The mummified body of the Pharaoh, sarcophagus, or any funeral offerings have never been found inside the Pyramid.Alternative names: the Pink Pyramid,the North Pyramid of Dahshur,the Pointed (Sharp-Tipped) Pyramid (from Arabic "Haram Mesinee"),the Great Pyramid of Dahshur,the Pyramid of Bats,the Pyramid of the Chain.
Lepsius No: 49
Type: True Pyramid
Location: Dahshur
Country: Egypt
History of archaeological exploration
1657: Scot, an anonymous traveller, describes certain aspects of the descent inside the Red Pyramid.
1660: Edward Melton, an Anglo-Dutch explorer, visited Dahshur on his great journey. In his book ‘Zeldzaame En Gedenkwaardige Zee-En Land-Reizen; Door Egypten, West-Indien, Perzien, Turkyen, Oost-Indien, En D'Aangrenzende Gewesten’, he provides a detailed account of his descent into the Pyramid.
1680-1681: Robert Huntington, a chaplain, describes the pyramids of Dahshur, including his descent inside the Pyramid.
1743: Richard Pococke, a British clergyman and traveller, visited Egypt in the mid-18th century and described his visit to the Red Pyramid in the book ‘A Description of the East, and Some Other Countries’.
1751-1756: Václav (Remedius) Prutký, a Czech missionary, described his descent into the Pyramid's voids in his book ‘Travels to Ethiopia and Other Countries’.
1799: Dominique Vivant Denon, a French painter, made some sketches of the pyramids of Dahshur as part of Napoleon's expedition to Egypt.
1839: John Shae Perring, a British engineer and Egyptologist, was the first to carry out an extensive research, clearance and measurement of the Red Pyramid.
1843: Karl Richard Lepsius, a German archaeologist and Egyptologist, carried out archaeological excavations of Egyptian pyramids, including the Red Pyramid. He recorded the Pyramid in the list of Egyptian pyramids under number XLIX (49).
1883-1887: William Matthew Flinders Petrie, a British Egyptologist, conducted archaeological studies and took certain accurate measurements of the Red Pyramid. Petrie found the remains of ox bones in the second chamber, some of them lying in bitumen.
1894-1895: Jacques de Morgan, a French engineer and archaeologist, excavated numerous mastabas in the vicinity of the Pyramid.
1897: George Andrew Reisner, an American archaeologist, carried out archaeological research and took some measurements of the Red Pyramid.
1947: Abd el-Salam Hussein, an architect of the Egyptian Department of Antiquities and an archaeologist, carried out extensive studies of the Pyramid. In the corridor he discovered a secondary tomb with the bones of a young man of short stature, which were later examined by Dr A.Batrawi. Hussein died suddenly in 1949 before sharing the results of his work, and his notes were lost.
1952: Ahmed Fakhry, an Egyptian archaeologist, conducted tentative excavations on the eastern side of the Pyramid in search of the upper temple and causeway, but he found almost nothing. There have been no publications on the results of the work carried out.
1964: Vito Maragioglio and Celesta Ambrogio Rinaldi, Italian architects, published detailed descriptions and large-scale drawings of the interior and exterior of the Pyramid as part of their two-decad exploration of the Memphis pyramids.
1982-1983: Rainer Stadelmann, a German Egyptologist, leader of the first systematic and fundamental archaeological research on the Red Pyramid. Clearing the rubble around the Pyramid, Stadelmann discovered pyramidion blocks and multiple fragments of casing blocks with hieratic writing and signs related to construction. One of the inscriptions read: "bring the 15th year to the ground". This is equivalent to the 30th year of Pharaoh Sneferu's reign. A Nebmaat cartouche (one of the five names of Pharaoh Sneferu) was also found.
2018: with the consent of the Egyptian authorities, a photogrammetric survey was carried out by the French company Iconem, commissioned by Label News for a documentary, ‘Pyramids: Solving the Mysteries’. The architectural consultant was the French engineer and architect Franck Monnier.
Field studies
The local-time effect, i.e. synchronous, in local time, implementation of similar histogram shapes in different geographical locations when measuring fluctuations in the course of processes of various nature, suggests the dependence of the histogram shapes on the rotation of the Earth around its axis and its movement along a circumsolar orbit (Victor A. Panchelyuga, Simon E. Shnoll “On fractal structure of space revealing during investigations of local-time effect”).
This effect has been investigated for various distances between the measurement sites, up to the maximum possible one on the Earth (about 15,000 km). Such measurements were also taken in Cairo, in a hotel room environment, and there was also a series of measurements taken on board a plane.
The purpose of this study was to test the existence of the 'local-time effect' within the Red Pyramid. For the purpose of the experiment inside the Pyramid (in chamber No. 2), two noise generators were used, placed at some distance from each other along the east-west, north-south and diagonal axes. Preliminary results have shown that, unlike measurements taken in a hotel room, on board a plane and in a number of other locations, there is little or no "local-time effect" at the Pyramid. This could be explained by the fact that the Pyramid somehow shields off or redistributes external influence that produces the same bursts in the noise that constitute the essence of the "local-time effect". More information can be found in Victor Pancheluga's paper Preliminary Results of the Study of Local-Time Effects Based on Measurements at the Red Pyramid (presentation at a workshop in Cairo, Egypt, 2012).
Date: 2006-2007
Researcher: НИЦ Лаборатория Альтернативной Истории
Laboratory studies
Seeds of pea (Pinum sativum) that were placed in the Red and Great Pyramid, as well as control groups, were used for the study. The ‘pyramid’ seeds germinated with a very long delay compared to the control group; some of the dry seeds, about 20%, proved to be non-viable and never germinated. Conclusions based on all the above results: 1) the results do not lead to an unequivocal conclusion that the presence of seeds in the Red or Great Pyramid can modify the morphological, biochemical or functional properties of plants grown from these seeds; 2) one may speak about indications of a possible influence effected by the pyramids on biological objects.
Date: 2009.12.
Researcher: НИЦ Лаборатория Альтернативной Истории
The research was carried out by electron microscopy, along with the identification of the elemental chemical composition of the samples. Among the elements, a high strontium (Sr) content was detected. High amounts of sulphur (S), phosphorus (P), carbon (C) and oxygen (O) were detected, which may indicate the presence of a possible organic component, however, the absence of nitrogen (N) contradicts this theory. Further research is required to test the hypothesis of an organic origin of the black streaks. More information is available in Alexey Yermolaev's report ‘The Red Pyramid of Sneferu. Black Streaks on the Chamber Stones’ (presentation at workshop in Cairo, Egypt, 2011).
Date: 2010.11., 2011.12.
Researcher: НИЦ Лаборатория Альтернативной Истории
In March 2019, samples of dark streaks were taken from the walls of the Red Pyramid’s chambers. The examination was carried out by means of Raman spectroscopy. Analysis of the spectrum showed the presence of substances that are products of wood combustion. More information is available in the article: ‘Analysis of Dark Streaks on the False Vaults of the Red Pyramid, the Sarcophagi of the Serapeum and the Osiris Shaft’.
Date: 2019.03.
Researcher: НИЦ Лаборатория Альтернативной Истории
