Pyramid of Merenre

29.8627°N, 31.2155°E.

Pyramid at South Saqqara built for Merenre Nemtyemsaf I, fourth pharaoh of the Sixth Dynasty, who reigned approximately 2283–2278 BCE. Original base 78.75 metres per side; original height 52.5 metres at a 53° slope. The Egyptian name of the complex was Khanefer-Merenre — Merenre's Beauty Appears. Excavated by Gaston Maspero in 1880 and re-examined by the French mission at Saqqara from the 1970s onward. The burial chamber preserved a basalt sarcophagus and the partially mummified body of a young man — long argued to be Merenre himself, which would make it the oldest royal mummy yet recovered, though the attribution is contested. The chamber walls were inscribed with Pyramid Texts continuing the Unas–Teti–Pepi I tradition. Merenre died in his early twenties after roughly five years on the throne; his pyramid was finished but his mortuary cult was small.

A king whose body may still exist, in a pyramid named after his beauty, and whose reign was so brief his successor was already on the throne by the time the casing stones went up.