Pyramid of Mentuhotep II

25.7283°N, 32.6075°E.

Early Middle Kingdom mortuary complex at Deir el-Bahari, west bank at Thebes, built for pharaoh Mentuhotep II Nebhepetre, founder of the Middle Kingdom and reunifier of Egypt after the First Intermediate Period, who reigned approximately 2061–2010 BCE. The structure is a terraced mortuary temple rather than a true pyramid — though it carried a square pyramidal core or solid mound on its upper terrace, the form remains debated. Excavated by Edouard Naville from 1903 and Herbert Winlock from 1920. The complex includes a forecourt, two colonnaded terraces, a hypostyle hall, a sanctuary cut into the cliff, and the burial chambers of six royal women whose intact tombs were discovered behind the western wall in 1921. Mentuhotep's hybrid pyramid-temple became the architectural template for Hatshepsut's mortuary temple six centuries later, built immediately to the north.

The first pharaoh to be buried at Thebes, the king who put Egypt back together after a hundred and fifty years of collapse, and the architectural ancestor of the most-photographed temple in Egypt.