Black Pyramid

29.8005°N, 31.2113°E.

Twelfth-Dynasty pyramid at Dahshur, built for pharaoh Amenemhat III, who reigned approximately 1860–1814 BCE. Original base 105 metres per side; original height 75 metres at a 54° slope. The local name is el-Haram el-Aswad — the Black Pyramid — from the dark mudbrick of the eroded core. Excavated by Jacques de Morgan in 1894 and again by Dieter Arnold from 1976. The construction is almost entirely mudbrick around a stone-lined chamber system, with only the casing in limestone — and the casing was scavenged in antiquity. The substructure includes two separate burial complexes: one for the king and a second for two queens, with corridors that pass over and around each other in three dimensions. The pyramidion — the capstone — survived intact, was found in the rubble, and is now displayed in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo: black granite carved with a winged sun disc, two udjat eyes, and three columns of hieroglyphs invoking the king's deification. Amenemhat III abandoned the pyramid because of structural collapse during construction and was eventually buried instead at Hawara.

A pyramid whose builder gave up on it and whose capstone outlasted everything else.