Pyramid of Naqada

25.8964°N, 32.7322°E.

The pyramid of Naqada in Upper Egypt, on the west bank of the Nile near the modern town of Naqada, one of seven small provincial step pyramids attributed to pharaoh Huni or Sneferu of the Third or early Fourth Dynasty, ~2600 BCE. Original base approximately 18 metres per side; original height around 11 metres on three to four stepped tiers. The structure is built of limestone blocks set in mud mortar with no internal substructure — no burial chamber, no entrance, no corridor. Excavated in part by Jacques de Morgan in 1898 and re-examined by Egyptian and German missions in the twentieth century. The Naqada region is best known archaeologically for the Predynastic Naqada culture (4400–3000 BCE) whose painted pottery and copper tools document the formation of Egyptian civilisation; the small pyramid at the site dates approximately 1,500 years later.

A small solid pyramid in a region whose name labels the formative period of Egyptian civilisation, in a structure that contains nothing but itself.