Satellite Pyramid of Userkaf

29.8732°N, 31.2191°E.

The satellite pyramid of Userkaf at North Saqqara, immediately south of the main pyramid of pharaoh Userkaf (r. ~2494–2487 BCE), founder of the Fifth Dynasty. Original base 15.7 metres per side; original height around 13 metres at a steep slope. Excavated by the Egyptian Antiquities Service in the 1920s and re-examined by Cecil Firth and subsequent missions through the twentieth century. The structure follows the standard Old Kingdom satellite-pyramid template: a small ritual pyramid with a granite-lined chamber and a shallow descending corridor, no human burial, no canopic equipment, and no funerary goods. Userkaf's satellite pyramid is one of the earliest documented examples of the form — the convention emerges in the late Fourth Dynasty and is fully standardised by the time Userkaf's complex is built.

A small ritual pyramid attached to the main pyramid of the king who founded the Fifth Dynasty and built the first dedicated sun temple, in the architectural template his successors would follow for two centuries.