Satellite Pyramid of Unas

29.8680°N, 31.2145°E.

The satellite pyramid of Unas at North Saqqara, immediately south of the main pyramid of pharaoh Unas (r. ~2375–2345 BCE), the last king of the Fifth Dynasty. Original base 15.7 metres per side; original height around 13 metres at a steep slope. Excavated by Alessandro Barsanti in 1900 and re-examined by Jean-Philippe Lauer and the French mission from 1936 onward. The structure follows the standard late-Fifth-Dynasty 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. Unas's main pyramid is famous for containing the earliest Pyramid Texts in Egyptian history — 283 spells inscribed on the antechamber and burial chamber walls — but the satellite pyramid carries no inscribed text, in keeping with the form's purely ritual function.

A small uninscribed ritual pyramid attached to the most consequential text-carrying pyramid in Egyptian history.