Satellite Pyramid of Khendjer

29.8320°N, 31.2235°E.

The satellite pyramid of Khendjer at South Saqqara, immediately south of the main pyramid of pharaoh Khendjer (r. ~1764–1759 BCE) of the Thirteenth Dynasty. Original base 15.7 metres per side; original height around 13 metres at a steep slope. Excavated by Gustave Jéquier between 1929 and 1931. The structure follows the satellite-pyramid template inherited from the Old Kingdom but adapted to Thirteenth-Dynasty construction practice: a small ritual pyramid with a quartzite-lined burial chamber and a sliding-roof closure system copied from the main pyramid, but with no human burial, no canopic equipment, and no funerary goods. Khendjer's complex is the rare Thirteenth-Dynasty royal monument to be completed in the king's lifetime, and the satellite pyramid is one of the few of its century to be finished to the same standard as the main pyramid.

A small ritual pyramid built to the higher Twelfth-Dynasty engineering standard rather than the abandoned-mid-construction template of most Thirteenth-Dynasty royal monuments.