Pyramid of King Piye

18.4170°N, 31.7665°E.

The pyramid of king Piye at El-Kurru, built for the founding king of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty who conquered Egypt approximately 727 BCE and ruled both Kush and Egypt as the first Black pharaoh of the unified state. Original base 8 metres per side; original height around 11 metres at a 70° slope — a small monument by Egyptian royal standards but the architectural prototype for every subsequent Kushite royal pyramid. Excavated by George Reisner in 1919. The substructure preserved a granite burial chamber, a stone bench on which Piye's body had been laid (a Kushite convention rather than the Egyptian sarcophagus), and four skeletons of horses buried in a separate pit nearby — Piye's chariot team, sacrificed at his death and entombed standing in a pit just outside the pyramid.

The first pyramid of the Kushite royal tradition, in the burial of the king who reunited Egypt and Sudan into a single state for the first time since the New Kingdom.