Pyramid of Queen Amanirenas

16.9387°N, 33.7493°E.

The pyramid of queen Amanirenas at Meroë, built for the Kandake who led the Kushite war against Roman Egypt between approximately 27 and 22 BCE. Construction date approximately 10 BCE. Original base approximately 8 metres per side; original height around 15 metres at the steep Meroitic slope. Amanirenas led a Kushite army across the Egyptian frontier in 27 BCE, sacked Aswan and Philae, and decapitated the bronze portrait statue of Augustus standing in Aswan — the head was carried back to Meroë and buried under the threshold of a victory shrine, where Sudanese excavators recovered it in 1910 (now in the British Museum and known as the Meroë Head). Strabo records that the Roman prefect Petronius retaliated, advanced as far as Napata, but ultimately negotiated a peace with Amanirenas at Samos that recognised the Kushite frontier and removed Roman tribute claims south of Aswan.

A pyramid for the queen who fought Augustus to a stalemate, whose foreign-policy victory included carrying the emperor's bronze head home and burying it under a doorstep so generations of her people could walk on it.