Lepsius I Pyramid

30.0350°N, 31.0780°E.

The Lepsius I Pyramid at Abu Rawash, north of Giza, attributed to the Third Dynasty (~2686–2613 BCE) and identified by Karl Richard Lepsius in 1842 as the first pyramid in his catalogue of Egyptian pyramids. Original base approximately 25 metres per side; original height around 18 metres on stepped tiers, though the superstructure has been almost entirely robbed for limestone in the medieval period. Excavated in part by Lepsius in 1842 and re-examined by French and Egyptian missions through the twentieth century. The substructure preserved a limestone burial chamber and the lower courses of a small mortuary chapel; no inscribed material naming the owner has been recovered. The structure is significantly older and smaller than the Fourth-Dynasty pyramid of Djedefre at the same site — the only finished pyramid at Abu Rawash.

The first pyramid in the Lepsius catalogue, built three centuries before the more famous monument that shares its desert ridge, with its builder unidentified two centuries after its rediscovery.