Word: pyramides
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...Snefru, known to the Greeks as "the Good King," has long been overshadowed by "the Bad King," Khufu (also known as Cheops), his more famous son and successor. Because Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza, on the outskirts of Cairo, is more accessible to tourists, it has become the picture-postcard landmark. Snefru's monuments, by contrast, sat on an army base in Dahshur, 13 miles away. For much of this century, they were concealed behind barbed wire and watch towers, off limits to all but a handful of archaeologists...
...newly opened site encompasses the remains of 11 pyramids, some of which were built 700 years after Snefru's reign, and many smaller rectangular mausoleums, known as mastabas. But it is Snefru's spectacular constructions that dominate the horizon. Most Egyptian kings gave themselves only one pyramid; Snefru built five, three of them at Dahshur...
...most striking is the Red Pyramid, known by the reddish tinge its iron oxide-rich stone takes on in the light of the setting sun. It is the first pyramid in the classic smooth-sided shape so familiar to schoolchildren. Previously, only step-sided pyramids had been built (a shape that was also seen in Mesopotamia and turned up, much later, in Latin America). It was Snefru who conceived of the more difficult smooth-sided form. "He made the intellectual jump," says Rainer Stadelmann, director of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo. Enlisting two of his sons as architects, Snefru...
Even more intriguing is the so-called Bent Pyramid, instantly recognizable by its strange, blunted profile. It has the best-preserved outer casing of any pyramid in Egypt, perhaps because the lower half of the monument is too steep for stone robbers to scale easily. Viewed from its base, the pyramid rises so abruptly that it seems at first glance to be about to break over visitors like a giant tidal wave...
...changes. Nobody knows why, although archaeologists have argued about it for years. Some theorize that the King may have died during construction, forcing workers to finish quickly. Others suggest that a building disaster--a heavy rain, perhaps--required a change of plans. Stadelmann believes the weak clay beneath the pyramid began to give way; rather than leave an ugly stub, Snefru completed the project at a gentler (and hence more stable) incline and began building the Red Pyramid a mile to the north...