Pyramid of Amenemhat III at Hawara and the Egyptian Labyrinth

The pyramid of Amenemhat III at Hawara stands at the entrance to the Faiyum depression in Egypt. It was built around 1831–1786 BC for one of the most powerful kings of the Middle Kingdom. Beside it stood a vast temple that later Greek visitors called the Labyrinth, which Herodotus judged more wonderful than the pyramids themselves.

Background: a king’s second pyramid

Amenemhat III, son of Senusret III, ruled Egypt for about 45 years at the height of the Twelfth Dynasty. His reign saw intense quarrying and mining expeditions, especially to the turquoise mines of Sinai, and large works in the Faiyum, a fertile basin west of the Nile fed by a branch of the river.

His first pyramid, at Dahshur, is known today as the Black Pyramid. Built close to the Nile on soft ground, it began to crack and subside, and builders had to add timber supports to its inner chambers. Although it was finished, the king’s burial seems to have been moved to a new pyramid at Hawara, closer to the Faiyum and to the cult of the crocodile god Sobek, who was worshipped at nearby Shedet (Greek Crocodilopolis).

Amenemhat III left other marks on the Faiyum. At Biahmu, a few kilometres north of the later city of Arsinoe, he set up two colossal seated statues of himself on tall pedestals; only the battered stone bases survive. Petrie, who excavated them in 1888, argued that they explain Herodotus’ story of two “pyramids” topped by statues standing in a lake.

The pyramid

The Hawara pyramid was built with a mud-brick core and a casing of fine limestone, most of which was later removed. It originally stood around 58 metres high on a base of about 100–105 metres a side, although figures differ slightly between surveys. Today it is a heavily eroded mound.

Its designers worked hard to defeat robbers. Unusually, the entrance was placed on the south side rather than the north. Passages led through blind corridors, false turns and heavy sliding blocks before reaching the burial chamber.

The chamber itself was cut from a single huge block of quartzite. Petrie estimated its weight at more than 100 tonnes. It was roofed with quartzite slabs and protected above by relieving chambers and a brick arch. Inside were a large quartzite sarcophagus and a second, smaller one, usually linked to the king’s daughter Neferuptah.

Neferuptah was later given her own small pyramid about 2 kilometres away. When it was excavated in 1956, its burial was found undisturbed, though the organic remains had decayed in the damp ground.

The Labyrinth

South of the pyramid lay an immense temple complex, probably the king’s mortuary temple combined with shrines to many gods. Petrie measured its foundations at roughly 300 by 240 metres, far larger than most Egyptian temples; it has often been said that the great temples of Karnak and Luxor could have fitted inside it.

Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BC, described twelve covered courts and 3,000 rooms, half of them underground, which he said he was not allowed to enter. Later writers, including Diodorus Siculus, Strabo and Pliny the Elder, also described the building. Strabo said it had as many halls as there had once been provinces of Egypt. The Greeks compared it to the legendary labyrinth of King Minos at Knossos, and the name stuck.

From the Roman period the temple was quarried for stone and lime, and by modern times it had almost vanished. Its exact plan remains uncertain, and the ancient descriptions cannot be checked in detail.

Excavation

The German expedition led by Karl Richard Lepsius explored Hawara in 1843 and believed it had found the Labyrinth in a group of brick rooms, which were later shown to be of much later date. Flinders Petrie arrived in 1888. While searching for the pyramid entrance he also excavated a Roman-era cemetery nearby, where he found many of the famous painted mummy portraits now known as Faiyum portraits.

In 1889 Petrie tunnelled through the pyramid’s side and reached the burial chamber, which was flooded with groundwater. The chamber had been robbed and burned in antiquity, but fragments of inscribed vessels confirmed that it belonged to Amenemhat III. Petrie also traced the Labyrinth’s foundations under the stone chips of later quarrying. Further investigations, including geophysical surveys in the 2000s, have tried to map what remains underground.

Timeline

• c. 1831 BC: Amenemhat III becomes king; work begins on his pyramid at Dahshur.
• c. 1815 BC: Construction of the Hawara pyramid probably begins after problems at Dahshur (date approximate).
• c. 1786 BC: Death of Amenemhat III; burial at Hawara.
• c. 450 BC: Herodotus visits and describes the Labyrinth.
• 1843: Lepsius explores Hawara.
• 1888–1889: Petrie excavates the site and enters the burial chamber.
• 1956: The intact pyramid burial of Princess Neferuptah is excavated.

Why it matters

The Hawara pyramid shows how Middle Kingdom builders tried to protect royal burials with ingenious engineering. Its lost temple, remembered as the Labyrinth, was one of the most admired buildings of Egypt in the classical world, and Petrie’s work there helped establish modern scientific excavation in Egypt.