While the quality of the pyramid is very low, the mortuary temple and the complex surrounding the pyramid at extensive and contain many beautiful carvings. Very little remains of these structures. Our century is not the first to excavate and reconstruct the pyramid complex, either — a son of Ramesses II undertook reconstruction sometime between 1290 — 1224 BCE

The mortuary temple lies along the eastern face of the pyramid — well, the remains of it do, at any rate. The floor of the temple is basalt, which is used in the floor of many funerary temples around Egypt. It has some symbolic meaning that we can only guess at — stone symbolism is apparently a little-represented area of Egyptology!

addtitionally, there are two huge boat-pits near the causeway — it is possible that they contained solar barques such as the one found near the Pyramid of Cheops in GIza, in the Solar Boat Museum, although nothing was found when they were excavated

South of pyramid is the entrance to the Persian Tombs — a set of vaulted tombs from the twenty-seventh dynasty. We did not go into them — at the time we didn’t know they were there (see, I knew I should have carried theguidebook everywhere!!) and the tombs rae not often on anyone’s itinerary.

This pyramid was built after those of Abu Sir, all of which are much less impressive than the great pyramids of the Giza Plateau. Pyramid-building had suffered a serious decline from the monuments of the fourth dynasty. Even the nearby step pyramid, a monumental architectural achievement, was only 350 years old when Unas built here