The Red Pyramid of Sneferu, Dashur, Egypt

The Red Pyramid stands at the royal necropolis of Dahshur, on the west bank of the Nile some 40 kilometres south of Cairo. It was built for Pharaoh Sneferu, founder of the Fourth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom (c. 2600 BC) and father of Khufu, who would go on to raise the Great Pyramid of Giza.

It is widely regarded as the world’s first successful true, smooth-sided pyramid — the culmination of Sneferu’s remarkable series of experiments. Learning from the collapse of the earlier Meidum pyramid and the corrected angle of the neighbouring Bent Pyramid, his builders raised the Red Pyramid at the gentler, more stable inclination of around 43 degrees from base to summit.

Rising to a height of about 105 metres with each side of its base measuring some 220 metres, it was for a time the tallest structure on Earth, until surpassed by his son’s Great Pyramid. It takes its name from the reddish hue of the limestone core blocks, which glows especially warm in the late afternoon light; originally the whole pyramid was cased in smooth white Tura limestone.

The single entrance lies on the north face, opening onto a long descending passage that runs some 63 metres down into the heart of the structure. Within are three chambers, each roofed with a soaring corbelled ceiling — stone courses stepped gradually inward to form a towering vault, distributing the immense weight above and creating interior spaces of extraordinary height and atmosphere. This corbelling was a true engineering innovation, so effective that it shaped pyramid building for centuries to come.

To descend the steep passage and stand beneath those vaulted ceilings is to feel the confidence of the Old Kingdom builders at the very moment the true pyramid form was perfected — the design that would define the horizon at Giza and echo down the whole of Egyptian history.