Dahshur Pyramids

Two enormous pyramids in open desert forty kilometres south of Cairo, and almost nobody at them. Dahshur was a military zone until 1996, which spared it the crowds and the stalls — you can often stand at the foot of the Bent Pyramid with nobody else in sight.

The Bent Pyramid

Unmistakable: it rises at about 54 degrees, then changes its mind roughly halfway up and finishes at 43. It also keeps most of its outer casing, which almost no other pyramid does — this is the closest you will get to seeing what a finished pyramid actually looked like, smooth and pale rather than stepped and bare.

The Red Pyramid

A kilometre north, and the reason the Bent Pyramid matters: this is the first successful true pyramid, about 105 metres tall, built at the safer 43-degree angle. You can go inside, down a long descending passage into three chambers with remarkable corbelled ceilings stepping up into the dark.

The climb in is steep and low, and the interior has a strong ammoniac smell from centuries of bat occupation. Worth it, but know that before you start down.

Both pyramids belong to Sneferu, father of Khufu, and between here and Meidum he built more stone into pyramids than any pharaoh in history — more, in raw volume, than his son put into the Great Pyramid.

Learning in public

Dahshur is where the pyramid was worked out. Sneferu's first attempt, at Meidum, appears to have collapsed or been abandoned. The Bent Pyramid was the second try, begun at a steep 54 degrees; partway up, cracking appeared in the internal chambers and the builders reduced the angle sharply to lower the weight, producing the bend.

They then started again from scratch a kilometre away, at the shallower angle throughout, and got it right. The Red Pyramid is the result. Twenty or thirty years later, Khufu's architects applied that hard-won knowledge at Giza and built the largest stone building on earth.

Three pyramids, one reign, and a visible engineering learning curve. There is nowhere else you can walk the whole sequence in an afternoon.

Still producing

Excavation continues. A subsidiary pyramid, a wooden coffin cache and further Middle Kingdom burials have come out of the sand here in recent seasons, and much of the site remains unexplored.