Pyramid of Inenek Inti

The pyramidal complex of Inenek Inti is located at the south of the pyramid of her husband, the Pharaon Pépi {{Ier}}. It is structured in a complete unit included/understood in a rectangular enclosure, of a North-South development, including/understanding a funerary temple, the pyramid girded in its peribolus and in the south its own pyramid satellite. It was put at the day by the French archaeological Mission of Saqqarah , among seven other secondary pyramids which accompanied that king forming a true necropolis thus family.

The funerary complex

Here because of a share of the presence of another complex pyramidal of queen in the east of the site chosen for Inenek and the exiguity of the places, the temple encloses the pyramid with a particular plan. However one can recognize there all the essential components with the operation of the worship with part of reception allowing the presentation of the offerings, and an intimate part dedicated to the queen.

The principal access was done by north by a large granite door, preceded by two small Obélisque S, engraved with titulatures and in the name of Inenek Inti, which gave on a small hall opening directly to the east on the court peristyle of the temple decorated with twelve pillars whose only remain the limestone bases.

This ceremonial court is thus off-set in north east of the complex. She was reserved for the glossing of the offerings which arrived daily at the temple and opened in the west along the northern face of the pyramid on a room with the ceiling supported by two pillars with square section which distributed, two series of five stores laid out in teeth of comb.

By the southernmost side of this same court, one reached the intimate part of the temple, reserved for the vaults of worship and to the false stele carries, true funerary liturgical object. The whole of the sanctuary is placed as it should be at the east thus conferring a plan in “L” with the funerary temple of the queen who opens on the pyramid satellite, high hardly few meters, girded in her own enclosure and traditionally placed on the south-east of the complex.

Finally a last series of stores follows at the end southern of the unit, certainly intended to shelter the material of worship. The whole is built in regular calcareous stone bases, with the framings of the principal red granite doors of Assouan.

The excavation of this funerary temple revealed that Inenek was the subject of a worship a long time after its death whose popular enthusiasm left many testimonys in particular to the feet of the two small obelisks which decorate its entry of it.

The pyramid

The pyramid was built in a local limestone and was covered with a fine limestone facing of Tourah and had a small vault joined with its northern face which sheltered the access to the underground device.

Measuring nearly twenty-three meters on side at its base, it rises indeed on a pit dug with very the rock plate. This pit in form of “T” allowed the installation of the funerary apartments of Inenek Inti, consisted of a descending shaft being inserted with more than three meters of depth and leading to a hall followed by a corridor barred by a granite harrow. This corridor led to the funerary room with as it should be in the west it fleshfly of the queen and the east a accompanying document, the serdâb of the pyramid. The walls and the pavement of this pit were covered with a masonry rising towards surface and the unit was covered by large monoliths of limestone laid out out of rafters. The fleshfly of the queen, anépigraphe, is in grauwacke black and is almost three meters long on more than one meter fifty broad. He was discovered during the clearing of the pit, under one of these large lintels of couvrement which while crumbling preserved it almost intact with its lid. Plundered as of Antiquity fall it nevertheless delivered remainders of vases canopes out of calcite, a certain number of containers and hard crockery intended to receive the food offerings as well as the vestiges of a weaving loom.

Bibliographical references

Jean Leclant, Gisele Clerk, Excavations and work in Egypt and in Sudan, 1989-1990 , Orientalia 60,1991
Jean Leclant, Gisele Clerk, Excavations and work in Egypt and in Sudan, 1993-1994 , Orientalia 64,1995
Audran Labrousse, pyramids of the queens, new a necropolis with Saqqara , Hazan edition, Paris, 1999

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