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The Dahshur pyramid field (daily 8am-5pm; GBPE10, students GBPE5) contains some of the most impressive of all the pyramids, and some of the most significant in the history of pyramid-building. Getting to Dahshur may prove problematic. The easiest way to reach the site is by taxi, though you can get there on foot from El-Badrasheen if you don't mind a very long walk. Otherwise, you should be able to get service taxi microbuses from El-Badrasheen or Giza train station (a short walk from Midan Giza) going to Dahshur village, which will drop you at the site entrance. Gettting back to Cairo, however, should not be left too late or you may find yourself stranded with the nearest public transport 10km away in El-Badrasheen. The pyramids are in two groups. To the east are three Middle Kingdom complexes , dating from the revival of pyramid building (c.1991-1790 BC) that culminated near the Fayoum. Though the pyramids proved unrewarding to nineteenth-century excavators, their subsidiary tombs yielded some magnificent jewellery (now in the Antiquities Museum). To the north, the pyramids of XII Dynasty pharaohs Seostris III and Amenenkhet II are little more than piles of rubble, but the southernmost of the three, the Black Pyramid of Amenemhet III (Joseph's pharoah in the Old Testament, according to some), is at least an interesting shape: though its limestone casing has long gone, a black mud-brick core is still standing (its black basalt capstone is in the Antiquities Museum). More intriguing, however, are the two Old Kingdom pyramids further into the desert, which have long tantalized archeologists with a riddle. Both of these pyramids are credited to Snofru (c.2613-2588 BC), father of Cheops and founder of the IV Dynasty, whose monuments constitute an evolutionary link between the stepped creations of the previous dynasty at North Saqqara and the true pyramids of Giza. Despite its lower angle (43.5°) and height (101m), Snofru's northern Red Pyramid (named after the colour of the limestone it was built from) clearly prefigures his son's edifice, which is also the only pyramid that exceeds it in size, Snofru's Red Pyramid being larger than Chephren's Pyramid at Giza. It was probably Snofru's third attempt at pyramid building, but he was not laid to rest in any of the three burial chambers here - all were unused. Snofru was in fact buried in the pyramid to the south, a monument that is not only the most intriguing of all the pyramids, but, because of its state of preservation, also the most breathtaking.
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