Building with bricks

A massive stone causeway known as Gisr Gadallah twists across the agricultural plain from Lahun village, west of Beni Suef, to a unique brick pyramid on the edge of the desert. Jill Kamil followed the wall and explored the pyramid complex
The brick pyramid of Lahun, with mastabas in the foreground.
The massive stone causeway across the floodplain, built during the Middle Kingdom about 2000 BC
A view of the pyramid from the causeway
It has been many years since I visited Lahun, a Pharaonic name which translates as "mouth of the lake," where the Nile enters the Fayoum depression via the Bahr Al- Youssef canal.
It was not my intention last month to go there, but since my appointment in Beni Suef took up only the first part of the day I decided to take advantage of being in the area and make my way from Lahun village, where the series of locks and sluices direct Nile water into Fayoum, to the desert and the brick pyramid of Senusert (Sesostris) II. To get there I drove slowly along the top of the stone causeway of Gisr Gadallah, sharing the road with friendly villagers, donkeys, buffalo and hordes of children.
Gisr Gadallah is a wall eight kilometres long and six metres high, rebuilt by Sultan Baybars in the 13th century. It cuts across the agricultural plain, and green fields succeed one another north and south as far as the eye can see. Fayoum's remarkable fertility never fails to stir me, and it is even more remarkable with the knowledge that the flow of the Nile water into the depression was not a natural phenomenon. In ancient times, only a part of the water from the channel that diverged from the Nile at Dairut, running parallel with the river for a distance of 276 kilometres, flowed into the Fayoum depression during the annual flood. Most of it flowed along the northward-sloping land back into the river Nile, carrying with it the rich alluvial soil it had brought from the south. It was this loss that ancient Egyptian engineers sought to remedy by building a retaining wall and directing the water into a catch-basin, where it could be regulated for irrigation.
This mammoth scheme for large-scale land reclamation took three reigns to complete. The project was envisioned by the first Pharaoh of the 12th dynasty, Amenemhet (Ammenemes) I (1994-1964 BC), and by the rule of Senusert II (1900-1880 BC) was so far advanced that the Pharaoh temporarily took up residence at the "entrance corridor" to watch its progress. His palace, undoubtedly made of mud- brick, has not survived, but we know that Fayoum bloomed in Senusert's reign. Fields and orchards were abundant, and the whole area became an ancient recreational ground for fishing and fowling, not to mention for hunting gazelle and other game in the surrounding desert.
I soon came within sight of the pyramid. From a distance it looked little different from the ruined fifth and sixth dynasty pyramids at Abu Sir and Saqqara: a pyramid without casing. However, as I approached it and drove up the desert incline, it soon became clear that this Middle Kingdom monument bore no resemblance to the earlier constructions
It is clear that Senusert took great care to choose the location of his funerary monument. The pyramid is the most prominent object on the plateau, commanding a view of both the Nile valley, near which it stands, and of the entrance to Fayoum, towards which it looks. It was built by an architect named Anupy, who made use of a great core of natural rock which he encased in huge blocks of limestone to a height of more than 12 metres. On top of the base, he erected a gigantic star- shaped framework of cross- walls in sun-dried brick. These bricks were baked from a mixture of Nile clay and straw the same way bricks are still made in Fayoum and in many parts of Egypt today. The same brick was used to complete the pyramid to its full height before it was encased in limestone, which has now disappeared.
A brick pyramid is a remarkable sight. Anupy had to consider the possible effect of rainfall on the monument, and he took all necessary precautions. He fitted the lowest layer of the limestone casing into sockets to counter any outward thrust or slippage of the superstructure, and dug a trench around the base of the pyramid which he filled with sand and flint for drainage.
Senusert was apparently laid to rest in his pyramid, as British archaeologist Sir Flinders Petrie discovered when he excavated it early in the 20th century. Although the tomb chamber had been entered in antiquity and all that remained was the granite sarcophagus and an alabaster offering table in the burial chamber, the sarcophagus was evidence enough that the pharaoh had indeed once lain there.
Petrie also excavated a series of eight mastaba tombs north of the pyramid designed for royal burials. None had been used. But it was here that a remarkable discovery was made. In February 1914, Petrie and his colleague, Guy Brunton, were excavating south of the pyramid, in between the two enclosure walls where shaft tombs had been dug for members of the royal family. These, like the pyramid, had also been looted in antiquity, but a cache of royal treasure belonging to the Princess Sit Hathor Inet miraculously survived. This was a unique collection which included necklets, pectorals, a gold crown and other golden objects, silver, carnelian, lapis lazuli and amethysts. There were toilet articles, caskets and many kinds of containers.
Most of this treasure is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York but the items which can be seen in Cairo, on the upper floor in the Egyptian Museum, include a bracelet of gold spacer beads threaded with extraordinarily small semi-precious stones; a now reconstructed girdle of large cowries and beads of gold, carnelian, feldspar and lapis; three pairs of small crouching lions of gold set in bead bracelets with slide clasps; and a fine gold pectoral inlaid with stones and bearing the name of Senusert II, builder of the pyramid.
I knew from James Baikie's Egyptian Antiquities in the Nile Valley that Senusert's architect Anupy, who described himself as "Overseer of all the Works of the King in the Land to its Boundary," built his own tomb about 400 metres west of the royal pyramid. It was situated so he "could survey his works without needing to go farther than his own funerary chapel." Baikie, who saw the tomb in the 1960s, described four underground chambers, a shrine excavated into the side of a hill and walls covered with fine white limestone, which was painted and sculpted. He mentioned it as being in poor condition.
I climbed a mound for a better view but could find no evidence of it at all, and the guard who suddenly appeared at my side as I left the pyramid complex indicated that there was nothing more to be seen and that I should go back. I retraced my route across Gisr Gadallah, aware that this modern construction, first created by the ancient Egyptians, was re-designed by the Ptolemies and rebuilt many times after that. The last official restoration of the masonry was actually carried out by Mohamed Ali in 1825.
Thus the pyramid has well withstood the test of time. But it was a later 12th dynasty pharaoh, Amenemhet III (1842-1797), who finally took credit for the whole project of land reclamation in Fayoum.
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