Egypt locates "missing pyramid"

SAQQARA, Egypt — Egyptian archaeologists have uncovered the "missing pyramid" of a pharaoh and a ceremonial procession road where high priests carried mummified remains of sacred bulls, Egypt's antiquities chief said Thursday.

Zahi Hawass said the pyramid — of which only the base remains — is believed to be that of King Menkauhor, an obscure pharaoh who ruled for only eight years more than 4,000 years ago.

In 1842, German archaeologist Karl Richard Lepsius mentioned Menkauhor's pyramid among his finds at Saqqara, the necropolis and burial site of the rulers of ancient Memphis, the capital of Egypt's Old Kingdom, south of Cairo. He called it the "Headless Pyramid" because its top was missing, Hawass said. But the desert sands covered Lepsius' discovery, and no archaeologist since was able to find it.

Only the pyramid's base — or the superstructure, as archeologists call it — was found after a 25-foot-high mound of sand was removed over the past 1 ½ years by Hawass' team. A burial chamber also was discovered.

Hawass said the style of the pyramid and of a gray granite sarcophagus lid found in the burial chamber indicates the pyramid was from the Fifth Dynasty, a period that began in 2,465 B.C. and ended in 2,325 B.C.

The period spanned 140 years of the Old Kingdom, two centuries after the Great Pyramid of Giza was completed in 2,500 B.C.

Archaeologists have not found a cartouche — a pharoah's name in hieroglyphs — of the pyramid's owner. But Hawass was convinced, based on the estimated dating of the pyramid, it belonged to Menkauhor.

Hawass' second discovery was a part of a ceremonial procession road, dating back to the Ptolemaic period, which ran for 300 years before 30 B.C.

It runs alongside Menkauhor's pyramid, leading from a mummification chamber toward the Saqqara Serapium, a network of underground tombs where sacred bulls were interred, discovered by French archaeologist August Mariette in 1850.