Beneath the Pyramids of Egypt… & Yorkshire

With this month filming for a new BBC project, visiting the ‘Immersive Tutankhamun’ exhibition in London and guest curating two more Egyptian-themed exhibitions, ‘The Story of Harold Jones’ has just opened at Carmarthenshire Museum (below left) while our ‘Resurrecting Ancient Egypt’ continues to celebrate Egypt’s influence on the architecture of Yorkshire, which has more pyramids than any other county in England.

Two of the current exhibitions Jo is guest-curating in Carmarthen and Beverley

And pyramids have certainly been in the media spotlight recently. With tv, radio and the press all asking for our take on reports of various ‘new discoveries’ beneath the pyramids of Giza, from claims of ‘lost cities’ with tunnels and spiral stairs to the fabled ‘Hall of the Ancestors’, Ark of the Covenant and even the tomb of Jesus(!), it’s always hard to comment without seeing evidence. And yet discoveries of elaborate structures beneath the pyramids are hardly anything new.

Part of the tunnel system beneath Djoser’s Pyramid (© M. Abd El Ghany/Reuters) with sections of its tiled walls now in Sakkara’s Imhotep Museum (© R.Haxby)

For Egypt’s earliest pyramid, the Step Pyramid at Sakkara c.2650 BC, is not only home to the burial chamber of King Djoser but to a network of tunnels and chambers stretching an astonishing 6km (3 and a half miles)! And with such labyrinthine structures interpreted as a kind of subterranean palace in which Djoser’s soul could live forever, some chambers were decorated with beautiful turquoise tiles and scenes of Djoser himself, sections of which are now in the nearby Imhotep Museum (above). Named after the pyramid’s architect Imhotep, this wonderful museum also celebrates the illustrious career of renowned pyramid expert Jean-Philippe Lauer who we were privileged enough to meet way back in 1999, towards the end of his long life spent excavating the Saqqara complex. In the 1920s and 30s working beneath the pyramid, Lauer and his colleagues had discovered over 40,000 vessels (below) carved from granite, diorite, alabaster, limestone and quartz, many inscribed with the names of Djoser’s predecessors to effectively bring the royal ancestors into his burial site and a selection of which can again be seen in the Imhotep Museum.

Only a few of the 40,000 stone vessels beneath the pyramid (from JP Lauer 1939, La pyramide à degrés) & Jo with JP Lauer during a filming trip in 1999 (© Immortal Egypt)

With such extraordinary finds located some 33 metres beneath Sakkara’s earliest pyramid, so too an entire mummification workshop (below left). Discovered beneath this same Sakkara site as recently as 2016 by the late and much-missed Egyptologist Dr. Ramadan Hussein, the international team he assembled included Immortal Egypt’s very own Dr. Stephen Buckley who helped analyse the subterranean workshop’s contents (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05663-4 & https://www.independent.co.uk/news/ap-new-york-university-of-york-people-experts-b2273774.html), with the painstaking work featured in the National Geographic series ‘Kingdom of the Mummies’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf0gnpC2ayw (below right).

Sakkara’s subterranean embalming workshop (© M. Lang, Universität Bonn) with Stephen & Dr Ramadan Hussein discussing the site (© NatGeo)

So it was great to revisit the site back in February before travelling the short distance north to see the first tomb known to have been built at Giza itself (below). Created for Queen Hetepheres I, whose son Khufu then built his own burial place the Great Pyramid directly behind his mother’s tomb, her golden grave goods were discovered in a chamber at the bottom of yet another shaft cut down some 27 metres into bedrock, as featured in our BBC2 documentary ‘Egypt’s Lost Queens’ (6’30 into https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7temba).

Jo beside Queen Hetepheres’ Giza tomb shaft (© Immortal Egypt), as shown at its discovery in 1925 (public domain)

Yet such discoveries are only a tiny selection of the various underground structures found beneath Egypt’s many pyramids, at least 120 of which have so far been discovered at key northern sites such as Giza, Sakkara, Dahshur, Abusir, Lisht and Hawara. And with the ancient Egyptians often building on top of much older structures to try and tap into the powers of their own impressive past, it would probably be more of a surprise if there weren’t anything beneath them. 

But of course anything relating to the pyramids always triggers huge interest, as do the endless claims they were built for all manner of purposes ranging from the practical to the esoteric, from the sublime to the ridiculous. Certainly the medieval belief that the pyramids were ‘Pharaoh’s Granaries’ was disproved as early as 1611 by Yorkshireman George Sandys after he visited Giza for himself (below), publishing the first English account to correctly identify the pyramids as royal tombs in 1615. 

Pyramids as ‘Joseph’s Granaries’ in St. Mark’s Venice on left (public domain) & at right Yorkshireman George Sandys at the Giza Pyramids in 1611 (© Immortal Egypt)

And Sandys clearly knew what he was talking about. For despite statements to the contrary, their purpose as royal tombs seems pretty obvious, given some still had their original mummified occupants in situ, from the ransacked body parts of kings Snefru, Djedkara, Unas, Teti, Pepi I, queens Seshseshat, Iput, Keminub and princesses Ita, Khnumet and Itaweret to the largely complete body of King Merenre (c. 2278 BC), found inside his Sakkara pyramid in 1881 and again now displayed in the Imhotep Museum (below). 

Mummified body of King Merenre found in his Sakkara pyramid (© Dr Amr Aboulfath)

And with burial beneath a pyramid something the Western elite began to appreciate during the increasing Egyptomania of the C.18th and C.19th, such impressive grave monuments were created around Yorkshire as early as 1788, with the Badsworth Pyramid erected by Col. Edward Rawstorne to mark the burial of his teenage servant Osmond Alexander. Some 50 years later, multiple pyramids were commissioned to top Barnsley’s Huskar Memorial marking  the final resting place of the 26 girls and boys aged between 7 and 17, killed while mining coal in July 1838. Soon after, a pyramid was also set up in 1846 atop the Leeds’ grave of Zinai Wormald, whose husband’s family had become rich making uniforms for the British army during the Napoleonic wars when the French and British fought over the control of both Europe and Egypt. 

The Smyth’s Ripon pyramid grave (© Immortal Egypt) with Jessie beside King Khufu’s sarcophagus (© Royal Observatory Edinburgh CPS Archives)

But surely the most appropriate British pyramid burial is in Ripon (above left). Marking the joint grave of Jessica ‘Jessie’ Smyth and her husband Charles, the couple carried out the first scientific exploration of the Giza Plateau in 1865, including taking the very first photographs inside the Great Pyramid (above right). The much smaller Ripon version was then designed by Charles himself in 1896, its inscription describing Jessie as his ‘companion through 40 years of varied scientific experiences’ culminating in those ‘underneath and upon the Great Pyramid of Egypt’. And it was their meticulous measurements of the vast structure which had then inspired archaeologist WMF Petrie to first visit to Egypt in 1880, albeit later dismissing Charles as a ‘pyramidiot’ whose more outlandish theories even included claims that the Great Pyramid’s granite sarcophagus once holding Khufu’s body had apparently been made for something rather different, since its “cubic contents are equal to those of the sacred Ark of the Covenant of Moses”(!). 

As only one of many extreme claims triggered by the awe inspired by Egypt’s largest pyramids, their role as the ultimate status symbols led to their replication as monumental entrance ways to some of the grandest homes in the west, beneath which visitors would enter and be suitably impressed.

Nostell Priory’s Pyramid Gateway aka ‘Obelisk Lodge’ (© Immortal Egypt & National Trust)

So from Castle Howard’s two Pyramid Gates completed in 1719, Nostell Priory’s Pyramid Gate designed in 1776 was sufficiently large to accommodate the estate’s gatekeeper and his family right up until the 1950s (above)! And not too far away, the Pyramid Gateway of Wentworth Woodhouse between Barnsley and Rotherham had been completed by 1728, its every structural measurement divisible by 7 which, like the flaming urn at its apex, was linked to the Masons whose symbolism drew heavily on ancient Egypt with its themes of resurrection. 

Pyramid Gate of Wentworth Woodhouse (© Immortal Egypt) & Yorkshire coalfield in black hatching with Wentworth at centre (https://hemingfieldcolliery.org/the-yorkshire-coalfield/)

Yet the Wentworth pyramid is also directly rooted in its Yorkshire location, since its eastern side is now affected by subsidence resulting from the main Barnsley Coal Seam located some 100 feet (30m) directly below, the mining of its coal - aka the ‘black gold’ - once creating the estate’s enormous wealth. 

Bretton Hall lake (© PJ Marriot) with its pyramid for water pumping equipment (© Immortal Egypt)

And with a similarly industrial twist across at Bretton Hall between Barnsley and Wakefield, a concrete pyramid erected in 1963 as a ‘distant echo of old Nile’ was designed to conceal pumping equipment bringing water from the nearby lake into the hall. So while hardly the Giza Plateau, its subterranean access point certainly gives an authentically underworld twist to this most practical of local pyramids which once again has its own fascinating story to tell. 

‘Exploring Ancient Egypt: the Story of Harold Jones/Archwilio’r Hen Aifft: Stori Harold Jones’ is at Carmarthenshire Museum until 28th September, with ‘Resurrecting Ancient Egypt: a Monumental Yorkshire Journey’ at Beverley’s Treasure House Museum until 10th May. Jo will also be joining the 128th Birthday Party celebrations at Sheffield Cats Shelter on 10th May (details including an Egypt-themed raffle prize at: https://thesheffieldcatsshelter.org/raffle/) and is speaking at Scarborough’s Big Ideas By the Sea Festival on 17th May https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/booking/select/wjxdylvyjvjv)