“All good things come in threes.“ Maybe pharaoh Snofru, the father of Cheops, had already thought of this. Because within 40 years he let as many as three pyramids be erected up. After the first pyramid – this one is quite dilapidated now – hasn’t been good enough for his final resting-place his engineers had to construct a second one.

If this pyramid had the same angle of inclination from top to bottom, it would have become almost 129 meters high. But this is too much for the soft ground wherefore the engineers made the angle of inclination in its last third plainly flatter. This gave the pyramid which was secondly thought of as final resting-place the name “Bent Pyramid”. However there was no reason to celebrate since even this pyramid wasn’t good enough for the pharaoh in order to climb up into heaven.

Only the third pyramid well known as red pyramid was finally good enough for Snofru. She is with 105 metres high known as the first “real” pyramid of Egypt. And it is even today worth a visit. While the pyramids of Giza are all day long full of people, only a few tourists find their way to Dashur.
So there we meet a quit lonely guard in the middle of the desert, who is happy about every change. He is also happy about a small tip, with which our guide guaranteed that we could take our cameras down to the chamber.

He himself refused to come with us. Because the entrance is at about 28 metres high, from where a 63 metre long channle leads nearly to the sea level. The path is rather uncomfortable. The ceiling is very low and we had to be bended the whole way. But even this is only the half truth.
At the bottom a acrid Salmiak-smell pun gets into our noses. Maybe their is a pharaoh somewhere here? Or even his horses? No they can not be it because at Snofrus time they were not existing in Egypt. Near the burial chamber the smell is increasing so that it was impossible to breath through the nose and we were after a short visit and a heavy ascent happy to be back at the fresh air.

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