The Merikare pyramid is a previously undiscovered ancient Egyptian pyramid and the presumed tomb of King Merikare , who ruled towards the end of the 9th / 10th dynasty . So far it is only known from a total of nine inscriptions, eight of which come from Saqqara North, the ninth is of unknown origin. All inscriptions come from priestly graves and at least four of these priests also held offices in the temple of the Teti pyramid . This fact led to the assumption early on that the Merikare pyramid must have been located near the tomb of Teti . As early as 1926, Cecil M. Firth assumed that Merikare had built a small pyramid on the southeast corner of the Teti pyramid. But it later turned out that this is only the cult pyramid of the latter. In 1994 Jaromír Málek proposed another structure than Merikare's possible burial site, namely the Lepsius XXIX pyramid , also known as the "headless pyramid", which is located northeast of the Teti pyramid. In the meantime, however, this building is mostly assigned to Menkauhor , a ruler of the 5th dynasty , which is supported by structural features, but also the fact that Menkauhor's funeral priests were largely buried in northern Saqqara. Malek counters this, however, that no graves of the 5th dynasty were built in the immediate vicinity of the Lepsius XXIX pyramid and therefore suspects Menkauhor's grave to be elsewhere in Saqqara.
literature
Jaromír Málek: King Merykare and his Pyramid . In: Cathérine Berger-El Naggar, Jean Leclant: Hommages à Jean Leclant. Volume 4: Varia (= Bibliothèque d'étude. 106/4). Imprimerie de l'Institut français d'archéologie orientale, Cairo 1994, ISBN 978-2-7247-0139-5 , pp. 203-214.
Christoffer Theis: The Pyramids of the First Intermediate Period. According to philological and archaeological sources. In: Studies on Ancient Egyptian Culture. (SAK) Vol. 39, Hamburg 2010, pp. 321-339 ( online ).
