"Les pyramides de la IVe dynastie", par Rainer Stadelmann

La pyramide rhomboïdale (illustration extraite de l'article de Rainer Stadelmann)

"It is astonishing that the building of the pyramids is never mentioned in inscriptions of contemporaries, kings, or high functionaries, although it must have been the main event that took place during the reign of any king. However, the building of a pyramid is like the performance of daily rituals in the temples, the ceremonies that guaranteed the rising and setting of the sun, the passage of the seasons, and the arrival of the Nile floods,- all these are a fundamental part of the king's natural lifetime assignments that they hardly needed mentioning. 
Sneferu was without doubt the most outstanding builder of the ancient world, having constructed three large and two smaller pyramids in his long reign using more than 3.6 million cubic meters of stone : one million more than his son Khufu used in his Great Pyramid at Giza. Nonetheless, he is known in Egyptian tradition as the good king par excellence who addressed, according to folk tales, his subordinates as 'friend' or even 'brother'. 
The shape of the pyramid complex changed under the influence of the sun god and his worship, from a north-south-oriented rectangle into a square east-west complex, following the course of the rising sun. The east-west orientation emphasizes a new element in the layout of the pyramid complex : the long causeway, which leads from the east, the land of the living, up the pyramid tomb, finally ending at the mortuary temple that from this time forward lies on the east side of the pyramid. The entrance gate to the causeway develops into a valley temple, the cult center of the pyramid town, in which the goddess Hathor and the king were worshipped as local deities."

Suite de cet article dans Digital Giza (Harvard University)