ABSTRACT
To understand the nature of the ground on which the pyramid and labyrinth stood at Hawara, it is important to keep certain distinctive factors in mind. In the first place, the terrain is not that usually selected for a monument of the scale of a royal pyramid complex, where it was customary to build on high ground to the west of the river valley, the chosen site, as a result, needing some levelling and building up where the causeway approached it from the valley temple, but not an undue amount of subconstructions as a rule. Here the site lay in a relatively low area, apparently on nearly level ground, but which in reality in its primeval state sloped gently down from a knoll of rock at the north-east end to the Fayum lake depression on the south-west. This latter zone was then liable to inundation and consequently would require considerable raising up if the buildings adjacent to the pyramid were to be safe from flooding or water seepage into underground galleries. In fact, many of the tombs on the site, and even the king’s own burial chamber, were later flooded, the danger having become a fact due to the rise in the level of the water in the Nile over the period after Amenemhat III.
