ASSOCIATED PRESS

November 12, 2008

SAQQARA, Egypt – Archaeologists have reported a newly discovered pyramid under the sands of Saqqara, an ancient burial site that has yielded a string of unearthed pyramids in recent years but remains largely unexplored.

The 4,300-year-old monument most likely belonged to the queen mother of the founder of Egypt's 6th Dynasty and was built several hundred years after the famed Great Pyramids of Giza, antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said while announcing the find yesterday.

The discovery is part of the sprawling necropolis and burial site of the rulers of ancient Memphis, the capital of Egypt's Old Kingdom, about 12 miles south of Giza. All that remains of the pyramid is a 16-foot-tall structure that had been buried under 65 feet of sand.

Hawass' team had been excavating at the location for two years, but determined only two months ago that the structure, with sides about 72 feet long, was the base of a pyramid. The pyramid is the 118th discovered so far in Egypt and the 12th to be found in Saqqara. Most are in ruins; only about a dozen pyramids across the country remain intact.

Hawass believes the pyramid belonged to Queen Sesheshet, who is thought to have played a major role in establishing the 6th Dynasty and uniting two branches of the feuding royal family. Her son, Teti, ruled for about a dozen years until his likely assassination.

Joe Wegner, an associate professor of Egyptian archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania who has been involved in other expeditions at Saqqara, cautioned that until “inscriptional confirmation is found, it's still an educated guess” that the pyramid is Sesheshet's.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20081112/news_1n12pyramid.html