Lost LABYRINTH Of Egypt Scanned

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At the beginning of the 19th century Hawara was studied by Napoleon Bonaparte’s famous expedition in Egypt. The French expedition (1799-1800) described the Hawara pyramid, and the pharaonic temple south of it. The remains in the north and the west were wrongly identified as the Labyrinth (Jomard-Caristie 1822) by Jomard who believed that he had discovered the ruins of the Labyrinth.

The first excavations at the site were made by Karl Lepsius, in 1843. Lepsius was commissioned by King Frederich Wilhelm IV of Prussia to lead an expedition to explore and record the remains of the ancient Egyptian civilization. The Prussian expedition was modeled after the earlier Napoléonic mission, and consisted of surveyors, draftsmen, and other specialists.

In Hawara K. R. Lepsius, carried out considerable excavations in the cemetery to the north and on the northern and south-eastern sides of the pyramid and in the area of the Labyrinth and claimed to have established the actual site of the Labyrinth (Lepsius 1849), attaching great importance to a series of brick chambers which they unearthed.

The data furnished by this party, however, were not altogether of a convincing character, and it was felt that further evidence was required before their conclusions could be accepted. Lepsius thought that the structures excavated by his team were parts of the temple of King Amenemhat III, but later research showed that they belonged to Roman tombs. Since the expedition of Lepsius, the place came to be known as a findspot for some high quality royal statues.

The pupil of Lepsius, G. M. Ebers, who did much to popularise the study of Egyptology by a series of novels, said that, if one climbed the pyramid hard by, one could see that the ruins of the Labyrinth had a horseshoe shape, but that was all.