The northern Mazghuna pyramid is the funerary monument built for an undetermined Egyptian pharaoh of the 12th or 13th Dynasty in Mazghuna, south of Dahshur. The building remained unfinished, and it is still unknown which pharaoh was really intended to be buried here since no appropriate inscription has been found. The pyramid was rediscovered in 1910 by Ernest Mackay and excavated in the following year by Flinders Petrie.
There are no remains evidencing the existence of a superstructure, with the only information that can be gleaned from the site being that the northern pyramid was planned on a larger scale than its southern neighbour which had a known base length of about â Christoffer Theis offers an approximation of . Ernest Mackay interpreted the lack of any remains to mean that the superstructure had been built entirely of limestone â a mudbrick core would have left traces behind â that was later thoroughly dismantled; Mark Lehner suggests that work on the superstructure had never begun.
The hypogeum is similar to that of the southern pyramid but much more tortuous, changing direction six times. The entrance is on the north side. From there, a staircase leads down to a square chamber and then to another staircase and to the first quartzite blocking. After that, two other chambers are connected by a passage with a second, still unsealed blocking. After the third chamber, a stairway and then a corridor leads to the antechamber just prior to the large burial chamber: this room, partially covered by an inverted V-shaped ceiling, is entirely filled by a huge sarcophagus-vault, which was carved from a single block of quartzite. The never-used sarcophagus lid, a 42-ton quartzite slab, still awaits to be fitted in the chamber. All exposed quartzite, which was built in the pyramid, had been painted with red paint and sometimes also decorated with vertical black stripes. The function of a large room behind the burial chamber remain unknown.
There are no traces of a valley or mortuary temple, or of the enclosure walls â like the one that exists at the southern pyramid. Mackay had discovered a long section of a northâÂÂsouth oriented mudbrick retaining wall that he originally thought belonged to the enclosure, but this had been built to control debris and keep the site level. The only other significant remains of the wider complex discovered were a section of the eastâÂÂwest oriented causeway built to serve the workforce as they brought in materials for the project and a large stone block found abandoned to its south. The causeway had an inner path measuring wide by long that was bordered on the north and south by double mudbrick walls and terminated east of the tomb's entrance. These were much thicker on their outer side than inner and had an wide void between packed with debris.
When the two Mazghuna pyramids were rediscovered, scholars noticed many structural similarities between those two and Amenemhat III's pyramid at Hawara; for this reason the southern pyramid was attributed to the son and successor of this king, Amenemhat IV. Subsequently, the northern pyramid was attributed to the female-pharaoh Sobekneferu, sister of Amenemhat IV and last ruler of the 12th Dynasty.
However, some scholars such as William C. Hayes believed that the two Mazghuna pyramids were built during the 13th Dynasty, on the basis of some similarities with the pyramid of Khendjer. In this case, the northern pyramid should have belonged to one of the many pharaohs who ruled between the beginning of the 13th Dynasty and the loss of control of the northern territory occurred during or after the reign of Merneferre Ay.