The village of El-Lahun or lllahun, the Egyptian Ro-hent and Coptic Lehone ("Mouth of the Canal"), lies on the right bank of the Bahr Yusuf to the north of the point where it leaves the Nile Valley and turns into a narrow passageway through the desert mountains on its way to the Fayyum. At El-Lahun are two sluice bridges regulating the flow of the Bahr Yusuf and the Giza Canal, successors to the massive ancient dams of the 12th Dynasty.
The Pyramid of Sesostris II is unusual in its structural design and in the fact that the entrance door faces south instead of the traditional direction of north.
3mi/5km northeast of El-Lahun, on the edge of the cultivated land, are the remains of the Coptic Monastery of Deir el-Hammam, with a church which dates from Early Christian times.
2mi/3km southwest of El-Lahun is the Kom Medinet Gurab, with the remains of a settlement dating from the late 18th and 19th Dynasties. It is still possible to identify dwelling houses, two temples (one of them built by Tuthmosis III) and the necropolis. Much of the material found here referred to the reign of Amenophis III and his wife Tiy, suggesting that the town flourished particularly during his reign.
South of the Pyramid of Sesostris II are four shaft graves belonging to relatives of the King. In one of these, the Tomb of Princess Sat-Hathor-Yunet, daughter of Sesostris II, Flinders Petrie (who excavated the whole pyramid complex) found in 1914 the Princess's gold jewelry, a treasure of the highest artistic quality which is now shared between the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
The Valley Temple belonging to the pyramid lies 2mi/3km east, on the margins of the cultivated land. Here, too, was the town of Hetep Senwosret ("Sesostris is content") or Kahun, founded by Sesostris II and occupied by workers, priests and officials. Laid out on a regular plan, it was inhabited only for a brief period during the 12th Dynasty, perhaps only during the construction of the pyramid. In the remains were found not only a variety of everyday objects but also numerous papyri (the Kahun Papyri) in hieratic scriptwith mathematical, medical, legal, religious and literary texts. Farther north is a crocodile cemetery.
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Pyramid of Sesostris II
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