The Etruscan Pyramid Search
Did one of the world’s greatest forgotten civilizations build pyramids? I decide to find out.
I’ve had a thing about pyramids ever since visiting Mexico in the early 1980s. I went to Teotihuacàn, location of an ancient complex dating back to 200 ACE which contained the third-largest pyramid in the world, the Pyramid of the Sun. In those pre-digital camera days, I documented the event on my Brownie 127 camera which had a roll of film that took just eight photos. These had to be delivered to a developer and collected a week later, while you kept your fingers crossed they had all come out. I had brought one roll for the whole of my three-week Mexico trip and one quarter of the spool went on pictures of the pyramids. That tells you something.
In case you are in any doubt, a pyramid is defined as “a monumental structure with a square or triangular base and sloping sides that meet at a point at the top” (Oxford Languages Dictionary). Ancient pyramids come in many varieties from stepped, like the Mayan temple at Chichen Itza and the Teotihuacàn complex, to smooth-sided, like the southern pyramid at Sneferu, Egypt,also known as the Red Pyramid or the…
