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Thanks ETL!

Sidebar: a mystery pharaoh of the Old Kingdom isn’t exactly a four leaf clover. :^) This one is dated on stylistic grounds to the 5th Dynasty. The 4th dynasty is well known (uh, to many of us) as the generations who built the most famous pyramids — and yet Khufu was succeeded by his son Djedjefre, whose pyramid at Abu Roash was left unfinished at his death and pulled apart for building stone over the next forty or so centuries, vanishing for good in the 18th or 19th c AD. Djedjefre wasn’t succeeded by Khafre, but by the young son of Djedjefre (he had a few years of rule, according to S. Quirke’s book on the monuments), who, uh, apparently died (ahem) and was succeeded by Khafre. By the time Menkaure his son succeeded him, there was a clear problem with the Egyptian ability to sustain useless public projects, and his rather large pyramid looks tiny next to the other two large ones at Giza.

Menkaure’s son (?) and successor founded the 5th dynasty (in the sense that he’s assigned to that dynasty) but apparently had lost control of lower Egypt, or just didn’t have the cash, and his burial was in a mastaba, a reversion to an earlier type from centuries past, I think near Saqqara.