Pyramiden Nunatak, Queen Maud Land, at the head of the Schytt Glacier, Antarctica

Pyramid-like peaks

Named 1949–52 (a shape on the survey photographs)

Mapmakers in the early 1950s looked at air photographs of Queen Maud Land and named a nunatak the pyramid, and the nunatak beside it the sphinx. The names record a likeness. A glacier can cut that likeness. A builder could have, too, and no dig has been published either way.

Why this is extraordinary

In the years 1949 to 1952 the Norwegian-British-Swedish Antarctic Expedition mapped a stretch of Queen Maud Land from the ground and from air photographs. On the east side of the head of the Schytt Glacier, a short distance east of a peak called Knallen, a rock stood clear of the ice. The cartographers named it Pyramiden. The word means the pyramid. A neighbour, about a mile to the south, they named Sfinksen, the sphinx. The names are descriptions of silhouettes on the photographs. They are also the reason a later reader, looking at a pointed rock in satellite views of this coast, thinks of a building.

A nunatak is simply a summit that pokes through an ice sheet. Queen Maud Land is full of them. The ice is the white. The rock is whatever the ice has not covered. Some of those tops are rounded. Some come to a point, with faces that meet at ridges. The pointed ones have a name in the study of glaciers. A pyramidal peak, a horn in the sharp cases, is what you get when ice cuts bowl-shaped hollows, called cirques, into several sides of one mountain. The walls between the bowls become the faces. Three or four faces is the ordinary count. The same recipe cuts famous peaks in other glaciated ranges. Nothing about the recipe requires a builder, and nothing about the recipe has, in the sources used here, been published as a measured study of this particular nunatak.

The other reading starts from the likeness the namers already admitted. If a mountain looks enough like a pyramid to be called one, a person is allowed to ask whether the faces are cut stone. Satellite pictures of Queen Maud Land, and of other Antarctic ranges, keep that question alive, because a low sun lays a hard shadow on a ridge and the ridge looks dressed. No excavation of Pyramiden has been published. No count of its faces, no angle of a wall, and no tool from its foot is in the sources used here, and this room does not invent them. A commercial satellite frame of an unnamed peak, the kind that circulates as “the” Antarctic pyramid, is not an openly licensed photograph this museum can hang. The named rock we can place on the map is Pyramiden, at about 72°17′ south, 3°48′ west.

There is also no published alignment. A built pyramid can be checked for a face aimed at a sunrise or a star. You would stand off the face, measure the direction in degrees, and compare it with the sun’s rising point at the solstice for that latitude. Nobody has published that measurement for Pyramiden. A glacial horn’s faces point down the valleys the ice occupied, which is a direction set by the bowls, not by a calendar. Both statements can be true of a rock that has not been instrumented: the test has not been made, and the landform does not need a sighted sunrise to explain a point. The age of the ice around these peaks, and the forests that grew before that ice, are in Forests and the ice. What the drills found under the sheet, as against a city still hidden, is in Under the ice.

Why it matters

If Pyramiden is cut stone, Antarctica has a building above the ice, not only a story about a city under it, and the faces could be surveyed like any other worked wall. If it is a horn, the continent’s sharp peaks are the ordinary work of ice, and the name is a compliment the rock paid to a shape. The photograph in this room is a different nunatak, so the likeness is not smuggled in as a picture of the wrong mountain.

The pin is Pyramiden Nunatak, about 72°17′ south and 3°48′ west, at the head of the Schytt Glacier in Queen Maud Land. The photograph is Basen, in the Vestfjella, about 130 kilometres from the coast, with the station Aboa on the rock. Basen shows a nunatak. It does not show the peak that carries the pyramid name. Sfinksen is the neighbour named in the same survey.

Photo tour

1 photograph, unedited. On a phone, swipe the row. Choose one to look closely.

No openly licensed photograph of Pyramiden Nunatak, or of Sfinksen, was found. The hero shows Basen, a different nunatak in Queen Maud Land, and the caption says so.
Frames of an unnamed “Antarctic pyramid” that circulate from commercial satellite views were not used. They are not an open license, and this room does not invent a coordinate for a peak it cannot name.

What is still unexplained

These sit beside the consensus account, with the same visual weight. None of them is marked solved.

Named for a shape A name that is already an argument Pyramiden and Sfinksen were named from the survey photographs of 1949 to 1952. Pyramid and sphinx are building-words. One reading says the expedition was doing what surveyors do, grabbing the nearest familiar outline. The other says the outline was familiar because it was a building, and the namers wrote down what they saw. The names alone cannot decide. They do fix the subject. This is not an unnamed pixel in a satellite mosaic. It is a rock a mapping party chose to call a pyramid, a short distance east of Knallen.

Unpublished Faces no one has measured A horn is identified by the bowls around it. Cirques on several sides, ridges between them, a point where the ridges meet. A pyramid is identified by dressed faces, courses, a base that was levelled, a tool. Neither description has been published for Pyramiden in the sources used here. The general landform is well known. This nunatak has not been the subject of a face-by-face report that would let you count the cirques or the courses. Until that report exists, “it is the usual glacial shape” and “it is built” are both readings of a name and a silhouette.

No azimuth published No star on the face At about 72° south, with a tilt like the Earth’s now, midsummer is a stretch when the sun does not set and midwinter is a stretch when it does not rise. That is the sky over Queen Maud Land. It is the same kind of polar day and polar night the forests room explains for trees that grew farther north, where the published latitude only crosses the polar circle. It is not a direction carved on Pyramiden. In the weeks when the sun does rise and set, its rising point walks the eastern sky. A built face could be measured against one of those mornings. No degree, no azimuth, has been published for this nunatak, and this room does not invent the path of that sunrise. A missing measurement is not a hidden one. The rock has not been asked the question in print.

Location and dating

Location: Pyramiden Nunatak stands at the head of the Schytt Glacier in Queen Maud Land, a short distance east of Knallen, near 72°17′ south, 3°48′ west. Sfinksen is the nunatak just to its south. Basen, in the photograph, is a different nunatak, in the Vestfjella, and the station on it was built in 1988.
Period label: Current consensus — open to revision The name enters the maps with the Norwegian-British-Swedish Antarctic Expedition of 1949 to 1952, from surveys and air photographs. That dates the naming, not the rock, and not a construction. No building date has been published, because no excavation has been published.
How this dating was done: The expedition years are the date of the survey that fixed the name. The rock itself is the old bedrock of Queen Maud Land, and this room does not assign Pyramiden a formation age it has not seen in print. A pyramidal shape cut by ice is a landform, and its age would be the age of the glaciers that cut the bowls, which is not a single published year for this summit. An alignment has not been dated because none has been measured.
What could change it: A published section across a face, showing either courses and a tool or cirques and a ridge, would move the reading. A measured azimuth, set against the solstice at this latitude, would open a sky reading that does not exist yet. Another name on a neighbouring rock would not.

Published ranges, drawn as bars. A bar is a claim about a span, not a point.

Named on the survey

1949 CE1952 CE

Named on the survey. Norwegian-British-Swedish Antarctic Expedition. The bar is when the nunatak was mapped and named Pyramiden. It is not a construction date.

What is actually there

Pyramiden is a nunatak at the head of the Schytt Glacier, a short distance east of Knallen, near 72°17′ south, 3°48′ west.
The 1949–52 expedition named it from air photographs. The name means the pyramid.
A neighbour was named Sfinksen, the sphinx, in the same survey.
A pyramidal peak is a known result of cirques cutting into one mountain from several sides.
No published excavation, face count, tool, or azimuth for Pyramiden is used here.
The photograph is Basen, a different Queen Maud Land nunatak, with the station Aboa.

Open questions

Question	Status
Is Pyramiden a glacial horn or a built pyramid?	Open. The name records the likeness. The landform can produce it. No measured face has been published for this rock.
Do satellite views of other sharp peaks change that?	They spread the likeness. They do not add a dig. A frame from a commercial satellite is not hung here.
Does any face point at a solstice?	No azimuth has been published. The polar day and the polar night at this latitude are real. They are not a direction on the rock.

The current narrative

Where publication stands today. It is the best-supported reading, and it is open to revision. It is not a verdict.

The current narrative — open to revision

A nunatak cut into a point by ice

Pyramiden is a glacial horn, or at least the kind of nunatak that sort of peak is. Cirques on several sides leave faces and a point. The 1949–52 party named the silhouette, and named a neighbour the sphinx, because that is how a map describes a shape. Queen Maud Land is a country of nunataks, and pointed ones are expected where the ice has been at work.

What supports this

Pyramidal peaks form where several cirques eat back toward one summit. The faces are the walls between the bowls.
The expedition’s names, pyramid and sphinx, come from air photographs of unexcavated rock, which is how a survey names a likeness.
Nunataks are the ordinary way old rock shows through an ice sheet. Basen, in the photograph, is one, in the same region, and it carries a modern station rather than a dressed course.

What pushes back

The general landform has not been published, in the sources used here, as a cirque-by-cirque study of Pyramiden. “Horns exist” is not yet “this summit was measured as one.”
The name is a building-word. A surveyor can mean it loosely. A later reader can mean it literally, and the photographs still look like the reason the name was chosen.
No count of faces is in print here, so a four-sided plan has been neither confirmed nor ruled out for this rock.

What would settle it

Stronger while the rock stays an unexcavated nunatak in a glaciated range and the only evidence is a pointed silhouette. Weaker if a published section shows courses, a levelled base, or a tool, or if the bowls that would make a horn are looked for and are not there. The name keeps both readings in the same word.

Emerging narratives

Other published readings. Each may be right. None is adopted here unless the evidence carries it.

An emerging narrative

A pyramid, seen above the ice

The peak was named for what it is. The faces are artificial, or at least the plan is too regular for ice alone, and satellite views of Queen Maud Land keep finding the same kind of point. A building above the ice would not have to wait for a drill.

What supports this

The mapping party chose the word pyramid, and chose sphinx for the neighbour. The likeness was obvious on the photographs of 1949 to 1952.
A low sun on a ridge makes faces look flat and planned. That is the picture the reading starts from, on this nunatak and on other Antarctic peaks.
No published geological report in the sources used here has counted Pyramiden’s cirques, so the natural account has not been closed on this rock either.
The peak stands clear of the ice. Whatever it is, it is not hidden. It can be walked to and measured.

What pushes back

The same pointed shape is produced by cirques, without a builder, wherever glaciers cut a mountain from several sides.
No excavation, no course of blocks, no mortar, and no tool has been published from Pyramiden.
No azimuth of a face has been published, so a sky purpose has not been shown. A regular-looking shadow is not yet a measured wall.

What would settle it

Stronger if a face resolves into dressed stone, or if a measured direction meets a sunrise and a cirque field does not. Weaker while the evidence is the name and the silhouette, and the landform that cuts points is the one this ice makes. The reading stays available because the rock has not been taken apart in print. It does not become a building because a commercial picture left a peak unnamed.

Should the current view be reevaluated?

Open to revision

A glacial horn is the landform that fits an unexcavated point in a nunatak field, and it has not been demonstrated cirque by cirque on Pyramiden. A built pyramid is the reading the name invites, and it has no published stonework. Open keeps the likeness and the missing measurement in the same view.

What drives this

The 1949–52 names, pyramid and sphinx, taken from air photographs.
The known way ice cuts a pyramidal peak, and the absence of a face-by-face study of this nunatak.
No published tool, course, or azimuth.

This is the museum’s own weighing of the evidence. It is not a visitor vote, and it is separate from the slider.

Weigh it yourself

Anonymous. Nothing here is stored except on this browser. Your lean does not change the assessment beside it.

A nunatak cut into a point by ice Unsure A pyramid, seen above the ice

If the contested reading is right

What would follow if a reading that is not the consensus turned out to be true, and what could settle it. This explains the stakes. It does not adopt the reading.

Pyramiden is a built pyramid

Queen Maud Land would hold a structure above the ice, datable by the stonework and by whatever sits against it, not by the surprise of the outline. The forests and the old ice sheet would remain what they are. A wall on a nunatak would be a new kind of object beside them. A sky reading would finally have a face to measure.

Why it is still worth a test

A published section of one face, and an azimuth if the face has a direction. Until the courses or the cirques are on the page, the name is a likeness and the peak is still a nunatak a survey named in 1949–52.

Sources

Pyramidal peak The landform. Cirques on several sides leave a point and faces. Antarctic peaks are among the examples of the shape.
Nunatak A summit that stands through an ice sheet. The word for the rock in the photograph and for Pyramiden.
List of nunataks Pyramiden Nunatak, about 72°17′ south, 3°48′ west, named by the Norwegian-British-Swedish Antarctic Expedition of 1949–52. Sfinksen is the neighbour.
Aboa Station, Basen The photograph. Basen nunatak, Vestfjella, Queen Maud Land. Not Pyramiden.

Image credits

Basen, a nunatak in the Vestfjella of Queen Maud Land, with the Finnish station Aboa on it, photographed in 2010. This is not Pyramiden. It is rock standing out of the ice in the same part of the continent, so you can see what a nunatak is. No openly licensed photograph of Pyramiden itself was found. . Polarforskningssekretariatet, CC BY-SA 3.0. Shown unedited.

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