A 4,000-year-old pyramid discovered 200 years ago by a German and later went missing has been unveiled by Egyptian archaeologists.

The 'missing pyramid', as chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawass says, appears to have been built by obscure pharaoh Menkauhor, who ruled for only eight years.

The pyramid lies inside the well-known Saqqara Serapium, a tunnel of underground tombs, discovered by French archeologist August Mariette in 1850, that has been closed to the public for repairs for the last ten years at Saqqara, south of Cairo, Egypt.

Unveiled on Thursday, June 5, Hawass announced the discovery of a part of a ceremonial procession road, dating back to the Ptolemaic period, which ran for about 300 years before 30 B.C.

It runs along from the recently discovered 'missing pyramid' of King Menkauhor and leads from a mummification chamber toward the Saqqara Serapium, where sacred bulls were interred, AP said.

German archaeologist Karl Richard Lepsius in 1842 mentioned it among his finds at Saqqara, referring to it as number 29 and calling it the 'Headless Pyramid' because only its base remains.

But the desert sands covered the discovery and no archaeologist since has been able to find Menkauhor's resting place.

"We have filled the gap of the missing pyramid," Hawass told reporters on a tour of the discoveries at Saqqara, the necropolis and burial site of the rulers of ancient Memphis, the capital of Egypt's Old Kingdom, about 12 miles south of Cairo.

FTP/DT