SAQQARA -- Escaping from millennia of desert sands, the famous "headless" pyramid at Saqqara, near Cairo, has finally been attributed to the pharaoh Mankauhor, who ruled Egypt 4,400 years ago.

"We had to move a mountain of sand, but we're sure that this pyramid is a pyramid from the Fifth Dynasty, and the only missing pyramid (from that period) is of a king called Menkauhor," Egypt antiquities chief Zahi Hawass told journalists.

On the vast plateau of the Saqqara necropolis, German archaeologist Karl Lepsius first named the enigmatic pyramid Number 29 in his 1842 list of pyramids but since then its attribution has been a source of controversy.

Hawass and a team of young Egyptian archaeologists spent a year and a half excavating the tunnels beneath what remains of the pyramid.

Hawass said the original structure's stones were taken for buildings in Cairo.

Digging revealed the pyramid's lower infrastructure, made from giant stone blocks, and the remains of the royal burial chamber but only the lid from the royal sarcophagus itself.

The pyramid is believed to have been 45 meters high (150 feet), barely a fifth of the height of the pyramid of Kheops, the biggest of the three great pyramids at Giza.

While some believed the pyramid to be Menkauhor's, who ruled for eight years from 2,389 to 2,381 BC, others insisted it was more recent.

"There can no longer be any doubt, even if there's no inscription, everything points to this being a monument from the Fifth Dynasty, and that Menkauhor was buried there," Hawass said.

He said a more recent construction would have had a far more complex death chamber and a different kind of stone would have been used for the burial chamber.

"Sakkara is still a more or less undiscovered site, and when I say that only 30 percent of pharaonic Egypt has been discovered, this is the main place I'm thinking of," said Hawass.