The main character of Pyramids is Pteppic (pronounced Teppic), prince of the tiny kingdom of Djelibeybi (a pun on Jelly baby, a confection popular in the United Kingdom). Young Teppic has been in training at the Assassins Guild in Ankh-Morpork for several years. The day after passing his final exam he realizes his father has died and he must return home. Being the first Djelibeybian king raised outside the kingdom leads to some interesting problems, particularly when a giant pyramid constructed in honor of Teppic's father twists the dimensions and brings to existence all of the kingdom's gods.  Djelibeybi is the Discworld counterpart to Ancient Egypt.  It is revealed that in the Discworld universe, large solid pyramid-shaped structures have a tendency to warp the flow of time (requiring the construction crew to deal with a variety of temporal paradoxes). Correctly built, a Discworld pyramid sustains an interior chamber where time passes very slowly, within which a dying pharaoh might live for a long period of time with respect to the outside world. However, the knowledge that pyramids can be constructed with this capability has been lost. The tradition of building them has remained, but as monuments and tombs only, not as functional chambers for travel into the future.