16 March 2000 (afternoon)

Sphinx & Khafre’s Pyramid

After the Sphinx we return to Mena House for lunch in the main dining room and luck out with a table by the picture windows. From our vantage point the Great Pyramid is so dominating that it’s an odd juxtaposition to our humble (but delicious) chicken kabob in a pita bread pocket.

After lunch most of the group opts to relax by the pool or take naps, but five of us return to the Giza Plateau with Moustafa and spend two hours exploring the pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure.

Map of the Giza Plateau. Courtesy of MesserWoland, Wikimedia Commons.

Khafre’s Pyramid

Khafre was one of Khufu’s sons and, at 471 feet, his pyramid falls only ten feet short of his father’s. It’s quite different in many ways, however, including simpler interior passages and a slightly steeper angle. It also sits a bit higher than the Great Pyramid and still retains some of its casing at the top. Khafre’s pyramid is closed for restoration today, so we won’t be able to go inside. The public can visit all three of the main Giza pyramids, but as part of a conservation effort only two are open at any given time.

Menkaure followed Khafre and ruled for about eighteen years. His pyramid is smaller than the other two at a mere 213 feet tall, but his mortuary complex is relatively well-preserved and his builders worked with stones so large it boggles, so there’s plenty to view and contemplate.

Giant stone blocks of Menkaure’s mortuary temple. The corner of his pyramid is behind them and Khafre’s pyramid is in the distance.

First stop is Menkaure’s mortuary temple, where the stone beams are as big as semi trucks. We examine them and the causeway that leads to his valley temple. Mud brick building ramps can still be seen in spots around the pyramid, since Menkaure died before his temple and pyramid were finished.

This pyramid is open, although the passages are a mob scene, crammed with Egyptian children enjoying their holiday. We climb down to a small chamber carved with a series of false doors, then crouch our way along a low passage to an antechamber, then go down again to the burial chamber. On our right, before we enter the burial chamber, there’s a room with several smaller rooms off of it, but we can’t go in because it’s gated.

Menkaure’s burial chamber and his lost sarcophagus

The burial chamber is tiny compared to Khufu’s but has an elegant vaulted ceiling. The place is wall-to-wall kids, but the attendant shoos them out and gives us a couple of minutes to ourselves, since we’re the only adults who’ve been willing to brave the decibel level.

Menkaure’s sarcophagus is missing, the object of a great tragedy. Unlike Khufu’s austere granite coffin, Menkaure’s sarcophagus featured carved decorative panels. English Egyptologist Richard William Howard Vyse pounced and packed it off to the British Museum in the fall of 1838, but the ship that was carrying it, the Beatrice, never arrived in Liverpool, lost during a storm.

Remains of a subsidiary pyramid

Back outside, we walk around the satellite/subsidiary pyramids. Menkaure has three, but Khafre has only one.

Moustafa then takes us to see a Ramses II pair statue discovered in the past couple of years, but still in the ground. Dr. Hawass hasn’t had a chance to publish it yet, so we can’t take photos, but it’s fun to see it anyway. It’s an interesting link between this OId Kingdom site and that ubiquitous New Kingdom pharaoh.

We walk around Khafre’s pyramid and observe the original granite casing of the lower courses. Menkaure’s pyramid also had a granite casing, although it was never completed. Moustafa tells us that a lazy official under Ramses II quarried Khafre’s casing until Ramses got wind of it and made him stop. Several of the granite blocks are still lying around, partially shaped into columns. We walk between the pyramid and a sheer wall of limestone bedrock, remains of a pyramid quarry. The marks made by the stone cutters are still evident, along with hieroglyphic graffiti dating to Ramses II.

Quarry near Khafre’s pyramid. Photo courtesy of JMCC1, Wikimedia Commons.

Dr. Mark Lehner

If you’d like to learn more about the Giza Plateau, you’ll find no better source than the Ancient Egypt Research Associates website. The soul of this terrific organization is Egyptologist Mark Lehner, a man who’s dedicated the better part of his life to unlocking the secrets of this breathtaking part of our shared human history.

Dr. Lehner is the force behind The Giza Mapping Project, an ambitious effort to account for every square centimeter of the plateau. In the process he’s advanced our understanding of the pyramid builders far beyond anything known before, including critical research on the infrastructure and organization that made it all possible.