Menkaure pyramid - The smallest of the three Pyramids

On the south side of the Menkaure pyramid, there are three smaller pyramids, designated G3-a, G3-b, 

and G3-c. The American archaeologist George Andrew Reisner speculated that the structures were likely tombs for the queens of Menkaure, and that the individuals buried there may have also been his half-sisters.

The archaeologist Mark Lehner argues that Pyramid G3-a has a layout akin to a ka pyramid, which would have housed a statue of the king rather than a body. 

The fact that the structure once contained a pink granite sarcophagus, however, has led scholars to speculate that it may have been reused as a queen's burial tomb, or that it served as a chapel where the body of Menkaure was mummified.

The Menkaure Valley Temple was excavated between 1908 and 1910 by George Reisner.

 He found a large number of statues mostly of Menkaure alone and as a member of a group. These were all carved in the naturalistic style of the old kingdom with a high degree of detail.

In the mortuary temple the foundations and the inner core were made of limestone. The floors were begun with granite and granite facings were added to some of the walls. The foundations of the valley temple were made of stone but both temples were finished with crude bricks. Reisner estimated that some of the blocks of local stone in the walls of the mortuary temple weighed as much as 220 tons, while the heaviest granite ashlars imported from Aswan weighed more than 30 tons. It is assumed that Menkaure's successor Shepseskaf completed the temple construction. An inscription in the mortuary temple that said he "made it (the temple) as his monument for his father, the king of upper and lower Egypt."

Subsequent architectural additions and two stelae from the Sixth Dynasty suggest that a cult for the Pharoah was maintained 

Menkaure's pyramid had an original height of 65.5 meters (215 ft), and was the smallest of the three major pyramids at the Giza Necropolis.

 It now stands at 61 m (200 ft) tall with a base of 108.5 m (356 ft). Its angle of incline is approximately 51°20′25″. It was constructed of limestone and Aswan granite.

 The first sixteen courses of the exterior were made of the red granite. 

The upper portion was cased in the normal manner with Tura limestone. Part of the granite was left in the rough.

 Incomplete projects such as this pyramid help archaeologists understand the methods used to build pyramids and temples. South of the pyramid of Menkaure are three satellite pyramids, with each accompanied by a temple and substructure. 

The easternmost is the largest and a true pyramid. Its casing is partly of granite, like the main pyramid, and is believed to have been completed due to the limestone pyramidion found close by.

 

Khufu Pyramid ( Great Pyramid of Egypt )

The Great Pyramid of Giza (also known as the Pyramid of Khufu or the Pyramid of Cheops) is the oldest and largest of the three pyramids in the Giza pyramid complex bordering present-day Giza in Greater Cairo, Egypt.

It is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the only one to remain largely intact.

Egyptologists believe that the pyramid was built as a tomb for the Fourth Dynasty Egyptian pharaoh Khufu over a 20-year period concluding around 2560 BC. 

Initially standing at 146.5 metres (481 feet), the Great Pyramid was the tallest man-made structure in the world for more than 3,800 years. 

It is estimated to weigh approximately 6 million tonnes, and consists of 2.3 million blocks of limestone and granite, some weighing as much as 80 tonnes.

It was originally covered by limestone casing stones that formed a smooth outer surface; what is seen today is the underlying core structure, although a few casing stones can still be seen at the base.

 It was built by extracting huge stones from a quarry and lifting them into place, but there are varying scientific and alternative theories about the exact construction technique.

There are three known chambers inside the Great Pyramid.

The lowest chamber is cut into the bedrock upon which the pyramid was built and was unfinished.

The so-called Queen's Chamber and King's Chamber are higher up within the pyramid structure.

The main part of the Giza complex is a set of buildings that included two mortuary temples in honour of Khufu (one close to the pyramid and one near the Nile), three smaller pyramids for Khufu's wives, an even smaller "satellite" pyramid, a raised causeway connecting the two temples, and small mastaba tombs for nobles surrounding the pyramid.

The Grand Egyptian Museum

Distance from the pyramids

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Khafre Pyramid

The designations of the pyramids Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure correspond to the kings for whom they were built.

 The northernmost and oldest pyramid of the group was built for Khufu (Greek: Cheops), the second king of the 4th dynasty.

 Called the Great Pyramid, it is the largest of the three, the length of each side at the base averaging 755.75 feet (230 metres) and its original height being 481.4 feet (147 metres).

 The middle pyramid was built for Khafre (Greek: Chephren), the fourth of the eight kings of the 4th dynasty; the structure measures 707.75 feet (216 metres) on each side and was originally 471 feet (143 metres) high.

 The southernmost and last pyramid to be built was that of Menkaure (Greek: Mykerinus), the fifth king of the 4th dynasty; each side measures 356.5 feet (109 metres), and the structure’s completed height was 218 feet (66 metres).

 All three pyramids were plundered both internally and externally in ancient and medieval times.

 Thus, the grave goods originally deposited in the burial chambers are missing, and the pyramids no longer reach their original heights because they have been almost entirely stripped of their outer casings of smooth white limestone; the Great Pyramid, for example, is now only 451.4 feet (138 metres) high.

 That of Khafre retains the outer limestone casing only at its topmost portion. 

Constructed near each pyramid was a mortuary temple, which was linked via a sloping causeway to a valley temple on the edge of the Nile floodplain. Also nearby were subsidiary pyramids used for the burials of other members of the royal family.

ZOSER PYRAMID

During an excavation in 1924-26, a pedestal of a statue of Djoser (Zoser) was found. This complex represents the first major work in stone. That is, unless there are other works that have yet to be found.

Across the Great Court of the Pyramid Complex of Djoser (Zoser) (2667 - 2648 BC), the second king of the 3rd Dynasty, stands the Step Pyramid. It is believed to have been created by one man, Imhotep. He has been called Doctor, Sage, Architect, Astronomer and High Priest. The Greeks worshipped Imhotep as Aesclepius, the God of Healing. Imhotep is also credited as a founder of the Egyptian, and Masonic, mystery traditions.

On the Pyramid, most of the outer casing is gone. In some places the core masonry has disappeared as well. It is obvious there were different stages of construction. The eastern side gives the best picture, but it can be seen from the northern and southern side as well.

The original structure was an underground burial chamber. This chamber was rare in that it was square; most mastabas were rectangular. The royal tomb is 28m underground with a vertical shaft leading to it. The entrance was sealed with a 3 ton piece of granite. The face of the mastaba was a fine Tura limestone.

Apparently it was intended for this to be the finishing touches to the building. It was then enlarged all around with ten feet of additional limestone and then again with an extension on the eastern side. The extension was twenty-five feet of limestone to make the mastaba rectangular. Again, it was enlarged and a two-tiered structure was made. A series of corridors and a tomb chamber was dug. Some of the chambers are lined with blue tiles. Some scholars think this tomb was intended for a member of Djoser's (Zoser's) family, but not for him. The only other site that has similar tiling is in the South Tomb which is located in the Djoser (Zoser) complex as well.

After the third stage was finished, the process to make it a true step pyramid was begun. Over 200,000 tons of stone was used to make the additional two tiers that went above the existing two-tiered structure. An additional two tiers were added above the existing four to make it into the six-tiered pyramid which is there today. A Tura limestone face was added on.

On the northern side of the pyramid, a few blocks of the casing remain. The casing blocks from the Great Pyramid rested on the individual blocks of the core masonry. The casing blocks on the step pyramid were set at an angle to take up the thrust of the successive layers.

The statue of Djoser (Zoser) that was found by excavators, was found in the Tomb Chamber. This statue was damaged but still intact. It is located in the Cairo Museum. The Tomb Chamber has a replica of the statue in this blue-tiled room. It can still be seen through the viewing slit that is at the entrance. The chamber is closed to the public. Scholars believed that the roof of the chamber could give way. The chamber walls have inscriptions that show beyond any doubt that this is indeed a burial chamber. It also contains offering rooms and most of the other features that were often found in both earlier and later tombs.

The Mortuary Temple is just north of the pyramid and is in total ruin. On the southern wall back across the Great Court from the pyramid are carved cobra heads or uraei. The cobra head is an often seen symbol in Egypt. It was once a symbol of the north.

The Southern Tomb is located just outside of the southern wall. Steps lead up the wall to the other tombs and monuments outside the walls. On the left side of the stairs, there is a large hole. At the bottom of the hole, is an entrance that leads to an amazing set of chambers. This Southern Tomb is closed to the public. These chambers are also lined with the blue tiles that are found in the burial chambers in the Step Pyramid. The inscriptions found in these chambers are remarkable. They are perfectly executed and pure in line.

Who Built the Pyramids?

Over several seasons, Lehner surveyed the plateau to an accuracy of within a millimeter, and began to see with greater certainty how the pyramid builders had arranged themselves across the landscape. An ancient wadi—a desert streambed that flows with water only during the occasional downpour—would have made a perfect harbor, he surmised. The locations of the stone quarries, down the slope from the pyramids themselves, were known, and he thought he knew where a city of pyramid builders might fit into this pattern.

What began to interest Lehner more than the question of how the Egyptians built the pyramids was, he says, "how the pyramids built Egypt." Construction of the immense Giza monuments, thought to have been built for three successive pharaohs in a kind of experimental gigantism, must have required a lot of "free-wheeling" on the existing social apparatus. Influenced by Cambridge University's Barry Kemp, who wrote Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization, Lehner came to believe that the colossal marshaling of resources required to build the three pyramids at Giza which dwarf all other pyramids before or since must have shaped the civilization itself.

By now, Lehner was in his early thirties and realized that continuing his career hinged on getting a Ph.D. From 1986 to 1990, he suspended fieldwork to study at Yale under William Kelly Simpson. In his final year, with an offer of funding for what, he says, "had been jelling in my mind" for some time, he designed his "dream project": to find and excavate the settlement of workers who had built the pyramids. His studies had given him an idea of what he should be looking for a city of about 20,000 people, on a scale with the earliest major urban centers of Mesopotamia, such as Ur and Uruk. In other words, he was looking for one of the most important cities of the third millennium B.C.

Lehner let the geology of the plateau guide his search. Guessing at the location of the harbor, he surmised where the delivery route to the pyramids must have run. Logically, the settlement for workers should be to the south-southeast, he thought, and in fact, at precisely that location, at the mouth of the wadi that divides the plateau, a towering stone wall, called in Arabic "the wall of the crow," loomed above the sand. In Lehner's home state of North Dakota, he says, the ancient masonry would have drawn attention and eventually been designated a national monument. But in Egypt, with its hieroglyphics, "gold bowls, and mummies," the wall was virtually ignored.

Explore the lives of the ancients ( Marriage to the Pharaohs )

To the ancient Egyptians, the most attractive women tended to be the fertile ones. A woman who had children was seen to be more fortunate than ones without. Taking after Isis, the mother goddess of Horus, Egyptian women strove to be intelligent, wise, mystical and mothers. Where her twin sister Nephthys was barren, Isis was fertile.

In the Egyptian community, men had to prove their masculinity by fathering children, while the women had to be able to bear these sons and daughters. Being a mother meant being able to keep her marriage secure and to gain a better position in society.

But an Egyptian family was not just a status symbol - the Egyptians loved their children and were not afraid to show it. But there were some advice to parents, written by scribes:

Do not prefer one of your children above the others; after all, you never know which one of them will be kind to you.

Unmarried women, on the other hand, seem to be free to choose partners as they so desire, and enjoy their love life to its fullest.

Adultery in Egypt was wrong. Women got the worst punishment for adultery - a man might just be forced into a divorce, but a woman could conceivably be killed for that crime. In the Tale of Two Brothers, the adulterous wife was found out, murdered and her body was thrown to the dogs.

Prostitutes advertised themselves through their clothing and make up. Some prostitutes wore blue faience beaded fish-net dresses, some of which is kept in the Weingreen Museum of Biblical Archaeology in Dublin. They painted their lips red, and tattooed themselves on the breasts or thighs and even went around totally nude.