The ancient Egyptian Old Kingdom king Khufu succeeded his father Seneferu and began his reign by moving his court north to Giza, a site that may have hosted a few older tombs but was still empty.
High above the Valley of the Nile, it was an ideal spot for his grandiose new project: the largest true pyramid ever built. With a base of 230.33 metres per side and oriented to the cardinal points within a fraction of a degree, Khufu’s Pyramid towered to a height of 146.89 metres.
People are amazed at the size of the pyramid, and some still do not believe that the ancient Egyptians could have built it themselves. They bring in men from Atlantis, or aliens in spaceships, saying that only a much more advanced civilisation could have created such an extraordinary monument.
But the truth is that the ancient Egyptians had the technology and the scientific knowledge to build this and all the other pyramids on their own. The Old Kingdom was a period of great experimentation and technological advances, peopled by great minds like the architect Imhotep and Khufu’s architect, his cousin Hemiunu.
Our new excavations at the Pyramid Builders’ Cemetery and Royal Installation south of the Sphinx prove beyond any reasonable doubt that native Egyptians, working voluntarily, built the Pyramids.
Debates among scholars about pyramid construction circle around alternative methods using the knowledge and skills that we know the ancient Egyptians already possessed. The Great Pyramid was centred on a large core of living rock, with the plateau around it leveled and smoothed and emplacements for the foundation blocks and channels and sockets for sighting instruments carved into the rock. The pyramid quarry was directly to the south.
During clearance work at Giza in the 1990s, we found remnants of the ramp that led from this quarry to the south face of the pyramid. Scholarly opinion differs in detail only about how the ramp continued: were there separate ramps against each face of the pyramid, or did a single ramp corkscrew around the exterior of the monument?
A new theory, proposed by French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin, suggests that there was an internal ramp, just within the pyramid’s skin, built as the monument rose, but this has yet to be proven.
Whatever the exact method of construction, the general outlines were simple: the stones were quarried using stone pounders, copper chisels, and wooden stakes soaked with water that were hammered into holes and used to split the rock. The resulting blocks were hauled up water-slicked ramps using ropes and manpower.
Casing stones were of finer limestone floated down the river from Turah to the south; these were put in place as the pyramid was built.
The interior of the Great Pyramid itself is both unique and extraordinary. Inside are three separate chambers: one, left unfinished, is dug into the plateau beneath the pyramid; a square chamber is high within the pyramid core; and then, even higher and approached by an amazing, corbelled corridor called the Grand Gallery, is the largest of the three, thought by most people to be the king’s burial chamber.
It is lined with granite; an expensive stone imported all the way from Aswan. Many scholars, including me, believe that these three chambers represent successive changes in plan for the pyramid’s infrastructure. Others, however, including my friend and colleague Mark Lehner, think that the three chambers were planned from the beginning, and that each has a unique symbolic function.
The Great Pyramid has not yet revealed all its mysteries. We are still investigating the enigmatic “air shafts” that are seen only in this monument. There are four of these small tunnels (each about 20 centimetres square): two leading from the upper (king’s) chamber to the outside, one from the north and one from the south wall; and two from the north and south walls of the middle (queen’s) chamber that do not emerge on the exterior of the pyramid.
Using robots, we have explored these shafts and found that those from the queen’s chamber are blocked after about 200 feet by limestone slabs with copper handles. In 2002, our robot found that 21 centimetres behind the slab in the southern shaft lies another blocking stone. We will soon be sending a new robot into both shafts to see what these secret doors are hiding.
The interior of the Great Pyramid was thoroughly robbed in antiquity. Legend has it that Arab treasure hunters working for the caliph Mamoun blasted what is currently used as the entrance around 820 CE and found that the pyramid had been robbed long before that.
KHUFU’S PYRAMID COMPLEX: The complex surrounding Khufu’s Pyramid has the basic form of his father’s but is more developed. To the east was an elaborate cult temple. This has been completely dismantled, and today only the basalt flooring and bits of the foundations remain.
From the east side of this temple, a long causeway, which bends partway down, runs off the edge of the plateau and ends at a valley temple, the location of which we discovered during recent excavations. Unfortunately, this now lies mostly under a modern villa, so we cannot explore it thoroughly.
In 1991, during clearance at the southeast corner of the Great Pyramid, we discovered the remains of a satellite pyramid. The lack of such a structure, an integral part of both earlier and later complexes, had long been a mystery. It lay underneath a modern road that had been built along the east face of the pyramid.
As part of my site management plan at Giza, this road was removed so that cars and buses could no longer pass directly in front of the pyramid (and over the remaining floor of the mortuary temple), damaging the ancient structure with their fumes and vibrations. The discovery of this small pyramid was very exciting. Nearby, we also found the remains of the pyramidion that had once capped it.
The function of these satellite pyramids, believed to have developed from king Djoser’s South Tomb, has long been debated. It is clear that they belonged to the king himself, rather than to one of his family members. Like the South Tomb, these pyramids might have held the king’s viscera (although this is unlikely, since there are emplacements for canopic chests inside some of the smaller pyramids), his crowns, his placenta, or a statue, perhaps representing an aspect of his personality or spirit.
Khufu had five boat pits surrounding his pyramid: two flanking his mortuary temple to the east, one parallel to his causeway, and two to the south. The three eastern pits are boat shaped, but the southern two are rectangular.
In 1954, Egyptian archaeologist Kamal Mallakh discovered a dismantled wooden boat inside the easternmost of these pits. Over many years, the planks, ropes, and mats that had been laid carefully into this pit were reconstructed by expert conservator Haj Ahmed Youssef into a 43.3-metre boat of imported coniferous wood. A second boat still lies within the western pit.
Some scholars argue that the boats in the southern pits were used for Khufu’s funeral, and that the other three pits (which may or may not have originally contained actual boats) were symbolic of the king as the ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt and perhaps of the king in association with the god Hathor. The southern boats may also be symbolic and represent solar barks in which the deceased Khufu would travel with the sun god Re through the day and night skies.
Also integral to Khufu’s Complex are the three queen’s pyramids that lie to the east, and the vast elite cemeteries to both east and west. Laid out in regular rows, or “streets”, these provided eternal homes for the royal family, high officials of the court, and priests of the king’s funerary cult. They were used until the end of the Old Kingdom and beyond.
THE LATER FOURTH DYNASTY: After the death of Khufu, the Egyptian court moved briefly north to Abu Rawash, where the next king, Djedefre, built a smaller pyramid.
Originally excavated between 1900 and 1902 by Frenchman Emile Chassinat, the site yielded a boat pit, the remains of a settlement connected with the royal cult, and numerous statue fragments, including the head of the earliest known sphinx.
Because the statues had been broken in pieces, Chassinat hypothesised a struggle for the throne between Khufu’s sons, with Djedefre usurping the throne from the legitimate heir, Khafre. According to this theory, when Khafre, the son of Khufu by a different queen, became king, he destroyed his brother’s complex and statuary in revenge, denying Djedefre eternal life.
However, new excavations have revealed instead that the statues were destroyed during the Roman era.
Djedefre’s burial chamber, in contrast to that of his father, is cut into the bedrock, with its roof at ground level. A cult chapel, finished hurriedly in mud brick, lay against the east face of the pуrаmid. In front of this was a boat-shaped pit, areas for the use of the mortuary priests, and breweries and bakeries. A subsidiary pyramid was recently found south of the main pyramid by a team led by archaeologist Michel Valloggia.
Inside was a broken sarcophagus, near which was a niche that once held canopic materials. One of the calcite canopic vessels, still sealed, was discovered here; this is the earliest example of this type of jar ever found. Also in the burial chamber was a large shallow bowl inscribed with the Horus name of Khufu and a group of ceramic vessels.
The position of this small pyramid at the southeast corner of the main pyramid might qualify it as the king’s satellite pyramid. However, the sarcophagus and canopic jar indicate that it was used for a burial, most likely of one of Djedefre’s queens. The inscribed bowl further suggests that she was a daughter or sister of Khufu.
Most scholars believe that Diedefre was succeeded by his half-brother Khafre. However, there are some who insert a short-lived king named Baka (Bicheris in the Greek sources, and evidently Djedefre’s son) between Diedefre and the builder of the Second Pyramid at Giza.
According to the ancient historian Manetho, Bicheris was the fifth King of the Fourth Dynasty, but there is no secure evidence for a king between Khafre and Menkaure. However, there is an unfinished pyramid whose architecture suggests it was built close in time to the Pyramid of Djedefre. This is at Zawiyet Al-Aryan, a site about 6 km south of Giza.
It was constructed inside a large rectangular enclosure and had a base about 210 metres square (about the size of Khafre’s Pyramid). Little if any of the superstructure was ever completed. The substructure consists of a long passageway sloping down then leveling off for a short stretch before descending again to a transverse burial chamber. An oval sarcophagus of granite was sunk into the pavement of this chamber; this was empty when first found.
Inscriptional evidence found associated with this pyramid identifies its owner as a king whose name is variously read as Nebka, Wehemka, or Baka. Further excavation of this complex might shed light on the attribution and placement of this pyramid in the Fourth Dynasty series; unfortunately, it now lies within a military zone.
KING KHAFRE’S PYRAMID: Khafre must have been fairly young when he came to the throne, as he laid out a pyramid almost as big as his father’s at Giza. Although it is actually several metres shorter than the Great Pyramid, Khafre’s monument was built on a section of bedrock some 10 metres higher and therefore looks taller.
Khafre’s architects were evidently not as skilled as their predecessors, however, as they made some errors in their calculations. By the time they reached the top of the pyramid, these had resulted in a slight skewing that had to be corrected by twisting the uppermost courses of the monument.
Entrance to the burial suite was, as was traditional by this time, from the north. There were two passages descending into the bedrock: one beginning at ground level and the other above in the masonry of the pyramid. These come together in the corridor leading to the burial chamber, which held a sarcophagus of black granite and a pit for the canopic chest. The sarcophagus was first investigated in modern times by an Italian circus performer turned Egyptological adventurer named Giovanni Belzoni in 1818. At that time, it held the bones of a bull.
The Pyramid Complex of Khafre is one of the most complete and best-preserved monuments of the Fourth Dynasty. To the east of the pyramid is a terrace with huge limestone piers that look like quays. Carved into the natural rock are five narrow trenches shaped like boats.
The mortuary temple here is significantly larger and more elaborate than its predecessors. It displays the principal elements that henceforth would be standard in such temples: a columned court; five statue niches; five magazines; and an inner sanctuary, which might have held a false door, stela, or a combination of the two. The inside of the temple was lined with granite and calcite. Scholars have reconstructed 12 statues, most likely of granite, around the interior of the columned court. The five statue niches were empty, but textual evidence found in a later pyramid suggests that two held images of the king as ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt and one held a statue of the monarch as Osiris.
South of the pyramid on its central axis was a satellite pyramid of which little remains. It was entered through two descending passages, one of which ends in a blind wall, and the other of which leads to a small niche. Inside the niche were the dismantled remains of a statue shrine made of cedar. This had been ritually destroyed, then buried carefully.
A long causeway leads east from the mortuary temple of Khafre down toward the edge of the floodplain, where there is a well-preserved valley temple. This is a large rectangular building, oriented north-south. In the eastern façade are two entrances, the one to the south inscribed as dedicated to Hathor and the one to the north dedicated to Bastet, a feline goddess associated most closely with the Delta site of Bubastis.
The entrances lead to a broad chamber spanning the width of the temple, then into a T-shaped, pillared hall. Sockets cut into the floor once held 23 or 24 statues of the king, perhaps one for each hour of the day and night. From the northwest corner of the T-shaped hall, a narrow corridor slopes up to the outside of the temple, where it joins with the causeway.
The temple was built with megalithic blocks of limestone, then cased with large blocks of red granite. The floor is laid in calcite cut in random shapes and fitted carefully together. Other than the statuary and the inscriptions carved at the entranceways, the interior does not appear to have been decorated. However, it is estimated that there were 58 large statues in Khafre’s Pyramid Complex.
Emplacements flanking the entrances to the temple once held sphinxes or lions. Marks in the terrace indicate that there was also a square emplacement midway between the two doors, where a booth may have been set up for the ritual purification of the king’s body. From the terrace, two ramps slope down; these were closed with leaved doors.
There was also once a huge harbour directly to the east. The harbour and valley temple represented a portal to the entire complex, a ceremonial entrance to the cult centre of the king. During the construction of the pyramid, goods from all over Egypt, such as granite from Aswan, calcite from Middle Egypt, and grain and other foodstuffs from royal estates all over Egypt, would have been delivered through the harbour.
THE GREAT SPHINX: Unique to Khafre’s Complex is the Great Sphinx, which sits in the quarry used by the king’s architects to build his valley temple.
Carved from an outcropping of bedrock, purposely left in place while the rock around it was quarried for use nearby, it is in the form of a lion with the head of a king. Most scholars believe that this represents Khafre himself and think that the site of the sculpture was chosen carefully for religious reasons.
In front of the Sphinx is a temple, unfinished, and probably never used. Its central courtyard is surrounded by a colonnade of 24 pillars of red granite. Forming a concentric square inside this colonnade is a series of 10 huge pillars that were meant to be fronted by colossal statues (perhaps 10 statues, or 12, for the months of the year or the hours of the day or night).
Two sanctuaries served as the foci of the cult, one at the east and the other at the west side of the temple in the directions of the rising and setting sun. One scholar has suggested that there were pillars in front of each sanctuary to represent the arms and legs of Nut, who is shown in New Kingdom temples swallowing the sun disk as it set and giving birth to it at dawn. The temple was probably dedicated to the deceased Khufu in his guise as the sun god Re.
The Sphinx would have been the primary worshipper and priest, making offerings as it faced east towards the morning sun, as well as an incarnation of the sun god in its own right. At the equinoxes, the sun passes over the western colonnade and court and into the eastern sanctuary, where it would have lit any cult image that might have been inside. The shadows of the Sphinx and Khafre’s Pyramid merge at this moment, bringing together two symbols of the king before the sun sets at the southern foot of the pyramid.
The solstices also produce significant results: for three days, the sun sets halfway between the Great and Second Pyramids. This forms an image of the hieroglyph for horizon, akhet, which is the disk of the sun between two mountains. In later times, the Sphinx was worshipped as an incarnation of the solar deity Hor-emakhet (Horus in the Horizon).
MENKAURE’S PYRAMID: Khafre’s son Menkaure also stayed at Giza, building his pyramid at the southern edge of the plateau.
Although it is much smaller than its predecessors, it was meant to be cased with granite for fully one-third of its height, and the mortuary temple was designed to be larger, more complex, and more expensively decorated than Khafre’s or Khufu’s.
A rectangular basalt sarcophagus with niched panelling from the original burial and the lid of a wooden anthropoid coffin from the Late Period inscribed with the name of Menkaure were found in the burial suite. This sarcophagus was later lost in a shipwreck off the coast of Spain.
The pyramid itself is only about 66 metres tall, less than half the height of Khufu’s. It was entered from the north face, several metres above the base.
The route to the burial chamber passes through a descending passage to a small, panelled chamber, then a horizontal corridor with three portcullises, an antechamber, and through another passage to the burial chamber. This is lined with granite, the underside of the roof carved to look like a barrel vault. A chamber with six niches whose purposes are still unclear lies off the passage to the burial chamber. This is most complex pyramid interior since Khufu; it is thought that its underground location links it with the cult of Osiris.
To the south are three small pyramids. These are generally thought to have been built for queens, but at least one, the easternmost, may originally have been intended for use as a satellite pyramid. The central small pyramid still held the body of a young woman when it was explored in early modern times.
No boat pits have been found in Menkaure’s Complex, but directly to the east of the pyramid is the mortuary temple, unfinished at the time of the king’s death. Along with the valley temple, it was completed by the next monarch, Shepseskaf, in mud brick. Many fragments of royal statues, including parts of an over-life-size image of calcite that may have served as a cult focus, were found by its excavator, George Reisner, in this temple.
The causeway that leads from the mortuary to the valley temple was left unfinished. When Reisner began excavating here, the location of Menkaure’s valley temple was unknown. To find this building, he followed the line of the causeway to the edge of the floodplain. His very first test pit uncovered a beautiful statue of the king and his great royal wife.
Other important sculptures found here included a series of triads representing the king with Hathor and the patron deities of various Egyptian nomes and the bases of four calcite statues.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 25 July, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
Short link: