The Great Pyramid of Khafre at Giza

Because its apex is in better condition and it is located on an elevation (of about 10 meters), Khafre's sometimes appears to be the largest of the three great Pyramids of the Giza Plateau. However, originally it was some three meters lower than its neighboring pyramid belonging to Khafre's father, Khufu. In fact, the walls of Khafre's pyramid are steeper than the Great Pyramid of Khufu (53o 10' as opposed to Khufu's 51^o 40^'), so it contains considerably less mass. It's name is "Khafre is Great".
Khafre may have, prior to his succession to the Egyptian throne in the 4th Dynasty, been named Khafkhufu, and according to Stadelmann, may have built a large double mastaba (G  7130-40) in the East section at Giza. However, his older brothers, Kauab and Djedefre apparently died early and upon taking the throne of Upper and Lower Egypt, his name was changed to Khafre. 

As one of the grandest pyramids in Egypt, his construct has been much studied, with a history of modern research not unlike that of Khufu's monument. In 1818, the strongman of Egyptology, Giovanni Belzoni, succeeded in penetrating into the pyramid's interior after a failed attempt by Giovanni Caviglia only a year earlier. Belzoni discovered the pyramid's "upper entrance" and managed to investigate its subterranean sections. However, the first extensive exploration of the monument was made in 1837 by Perring.
Mariette directed excavations of the pyramid's Valley Temple, which is also related to the Great Sphinx, in 1853. A year later, he was responsible for unearthing one of ancient Egypt's most famous and beautiful statues, that of Khafre on his throne with the protective outstretched winds of the falcon god, Horus, sheltering his head from behind. While Petrie also worked on this pyramid complex while at Giza, the first systematic modern excavations did not occur until the German Ernst von Sieglin expedition of 1909-1910 under the direction of Uvo Holscher. Later in the 1930s, Hassan unearthed the boat pits associated with the pyramid, and in recent times, Lehner and Hawass have investigated the pyramid complex under the auspices of the American Giza Plateau Mapping Project. Their work has mostly centered around modern geodetic measuring techniques, which has yielded considerable knowledge on both the pyramid, and the archaeology of architecture.

 

Overall ground plan for the Khafre complex

The Valley Temple
The valley temple of Khafre's Giza complex, which is one of the best preserved Old Kingdom temples in Egypt. As a masterful work of ancient Egyptian monumental architecture, it was cleared of sand and in 1869 this temple, along with other monuments at Giza, became the backdrop for the ceremonial opening of the Suez Canal.

The temple was fronted on the east by a large terrace paved with limestone slabs, through which two causeways led from the Nile canal. Just about in the middle of the terrace, fragments of what may have been a small, simple, wood and matting structure was unearthed that may have been the location of a statue depicting Khafre. However, others believe that this was a tent used for purification purposes, though known examples of such a structure are only found in a few private tombs.
In 1995, Zahi Hawass re-cleared the area in front of the Valley temple and in doing so, discovered that the causeways passed over tunnels that were framed with mudbrick walls and paved with limestone. These tunnels have a slightly convex profile resembling that of a boat. They formed a narrow corridor or canal running north-south. In front of the Sphnix Temple, the canal runs into a drain leading northeast, probably to a quay buried below the modern tourist plaza.
The causeways connected the Nile canal with two separate entrances on the Valley temple facade that were sealed by huge, single-leaf doors probably made of cedar wood and hung on copper hinges. Each of these doorways were protected by a recumbent Sphinx. The northern most of these portals was dedicated to the goddess Bastet, while the southern portal was dedicated to Hathor.

The temple was laid out in almost a square ground plan. It is situated just next to the Great Sphinx and its associated temple. Not surprisingly, since the valley temple was a gateway or portal to the whole complex, it is very similar to the fore part of Khafre's mortuary temple. Its core wall was built of huge blocks that sometimes weighed as much as one hundred and fifty tons. This inner core was then covered by pink granite slabs, a material used extensively throughout the complex that was quarried near Aswan far to the south. This wall was slightly inclined and rounded at the top, making the whole structure appear somewhat like a mastaba tomb.
Between the two entrances to the valley temple was a vestibule with walls of simple pink granite that were originally polished to a luster. Its floors were paved with white alabaster. A door then led to a T-shaped hall that made up a majority of the temple. This area too was sheathed with polished pink granite and paved with white alabaster, though it was also adorned with sixteen single block pink granite pillars, many of which are still in place today, that supported architrave blocks of the same material, bound together with copper bands in the form of a swallow's tail. These in turn supported the roof. 

Here, in the dim light provided by slits at the tops of the walls, stood as many as twenty four statues of the king (though one statue base in the middle that is larger than the others may have been counted twice) made from diorite, slate and alabaster. This line of statues continues along the cross of the T shaped hall ending at a doorway that leads to a corridor from which a stairway ramp winds clockwise up and over the top of the corridor before terminating on the roof of the valley temple.
On the south side of the roof was a small courtyard, situated directly over six storage chambers also built of pink granite and arranged in two stories of three units each. These were embedded in the core masonry of the T shaped hall. Symbolic conduits lined in alabaster, a material specifically identified with purification, run from the temple's roof courtyard down into the deep, dark chambers below. These symbolic circuits run through the entire temple, taking in both the chthonic and the solar aspects of the afterlife beliefs and of the embalming ritual for which the valley temple was the stage, according to some Egyptologists. 

Hence, the Polish scholar Bernhardt Grdseloff proposed that purification rituals were carried out on the roof terrace in a tent especially constructed for that purpose. Afterwards, he theorized that the body was embalmed in the temple antechamber. A French Egyptologist, Etienne Drioton proposed a similar view, only switching the locations to the antechamber for the purification and the embalming on the roof terrace. However, Ricke correctly pointed out that these types of rituals required considerable water that was only available near the canal, so at best the priests of the valley temple could have only performed the rituals symbolically.
At the other end of the cross in the T shaped hall (north), an opening gave way to a passage, also paved with alabaster, that led to the northwest corner of the temple and there joined the causeway.
The Causeway
A corridor cut from the rock separated the ruined causeway from the Great Sphinx temple and the valley temple. The causeway stretches some forty-six meters connecting these structures with the the mortuary temple just before the main pyramid. It did not run exactly along the east-west axis of the pyramid and mortuary temple, but instead somewhat to the southeast of it due to the fact that the valley temple was erected slightly out of line with the Great Sphinx and the mortuary temple. Archaeologists believe that causeway was probably a covered corridor built of limestone and lined on its exterior by pink granite blocks. Within it may have been decorated with reliefs.
The Mortuary Temple
The causeway enters the mortuary temple near the south end of its front facade.

The mortuary temple, unlike later pyramid complexes, did not border directly against the pyramid but was rather separated from its east wall by the pyramid courtyard. Rectangular in its ground plan, it is oriented east-west and has walls built of local limestone that are cased in finer limestone, a technique introduced in this structure. Inside, the building was almost completely lined with granite. The mortuary temple has, in its elemental design, the basics for the mature mortuary temples ultimately perfected by Sahure at Abusir, including an entrance hall, an open courtyard, five statue chapels, various storehouses and an offering hall. This structure marks a real architectural advance, being both larger then previous examples and for the first time, including all five elements that were to become standard.
The entrance to the mortuary temple in the east led through to a small antechamber adorned with a pair of monolithic pink granite pillars. About the entrance area were a few small chambers (two granite chambers immediately to the left of the entrance, and at the other end of a short corridor running along the front of the temple, four more chambers lined with alabaster) that are thought to have been storage annexes or serdabs. Ricke, in his investigation of the mortuary temple, found this area strikingly similar to the valley temple, and considered it a kind of repetition. He designated this area as the "ante-temple" (Vortempel) and the remaining area of the mortuary temple as the "worship temple" (Verehrungstempel).
This antechamber in turn led into the entrance hall itself where there were twelve more similar pairs of pillars to those in the antechamber. This entrance hall had an original ground plan of an inverted T. Hence, the first part of the entrance hall was transverse, with recessed bays. It led in turn to a rectangular section. Off of the transverse part of the hall, two long, narrow chambers branched off from either end, and it has been suggested that huge statues of the king once graced these dim passages. 

After the entrance hall there is a large, open courtyard situated in approximately the middle of the temple. Paved in slabs of alabaster and oriented north-south, along its sides runs a covered ambulatory with a flat limestone roof made of slaps supported by broad pillars of pink granite. The lower part of this ambulatory was formed by a dado in red granite and limestone. It was covered by brilliantly colored reliefs of which only fragments remain. Ricke thought that the ambulatory was fronted by 3.75 meter high statues of Khafre sitting on his throne overlooking the courtyard, but Lehner thinks these were standing statues of the ruler. Lehner bases his belief on the discovery of a small statuette in the workshops west of the pyramid. This artifact shows the ruler, wearing the crown of Upper Egypt, standing in front of a kind of pillar. The remains of a small canal suggest that it was drainage for an altar that stood in the middle of the courtyard.
A door in the west side of the ambulatory communicated with five, long chapels (actually niches) that also originally housed statues of the king. Another narrow corridor opens from the southwest corner of the courtyard and led to an offering hall located in the west part of the temple. The hall was a narrow, long room oriented north-south (in contrast to later mortuary temples) with a false door positioned on the west wall, precisely on the pyramid's long axis. Between the five cult chapels and the offering hall, a group of five storage rooms were provided for cult vessels and offerings used during various ceremonies.
A stairway in the northeast corner of the temple led up to the roof terrace, while in the northwest corner of the courtyard, another corridor led to the paved pyramid enclosure.
Though all of them had been plundered apparently in antiquity, there were five boat bits discovered outside of the mortuary temple. Two of these stood on the north of the temple, while three were to its south. Another pit may have been planned. All of these were carved into the rock in the shape of a boat. Two of the pits still retained their roofing slabs, though all of the pits had been looted, probably during antiquity.
The Pyramid Proper
Kafre's pyramid is surrounded by an inner, huge stone perimeter wall, within which is an open courtyard barely ten meters wide that bounds the four sides of he pyramid proper. This courtyard is paved with limestone slabs of irregular form. 

Because of the two different entrances to this structure, some Egyptologists believe that the main Pyramid of Khafre was originally meant to be larger and to stand slightly farther north then its completed position. However, modern scholars with considerable expertise on this pyramid, such as Lehner, doubt this assumption. Like the pyramid of Khufu and others in Egypt, Khafre's structure takes advantage of a rock outcropping to both increase the stability of its core, as well as to conserve the amount of necessary building materials needed for its construction. In fact, the lowest levels of its southwest corner are actually hacked out of the rock subsoil. The bedrock surface to the northwest had to be cut down some 10 meters by its ancient builders, while the southeast corner had to be built up using mammoth blocks of masonry. However, by far the substance of the pyramid core is made up of locally quarried limestone blocks of approximately equal height. Nearby to the north of they pyramid, one may still clearly see the traces of how these blocks were quarried. The blocks were not laid with the care that was given to the core of Khufu's pyramid, for the layers do not always run exactly horizontally, and the joints are at times very wide. Often, there is no mortar between the blocks. In fact, because the four corner angles were not quite aligned correctly to meet the pyramid apex, there is a very slight twist at the top.

The base levels of the casing were made of pink granite, while the higher layers, which become much smaller towards the top (about one cubit thick) are of fine Turah limestone. The outside faces of the casing blocks are often staggered by a few millimeters rather than flush, which may mean that they were faced prior to their placement. While the pyramidion and the apex have been lost, at the top of the pyramid, a small portion of the original casing remains in place, which helps us see how the finishing blocks were laid and bound to the pyramid core. However, because it is clear that the remaining casing is eroding, recent investigations by Italian experts have shown that the remaining corner edges of the mantle are not completely straight. Individual blocks are slightly turned in various directions. An analysis of this peculiarity suggests that this was the result of seismic activity. Small earthquakes were not uncommon in ancient Egypt, as they are likewise known to occur in modern times.
The oldest of the two entrances into the subterranean depths of Khafre's pyramid is now located in the ground about thirty meters north of the pyramid. Carved completely out of the rock subsoil, it is sometimes called the "lower entrance". This portal communicates with a corridor that at first descends before running horizontally. In this horizontal leg of the corridor, a passage gives way on the west wall to a small chamber cut from the bedrock and provided with a pented roof, where part of the burial equipment was possibly stored. After the horizontal section of the entrance corridor, it finally ascends into a horizontal corridor shared by the "upper entrance".

The second portal, known as the "upper entrance", is located in the north wall of the pyramid's face about twelve meters above ground level. It communicates with a corridor lined in pink granite that first descends before running horizontally at the base of the pyramid. At the transitional point between its descending and horizontal sections, there is a barrier made of pink granite, which in antiquity, grave robbers managed to dig around. The horizontal passage continues south after the barrier, eventually arriving at the burial chamber, which lies on the vertical axis of the pyramid. Given the location and relatively simple construction of the access corridor and the burial chamber, it is likely that the architects of this pyramid sought to avoid the complications that builders of Khufu's pyramid had encountered with their technically difficult system of passageways, barriers and chambers.
As with earlier pyramids, the burial chamber has a rectangular, east-west oriented ground plan which places it at a right angle to the passage system. With the exception of its ceiling, it was excavated completely out of the rock. Located over the pyramid's base, the burial chamber's gabled ceiling is built from enormous pented, limestone blocks. Originally, the intention may have been to cover the burial chamber's walls of this chamber in pink granite. There are shaft entrances in both the north and south walls of the burial chamber that, at first, appear similar to those in the Queen's and King's cambers of the great Pyramid, but are rather short, horizontal openings that could have been used to reinforce a wooden structure inside the tomb. 

Near the west wall of the burial chamber, almost directly under the vertical axis of the pyramid and situated within a niche stands the black granite sarcophagus of the king that originally was surmounted by a sliding lid. The lid was found in two pieces close by. Near the sarcophagus, a small shaft in the floor probably held royal canopic vessel, which would have been the first instance of this funerary equipment placed in a pyramid.. No positively identifiable remains of the king's mummy or his other funerary equipment were found within the pyramid.
The Cult Pyramid
A small, almost completely destroyed cult pyramid (G 2a) sits on the axis of the south side of the main pyramid of Khafre. Cult, or Satellite pyramids as they are sometimes called, are thought to have derived from the south tomb of Djoser's complex at Saqqara, and may have been for the burial of statues dedicated to the ka, or spiritual double, of the king. Originally, it was surrounded by its own enclosure wall. It has a simple substructure that consists of a descending corridor that gives way to an underground chamber with a T-shaped ground plan. Because this chamber contained bits of wood, carnelian beads, fragments of animal bones and vessel lids, Maragioglio and Rinaldi concluded that it must have served as a tomb for one of Khafre's consorts. However, Stadelmann opposed this view, believing that it was a cult pyramid. His opinion is supported by the cult pyramid attached to Khufu's complex on its southeast corner.
More to the point, Lehner believes that the wood made up a frame of cedar in the form of a sah netjer, or divine booth, which was used to transport a statue to be buried in the subsection of this small pyramid.
Other Structures
In the early 1880s, Petrie also discovered west of Khafre's pyramid beyond the so called outer perimeter wall, the ruins of a structure that contained long, mostly east-west oriented rooms. He assumed, as did some later investigators such as Holscher, that this was a worker's village that lodged as many as four to five thousand men in 111 large rooms. However, later work by Lehner and Hawass seem to suggest that that this facility, rather than a settlement, was instead a storehouse as well as the workshops for the pyramid complex. Interestingly, the great number of mollusk shells that were found here also suggest that the surrounding area was, rather than arid desert as it is today, a kind of savanna with the corresponding flora and fauna.
Violation of the Pyramid
Perhaps as early as the First Intermediate Period, as in the case with other pyramids, thieves had probably already broken into Khafre's tomb. Inscriptions by the "overseer of temple construction" indicate that already by the 19th Dynasty, considerable damage had already occurred. In fact, written sources indicate that, on the orders of Ramesses II, casing from Khafre's pyramid was used for the construction of a temple in Heliopolis. Other sources suggest that a large part of the pyramid casing was removed between 1356 and 1362 for use in the Mosque of al-Hassan.
At any rate, the Arab historian Ibn Abd as-Salaam records that the pyramid was opened up in the 774 after the hegira (1372 C.E.), during the reign of the Great Emir Jalburgh el-Khassaki. It is possible that the tunnels going around the granite barriers in the entry passage could have been dug at that time.
The Great Sphinx
Outside perimeter walls may have extended around the entire Khafre pyramid complex, including within it the great Sphinx. Close study by geologist Thmas Aigner of the geological layers of the Sphinx show that it was closely related to the quarrying and building of the Khafre complex.
Hence, there is some indication that it was a part of Khafre's pyramid complex. However, the latter is by no means certain, so here we have avoided the issue for the time being, electing rather to discuss the Great Sphinx separately.
Technical:
Main Pyramid
Original name: Khafre is Great
Date of construction: 4th dynasty
Original height: 1473.5 meters
Angle of inclination: 53^o 10'
Lengths of sides of base: 215.25 meters
Length of Causeway: 494.6 Meters
Cult Pyramid
Angle of inclination: 53^o 54'
Length of sides of base: 20.9 meters

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The Pyramid of Khufu at Giza in Egypt

For many years, the Sound and Light Show at Giza opened with, "You have come tonight to the most fabulous and celebrated place in the world. Here on the Plateau of Giza stands forever the mightiest of human achievements. No traveler, emperor, merchant or poet has trodden on these sands and not gasped in awe".
Though there are many outstanding ancient monuments in Egypt that survive to this day, one in particular is best known and the most closely associated by the general public with ancient Egypt. It is, of course, the Great Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops), the largest in Egypt, located on the Giza Plateau just outside Cairo. Its name was "Khufu's Horizon" In fact, even if people have very little knowledge of Egypt, they will frequently not only know of this monument, but will also have any number of opinions about how and when it was built, as well as its function. Arguably, it is the best known manmade structure in the world, and for good reason.

 
The name of the Great pyramid, Khufu's Horizon

Of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, Khufu's Pyramid is the first, and only survivor. It is indeed impressive, originally standing some 146.59 (481 feet) high and covering about thirteen acres of land , though in the last hundred or so years, modern marvels (the Empire State Building, built in 1930, is over three times as tall though situated on only two acres of land) probably make it seem less impressive to visitors than to those who, for thousands of years, came to visit the pyramid prior to our modern era. In reality, modern scholars for the most part probably find this pyramid less interesting than many other ancient structures in Egypt, mostly because it is not decorated with reliefs and inscriptions (though parts of its subsidiary structures were), and is otherwise, except for some parts of its internal structure, a fairly typical pyramid complex. Other pyramids are almost as large, and many pyramids are really more enigmatic. Khufu's pyramid was not the first, nor was it even the first true pyramid. Other pharaohs, such as Sneferu, Khufu's father, had moved probably as much stone, building three different pyramids himself. 

Yet, Khufu's pyramid was, in a line of astonishing architectural leaps forward, a significant link in Pyramid building's evolution. In terms of its size, the technical accomplishments of its construction, the great concern for cardinality and the organization required for its construction, this pyramid represents a phenomenal effort. Like later pyramids, it encompasses all of the standard elements of the pyramid complex, though most have since disappeared. The finished pyramid, which included a superstructure and substructure, was surrounded by an enclosure wall of fine Turah limestone, which enclosed a court paved in limestone. There was a valley temple, a causeway from it leading to a mortuary Temple that was itself situated against the pyramid. There was also a cult pyramid, as well as three pyramids for the burial of queens, a number of boat pit and other structures.
Though we really do not know with absolute certainty, the pyramid complex of Khufu probably remained mostly intact for almost 4,000 years. During that period of time, most visitors to it must have been amazed by its enormity, and probably by the ancient Egyptian's reverence toward the structure.

In the end, the deterioration of this pyramid, like its conception, can be attributed at least partially to religion. It was created to bury the king in a complex that would conform to the ancient Egyptian religion. It probably survived in relatively good shape until that religion was replaced by another, and then another. By the time the Arabs invaded Egypt during the seventh century, there was little or no religious reverence afforded the structure, so casing stones and other building material from the complex were reused for new building projects in the area of Cairo. This process was not exclusive to Khufu's pyramid and in fact, the reuse of material from older structures was not even uncommon during the age of the pharaohs. However, even this did not happen to the Great Pyramids until, in the Middle Ages, a series of earthquakes loosened the casing stones and allowed them to be harvested for other projects.

 The Pyramids of Giza seen from the city

Most people with a limited knowledge of Egypt believe that the Great Pyramids of Giza lie out in the desert, and are therefore rather surprised when, traveling down Pyramid road to the east, they see them rise up, seemingly among the distant buildings. They in fact sit on the city limits of Greater Cairo, and are threatened by man's expansion, though scholars are very aware of this today, and work to prevent damage to the structure.
For awhile, mankind treated the Great Pyramid with more curiosity than reverence. It was tunneled through, climbed, and generally abused, right up to our modern era. In her book, The Mena House Oberoi, Nina Nelson tells us that,

"Climbing Cheop's Great Pyramid continues all and every day. ... It is a labourious task yet everyone who does it enjoys it. The blocks of stone measure from two to five feet high and certainly one3 should have a guide to help pull one along the difficult places."

At one time, various people even attempted to set records for scaling the monument
During World War II, there were even gun emplacements built on its apex. The Egyptological community, and particularly Zahi Hawass can be credited for bringing that to a halt. No longer are people allowed to climb it (unless very special permission is granted), and its investigation today is always non-intrusive. Planes are not allowed to fly above it and in general, it receives the national protection it deserves.
Nevertheless, it has been and continues to be a place of considerable activity. Races were often held at the pyramids, and in recent years, it has served as a backdrop for artistic displays and musical performances. With Zahi Hawass as Chairman of the SCA, it is doubtful that we will see many more performances by artists such as Sting and the Grateful Dead, but it remains the primary venue for Verdi's Aida opera.
Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of Khufu's pyramid complex is the amazing amount of investigation it has received, and the astonishing degree of controversy that it has inspired. The research of the complex continues even today, and new discoveries, sometimes major ones, have been made even in recent years. For example, only very recently, the estimated number of blocks used to build the pyramid itself has been cut almost in half, while as I write this article, a new robot is being prepared to further investigate the pyramid's internal structure.
The history of man's thoughts about this structure is by far more complex, and often more interesting than the pyramid itself. Even in recent years, speculation that the pyramid was constructed by aliens or perhaps Atlantians continues. Countless books have been written about this Pyramid, many scholarly, but others not.
Take, for example, the matter of the metric system. Used by most countries as the official standard of measure, and by the scientific community worldwide, there has been a reluctance on the part of Americans and the British to incorporate the system.

 Much of this may be a reluctance on the part of their respective populations to change from the system familiar to them. However, the Great Pyramid of Khufu certainly played a part in all of this.
John Taylor was an eccentric British publisher who, in 1859, produced a work entitled The Great Pyramid: Why Was it Built? And Who Built It? Borrowing from the work of Tompkins, he thought that the Pyramid was actually built by Noah of biblical fame. He thought that the Great Pyramid's dimensions were very purposeful, which they probably were, but he saw in them relationships to many physical measurements, such as the number of days in the year and the radius of the earth. Part of his calculations involved a unit of measure he called the Pyramid Inch which he believed the Egyptians used in building the pyramid, which only differed from the British inch very slightly. He is essentially credited with being one of the founders of modern Pyramidology, but his ideas would probably not have caught on were it not for the work of Professor C. Piazzi Smyth, a British Israelite and the Astronomer-Royal of Scotland. Smyth built on Taylor's ideas. Though Taylor had not traveled to Egypt, Smyth did, and set about measuring every minute detail of Khufu's monument. 

Smyth attempted to connect the measurements he made of the pyramid to many different natural aspects of the world and our universe, to the point were even many of his contemporaries thought him ludicrous. A Christian man, Smyth nevertheless though that the number relationships he derived from the pyramid were a record of "perfect" standards of measurement that God intended man to use. In reality, many of Smyth's calculations seem artificial and arbitrary to us today. Smyth was hardly a dispassionate, objective scientist when dealing with the pyramid. His writings shows that he certainly had a deep emotional commitment to demonstrating "scientifically" that the Christian religion is true, and that he saw his work with the pyramid as a means by which he could do so.
In his work, he pointed out that the meter was devised by man, whereas he believed the Pyramid Inch, and thus the British Inch, were a measurement provided by god. And while scientists seem to have in general rejected the work of Taylor and Smyth, a number of Christian religious leaders accepted their theories and made them an article of faith, particularly in England and the US, but also even in France.
Many of Smyth's contemporaries and disciples were as hostile to the metric system as was he. With some amusement Martin Gardner recounts the fact that in the United States the pyramidologist Ohio Auxiliary Society, of which President James A. Garfield was a supporter, published a journal entitled The International Standard to defend the "true inch" and other measurements against the metric system. Thus, the Great Pyramid of Khufu became a star in the arsenal of 19th century Christianity, and at least for a time, helped arrest the expansion of the metric system of measurement. But perhaps more importantly, Taylor and Smyth helped create a mystic association with the Pyramid Khufu that spawned imaginative ideas that continue to this day.
When one visits the Pyramid of Khufu, one is actually walking in the footsteps of the famous, both of the modern and ancient world. Alexandria the Great stood before it, just as modern visitors, and swore to build for his father, the Macedonian king Philip II, a funerary monument as large as the Great Pyramid, though death took him before he was able to do so. Herodotus, Strabo and Pliny certainly all made visits to the pyramid. Doubtless, every famous traveler in antiquity must have visited Khufu's complex. Many later individuals came to see this wonder of the ancient world, and they continue to come today. For years, it was popular for them to climb the pyramid, though this is no longer allowed, but atop it one can see the names etched in stone of those who did. 

Ground Plan of the Great Pyramid Complex of Khufu

Though most of the early visitors to the Great Pyramid were non-intrusive, by the time of the Arab Invasion of Egypt, the ancient Egyptian religion was gone and so too was apparently the Egyptian's understanding of the monument. Fables arose of fabulous treasures and immense knowledge contained within the structure, long before Taylor and Smyth's work. Finally, Caliph al-Ma'moun (831-832 AD) is believed to have acted upon this information. Though the pyramid, or at least the substructure had been breached by unknown robbers during antiquity, al-Ma'moun was apparently the first known individual to do so. After having at least looked for the original entrance, but unable to find it, al-Ma'moun instructed his men to tunnel into the pyramid from a point at the center of its north face, seven courses up. Apparently, the pyramid still held at least some of its casing stones, for they had to light fires to heat the blocks before cooling them rapidly with vinegar to induce fractures. Once past the outer core, they dug for about 100 feet, finding nothing in the process. However, one of the workmen heard a muffled thud of something heavy falling within the pyramid, not too far away, and they altered course and eventually broke through into what is now known as the "Descending Passage". While al-Ma'moun's men explored a considerable part of the pyramid's interior structure, they apparently found nothing except an empty coffin, though rumors, legends and fables, also grew from their exploration.
Even though al-Ma'moun apparently found no riches or hidden knowledge within the Great Pyramid, it continued to retain its mysterious, hidden meaning for most travelers. All of the European scientific travelers and pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land seem to have visited it. They are too numerous to mention here. However, the first attempt at an Egyptological study, it seems, was conducted by John Greaves, and English scholar from whom Tomkins would later draw some of more fanciful ideas. he climbed to the top, measured the pyramid's blocks and also made his way inside the pyramid. His sectional drawing of the structure is remarkably accurate for its time.
However, only at the turn of the nineteenth century did true archaeological work begin using scientific methods. Nathaniel Davison discovered a lower relieve chamber as well as a tunnel connecting it with the Great Gallery during the 1760s. The scholars with Napoleon's expedition also measured and described the Great Pyramid again, and made exploratory soundings in and around it. Early in the nineteenth century, Giovanni Battista Caviglia cleaned out many spaces inside the pyramid and in 1937, both Vyse and Perring investigated the structure. Their books, Operations Carried Out on the Pyramids of Gizeh in 1837 (3 vols.) and The Pyramids of Gizeh (3 vols.), respectively, are still valuable sources.
Between 1843 and 1844, Lepsius focused his attention primarily on the structure of the Great Pyramid, expressing his view that the core consisted of inclined accretion layers. For the birthday of the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, the archaeologists honored their prince and patron by scaling the pyramid and flying a flat from its top. Petrie, who carefully examined the Pyramid between 1881 and 1882 did not agree with Lepsius' accretion theory. Petrie, who seems to have always been more interested in his Egyptological studies than comfort, set up his headquarters in one of the nearby rock-cut tombs, and slept on a layer of sand, using a kerosene stove for cooking. The account of his investigations, The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh, remains even today one of the most important studies on the pyramids.
Borchardt also worked on the famous monument. He first concentrated on explaining the method originally used to measure and orient the ground plan, and on reconstructing the stages in which the pyramid was built.
In 1954, The Egyptian archaeologists Kamal Mallakh and Zaki Iskander and their colleagues discovered on the south side of the Great Pyramid, two pits that contained intact burial boats. Later, in the second half of the 1980s, the French architects, Jean-Ptrice Dormion and Gilles Goidin made precise geophysical measurements of its inner core, which was later confirmed by a Japanese team.
Finally, Zahi Hawass, a longtime investigator at Giza and now the Chairman of the SCA (Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities), focused on the grounds of the presumed valley temple, the causeway and the mortuary temple. It was he who, not so long ago, discovered the cult pyramid as well as its pyramidion. Though he has now moved on to head Egypt's antiquity community, work nevertheless continues.
Today, the Pyramid of Khufu, though lacking its original luster, remains perhaps the most visited site in Egypt. It is said that "Man fears Time, yet Time fears the Pyramids" Hence, the Pyramid of Khufu, though not the oldest in Egypt, nevertheless has become a symbol of long lasting durability, and it is probably for this reason more than any other, that one can still find it pictured on the reverse of the US Dollar Bill.
Technical
The Pyramid

• Height: 146.5m
• Base: 230.38m
• Slope: 51^o 50'

Great Gallery

• Height: 8.48 to 8.74m
• Length 47.85m
• Slope: 26^o 16' 40"

Queens Chamber

• Height 6.26m
• Length 5.76m
• Width 5.23m

King's Chamber

• Height: 5.84m
• Length: 10.49m
• Width: 5.42m

Causeway

• Length: 825m

Boat Pits (On Northeast and Southeast Corners of Pyramid

• Depth: 8m
• Length 52m
• Width: 7.5m 
 

 

 

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Sphinx Temples at Giza

The Great Sphinx is, like many other monuments in Egypt, a complex rather than simply a single colossal statue. At the Sphinx on the Giza Plateau near Cairo, there are actually two Sphinx temples. One of them, directly in front of the Sphinx, dates to the time when the Sphinx monument was built, while the other is of New Kingdom construction. In the older of the two temples, the core blocks are of the same generally poorer quality and more easily eroded limestone as the body of the Sphinx. Thus these temple can be regarded as contemporary with the carving of the monument. It should also be noted that the same core blocks also make up Khafre's lower, or valley temple, and thus place it, the Sphinx and the Sphinx temple in the same date range.
Hence, it was probably built by the same men who constructed the Pyramid temples of Khafre and is in fact almost an exact copy of the court of Khafre's mortuary temple. In fact, Khafre's lower temple was at one time thought to be the Sphinx Temple. The two temples are similar in size and both face east in a north-sought alignment. Each has a pair of north and south entrances in their eastern facades. Both temples were faced, inside and out, with finely dressed pink granite form Aswan in the far south of Egypt, and paved with alabaster. 

Specifically, the old Sphinx temple was built of local limestone, and cased on the inside with fine Tura limestone, granite and alabaster. On the exterior, only the portals were lined with granite, though apparently the builders intended originally to encase the whole of the exterior in this stone.
The Sphinx temple, which was built on a terrace eight feet lower than the floor of the Sphinx, is very ruined now, with little of its granite facing left and little of its alabaster floor. Any inscriptions it may once have carried, which might have told us much about its purpose, are long gone. Only the eroded limestone core of the structure remains, in part. It is enough to show that this temple once boasted a central court, about 46 meters by 23 meters, which was open to the sky and afforded a good view of the Sphinx. Offerings would have been made on an altar in the court, which was paved with white alabaster. There was also an interior colonnade of rectangular pillars. Large recesses in the inside eastern and western walls suggest the original presence of cult statues.

The temple has two entrances on the east, one on the north, and the other on the south. These may represent doorways for Upper and Lower Egypt. There was no immediate access to the Sphinx from inside the temple. Its western wall was cut to a height of up to 2.5 meters from the living rock, and thereafter topped with limestone blocks. It was necessary to go by passages to the north and south of the temple to reach the Sphinx. There is evidence that this temple of the Sphinx was never finished, and perhaps never even used. 

Scholars believe that the temple would have something to do with the solar cycle, which would include Atum and the sun in its other phases, including Khepri, the rising sun, Re, at its zenith and Atum when it sets. If so, it would probably be the first solar temple in Egypt. As with Khafre's other temples, symbolic meaning has been seen several elements of the old Sphinx Temple. The twenty-four columns suggest that there was one for each hour of the day and night. There were also ten to twelve statues, again suggesting a statue for each hour of the day. The court statues sat in sockets cut in the floor in front of each pillar, bringing the base of the statue flush with the alabaster paving covering the bedrock floor. Each court statue was encased in red granite to match the statues. The temple is also unique in having two sanctuaries, one on the east and the other on the west, each at the back of a recessed bay such as that first seen in Khufu's mortuary temple. Perhaps one sanctuary was for the rising sun and one for the setting sun, but most everything about the temple is little more than guesswork. These were very small sanctuaries, and in front of each there were two pillars, which Ricke though represented the arms and legs of the goddess Nut. 

The building as a whole is more symmetrical in design than any other temple of its period. Mark Lehner has shown that the temple may well have been solar oriented and the Great Sphinx could have been visualized as an image of the king merging with the sun or perhaps presenting offerings in the temple. However, the temple was left unfinished by its builders, and it is possible that it was never dedicated to service in the age of its construction.
In fact, it is striking that, in the hundreds of Old Kingdom tombs at Giza, Egyptologists have not been able to unearth any titles of priests or priestesses that clearly belong to the Sphinx temple. The temple, which was uncovere
d at the beginning of the 20th century, had large boulders thrown both inside and outside. The Antiquities Department of Giza moved these two to eight ton stones and placed them in their appropriate locations with respect to the temple's original plans. Not long ago, cracks in the walls of the temple have been restored with mortar consisting of lime and sand.
New Kingdom pharaohs, ruling a thousand years after Khufu and Khafre, built new temples close to the Sphinx, who had become in their time (whatever his original significance may have been) a god in his own right. In the latter days of ancient Egypt, two thousand years after Khufu and Khafre, an atavistic passion for an idealized and (not surprisingly) misremembered past led to more rebuilding on the Giza site and fresh interpretations of the origin and meaning
of the Sphinx. During the New Kingdom the Sphinx was called Horem-akhet, "Horus of the Horizon".

The major New Kingdom Sphinx temple sits on a small rise to the northeast of the Great Sphinx. Built by Amenhotep II, is was only a part of a number of building projects, including terraces, enclosures, rest houses and temples the formed almost a royal national park about the Sphinx during the New Kingdom. The temple of Amenhotep II, situated on the higher terrace northeast of the Sphinx, was built during the first year of his reign. Its cult was certainly activated, but the structure was destroyed, with only fragmentary remains surviving. However, today, the temple has been largely restored.

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