Menkaure’s triads are our first intact examples of this statue type, though a fragmentary example shows that the triad form was already extant in the time of Khafre.352 Set on bases, the Menkaure triads have back-tilted back slabs, out of which, and beyond which, their high relief figures (at first glance frontal) seem to emerge. Unfinished backs suggest the triads were designed to be set against or embedded in
King looks to proper right
Fig. 10: King looks to proper right in dyad (MFA, Boston 11.1738)
Proper Right
Dyad (MFA 11.1738)
Fig. 11: Potential for movement in three directions integrated into design of Type 1 triads
Proper Left
A wall. Despite the monumental size suggested by photographs, the triads are relatively small. Heights of the intact examples range from 88.5 to 95.8 cm.353 comparing their size with those of the third dynasty djoser relief panels may not be inappropriate. Found in situ under the king’s pyramid and south tomb, the Djoser panels were set into false door wall niches, where each relief is about 87 cm high.354 I am regularly led back to the thought that the triads, in their original concept (and concept only, since it was never realised) were intended to fit into wall niches akin to what we see with the djoser panels.355 he height of some triads’ relief surfaces, omitting the base, is, in fact, extremely close to the height of the Djoser panels. Fig. 12 shows how a 166 cm man, standing beside a triad would need the sculpture to be elevated on a plinth, just as the Djoser panel sits on top of a blank space (about 58 cm high) that may represent just such a statue plinth.
My question is whether Menkaure or Shepseskaf had the idea of placing the triads on plinths against an un-niched wall (Menkaure) or in niches (shepseskaf) where the triads’ figures would face into the valley temple court.356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 he
24 My thanks to Yasmin El Shazly, Head of Documentation, he Egyptian Museum, Cairo, who obtained new measurements for me, April 2009.
25 F. D. Friedman, ‘he Underground Relief Panels of King Djoser at the Step Pyramid Complex’, JARCE 32 (1995), 1—42; the dimensions of panels are given on pp 12—13.
26 I thank Helen Strudwick for raising the question of how Menkaure’s designers could have been familiar with the Djoser panels, which lay closed of, about 33 m below ground, and thus clearly out of sight. while twenty-sixth dynasty copyists did enter the pyramid’s panel corridor (see C. M. Firth and J. E. Quibell, Excavations at Saqqara: he Step Pyramid I (Cairo 1935), 104 (pls 15, 16); II, pls 15, 16), it seems doubtful to me that Menkaure’s fourth dynasty designers, or Sneferu’s, ever penetrated their predecessor’s pyramid (including a difficult descent to the panels corridor) or the south tomb (with admittedly easier access). It is more likely, I think, that fourth dynasty designers were consulting prototypes for images (and architectural plans) in an archive. he similarity of Djoser’s third dynasty below-ground reliefs, for example, with the fourth dynasty Sneferu above-ground reliefs (see Fig. 25 infra), suggests the existence of such an archive where the third dynasty material was available for reference and adaptation.
27 It may seem odd to compare the triads with the underground Djoser panels that clearly did not face into an open court. he in situ panels, in fact, face a wall, while their relief figures face left. But the actions of the relief figures, with the king standing in shrines or running, were understood not as happening in the subterranean corridor, but in the real heb sed and great courts above ground (see infra, Fig. 23, Fig. 26). In other words, the Djoser figures, while not literally facing any heb sed ritual courts were understood conceptually to function in—to move about in—those actual spaces above ground. what I am further suggesting is that, despite being from architecturally very dissimilar spaces, the subterranean panels (with king, deity and accompanying figures in the form of animated glyphs) and the approximately 58.5 cm widths28 of Shepseskaf’s compound brick niches could have accommodated some of but not all of the triads, which are of varied heights, widths and depths. But was the use of wall niches for elevated triads ever an idea considered but never used (Fig. 13)?29 hat the series of ten to twelve triads had to go in the court seems clear. here is no other place they would it. And if I am right that the triads were designed for the heb sed, it would also make sense they would appear in the open court. A temple court equipped with statues of the king is associated with the sed festival since Djoser’s heb sed court at the Step Pyramid Complex, and is suggested by the open courts at Sneferu’s statue cult (‘valley’) temple,30 now confirmed as a heb sed temple through inscriptional evidence,31 and at Khufu’s pyramid temple,32 where, in both cases, provisioning and heb sed themes were found together. A heb sed context is suggested, too, by the open court of Khafre’s pyramid temple, which, faced with twelve (now lost) statues of the king,33 is thought to have been the focus of a heb sed.34 My
Fig. 12: Relative sizes of Djoser panel and a triad, the latter on a hypothetical base; man shown for scale (166 cm)
Fig. 13: A concept never realised? Possible idea for installing triads on bases in the compound niches added by Shepseskaf
Guess is that Menkaure intended to set his triads on plinths against the walls of his open valley temple court for the heb sed ritual, and that at his death, shepseskaf perhaps elaborated on this idea by placing compound niches along the walls where menkaure had intended the statues to go. here is no clear evidence to my knowledge, however, that the statues were ever actually installed.
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