From Khufu’s pyramid in the northeast to the smaller unfinished pyramid of Menkaura in the southeast, the southeastern corners of all three Giza pyramids are aligned diagonally. According to Lehner’s calculations, the mass of Menkaura’s unfinished pyramid is only one-tenth of that of the Great Pyramid. Originally ca. 65 meters high, with a base of 102.2 x 104.6 meters, Menkaura’s pyramid had lower courses covered in costly granite casing stones. A complex arrangement of interior passages and rooms includes a subterranean granite-lined burial chamber, a possible statue chamber with six niches, and a chamber with the false door design carved on its walls. In the burial chamber was an ornately carved sarcophagus, which was shipped to England by Howard Vyse in the 19th century, but it went down with the ship in a Mediterranean storm. Human bones found in an upper chamber have been radiocarbon dated, but are from post-pharaonic times. Remains of a young female were also found in one of the three so-called queens’ pyramids to the south of the pyramid’s enclosure wall. Two of these pyramids either are unfinished or were intentionally built in stepped form.
Both the mortuary and valley temples of Menkaura’s pyramid complex were unfinished in stone, and were hurriedly completed in mud-brick. These temples were excavated in the early 20th century by George Reisner (see 1.4), who meticulously recorded all finds in drawings, photographs, and field notes. In the mortuary temple Reisner found fragments of a colossal travertine statue of Menkaura, and in the valley temple were triad statues of the king with the goddess Hathor and a provincial deity.
The exquisitely carved pair statue of Menkaura embraced by his chief wife Khamerernebty II is one of the great masterpieces of Old Kingdom art (Plate 6.5). Its ancient appearance would have been quite different, however, as traces of paint still visible on the surface suggest. Reisner also found 15 statuettes of the king in various stages of carving, which demonstrate the step-by-step methods used by the royal sculptors.
The 4th Dynasty ends with the short reign of Shepseskaf, Menkaura’s successor, who built a very large mastaba tomb (99.6 x 74.4 meters), not a pyramid, at South Saqqara now called the Mastabat el-Fara’un (Figure 6.9). Surrounded by a double wall, the monument has most of the elements of a pyramid complex: mortuary temple on the east, causeway, and (an unexcavated) valley temple. The burial chamber was lined with granite blocks, forming a vaulted ceiling.
It is probably significant that Shepseskaf’s funerary monument and Menkaura’s pyramid were much smaller than the other two Giza pyramids. Menkaura probably reigned for 29 years, and even though part of his pyramid was built with costly granite casing blocks brought by barge from Aswan, it was planned on a much smaller scale than those of his predecessors. Lehner has suggested that perhaps there was much less space on the Giza plateau to build a third large pyramid. Others have suggested that as the pyramid became smaller in scale, the temple complexes expanded - which is definitely seen in the later Old Kingdom, when the pyramids were not only much smaller but were also less solidly constructed. This may reflect an ideological change connected to the increasing importance of the cult of the sun god, with less importance placed on the actual tomb of the king.
Mortuary
Descending
Figure 6.9 Plan of Shepseskaf’s tomb at Zawiyet el-Aryan. Source: Drawn by Philip Winton. From Mark Lehner, The Complete Pyramids. London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 1997, p. 139.
0 150 ft
There also may have been economic reasons that all other royal tombs after those of Khufu and Khafra were much smaller. Possibly later kings did not have the economic means to build such enormous monuments, nor the ideological means to justify such constructions. But perhaps it is also worth asking why the pyramids of Sneferu, Khufu, and Khafra are such aberrations in size compared to all the others of the Old Kingdom.
World History
