Problems of dating and purpose arise from the Valley Temple which lies beside the Sphinx and the temple dedicated to the Sphinx itself. The Valley Temple, linked by a causeway to Khafre’s pyramid, is a very strange structure, cyclopean and stark, with a dominating monumentality. It is one of the most compelling examples of early architecture in Egypt, indeed in the world; not the least of its wonders is a polished alabaster floor in the interior of the temple. The Valley Temple is quite unlike any other Egyptian building, with the possible exception of the so-called ‘Tomb of Osiris’ at Abydos which has similarities in the employment of massive blocks in much of its architecture. The building of this temple or shrine at Abydos is traditionally but not wholly convincingly attributed to King Seti I, of the Nineteenth Dynasty.
The Valley Temple’s architecture is remarkable for its stark, megalithic simplicity and austerity, qualities which seem at odds with the majesty and splendour of Old Kingdom design generally. It contains exceptionally large lintels, some weighing around two hundred tons; how these were lifted into place in the third millennium is difficult to explain. Nor is the purpose of the temple certain, though it is thought to have been associated with the rites attending the king’s mummification.
Apart from the very unusual structure of the Valley Temple, its most perplexing element is that the skin of granite which has been used to face the temple is overlain on apparently earlier, limestone blocks which reveal a similar level of deterioration to that which is apparent in the Sphinx. For the limestone blocks to have deteriorated to the extent that they have suggests a long exposure to very different climatic conditions to those which have prevailed for the four and a half millennia which have elapsed since the conventional dating of the monuments on the plateau at Giza.
The condition of the granite which overlays the limestone core blocks of the Temple is further remarkable for the fact that their surfaces which are laid against the limestone have been shaped to fit snugly against the deteriorated surface of the limestone. It would surely have been far more economical to have smoothed the blocks of the original core to receive the granite facings, which are made of a far harder material, but for some reason this was not done. A further enigma in the construction of the Valley temple is that examination of the fossil assemblages present in the limestone of Giza has not established the source of the Valley Temple’s masonry.26
World History
