Pyramid Complex at Giza
Air view on the Great Pyramid and the Queens' Pyramids next to it.
Source: Lehner, Complete Pyramids, p. 109.
Source: Lehner, Complete Pyramids, p. 109.
Location
After his predecessor and father Snofru had chosen Dashur, on the southernmost edge of the Memphite necropolis, to build not one but two pyramids, Kheops moved north, to Giza, for his own funerary monument. His was the first of three royal pyramid complexes erected at this site: his son and second successor Khefren, and his grandson, Mykerinos, would both follow in his footsteps.
The move north, away from Dashur and towards the northern edge of the Memphite necropolis, may seem surprising at first. A lot of the material that was used to build the pyramids at Giza, however, was quarried on site, making it an ideal location for a project as ambitious as Kheops' funerary monument. The resources at Dashur may perhaps have been deemed exhausted for this project.In addition, a pyramid complex was much more than just a funerary monument for a king, or a testimony for his megalomania, as has often been assumed. It was also an important economic centre, housing priests and servants, controlling the flow of goods from the many royal estates to the temples.
Or Kheops might have preferred to built his monument at a site that had not yet been used before, just like his father did when he abandoned Meidum for Dashur.
Structure
Source: Lehner, Complete Pyramids, p. 109.
The pyramid complex of Kheops marks a further evolution in the building of pyramids and related temples. All the elements that would become traditional for future generations, were already present:
The pyramid itself
A
small satellite pyramid, uncharacteristically located at the southeast
corner of the pyramid, rather than along the southern face
Subsidiary pyramids believed to have been built for several of Kheops' queens, including, perhaps, his mother, Hetepheres I
A small Mortuary Temple in the east
A Valley Temple, now mostly lost
A causeway, now mostly lost, connecting the Valley Temple with the Mortuary Temple.
Several pits
(once) containing boats that the deceased king would need for his daily
transportation in the afterworld, or that were used for the royal
burial
The Great Pyramid
Pyramid
With its 146.59m in height, Kheops' pyramid, has indeed deserved its modern-day nick-name of The Great Pyramid. Khefren's adjacent pyramid appears to be somewhat higher, but this is only because it was built on a higher part of the Giza platform. It is, in fact, slightly over 3m “smaller".
Like the pyramids at Dashur, built by Kheops’ father Snofru, the Great Pyramid consisted of huge core blocks, laid in horizontal courses, encased in fine limestone.
As with most pyramids, the outer casing has been removed over the centuries to be reused in other buildings, leaving only the pyramid's naked core. What does remain of the outer casing shows a high degree of craftsmanship and precision.
The pyramidion of this monument is, like with so many other pyramids, missing as well. A wooden structure was put on top of the pyramid in modern days, to give the many visitors of this monument an impression of its original height.
Like Snofru's pyramids at Dashur, a part of the Great Pyramid's internal structure was built inside the pyramid's core, rather than underneath it; a practice that would be abandoned by later pyramid builders. Kheops' internal structure, however, is somewhat less complex than that of Snofru's pyramids at Dashur.View on the Great Pyramid of Kheops at Giza.
Source: Lehner, Complete Pyramids, p. 108.
From the entrance, traditionally located slightly off-centre in the northern face of the pyramid, sloping at an angle of 26° 34' 23", leads down to a subterranean chamber. The first 28.8m of the passage run through the pyramid's core, and then another 30.3m through the natural rock of the plateau.
The subterranean chamber is roughly hewn and gives the impression of not being finished. It has longtime been assumed to have been intended as the burial chamber in the pyramid's original plan, before Kheops and his architects had decided to go for a completely different internal structure. It was planned to measure 14m by 7.2 and a height of 5.3m. From its southern corner, a roughly cut passage leads further south to a dead end. As the king's burial chamber was always the last chamber of a series, it seems unlikely that the subterranean chamber would have been intended as such. This is confirmed by the fact that the descending passage leading to the chamber is too small to allow a sarcophagus the size of the one found in the King's Chamber, to be entered. A more recent theory has suggested that this chamber was built below the ground level on purpose, for it represented the underworld. Its unfinished state suggests it was the last chamber that was built, rather than the first and that it was not completed at the time of the king's death. It could also be that it was left unfinished deliberately, to symbolically mark the coming into being of creation out of the primeval, subterranean waters.
Several metres before the descending passage plunges into the the natural bedrock, a second passage leads up to the rooms inside the pyramid's core.The first room is named Queen's Chamber, a name which is the result of an old misinterpretation that once the king's wife was buried in this room. The chamber is entered via a horizontal passage that connects with the ascending passage from just before the Grand Gallery. It measures 5.8m by 5.3 and a height of 6m. A corbelled niche, 4.7m high, in the east wall may once have housed a Ka-statue of the king. If so, the purpose of the so-called Queen's Chamber was the same as that of the serdabs found connected to private mastabas and to the Step Pyramid of Netjerikhet: it marked the place where the deceased king could come and collect his daily offerings.
At the point where the ascending passage connects to the horizontal passage leading to the Queen's Chamber, a low narrow passage connects to the Grand Gallery, a monumental passage of 46.7m by 2.1 and a height of 8.7m, leading further up to the King's Chamber. The corbelling of its roof does not run op entirely to the top, which is covered by slabs. Regular holes in the walls are believed to have been sockets for large beams that were to hold back the blocks which sealed the ascending passage.
A view inside the impressive Grand Gallery of Kheops' pyramid.
The Grand Gallery eventually leads up to a relatively small antechamber which, in turn, opens on to the Kings' Chamber, the actual burial chamber of Kheops. This rectangular chamber, made entirely out of red granite, measures 10.5 by 5.2m and a height of 5.8m.The king's sarcophagus is traditionally located in the west of this room. It is slightly larger than the passages leading to the chamber where it was located, which means that it put in place as the pyramid was being built around it.
Despite all measures to seal off the burial chamber, the king's sarcophagus was found empty.Above the King's Chamber, there are five equally size stress-relieving chambers. The topmost chamber has a pented roof to distribute the weight and stressed of the pyramid's core above. Graffiti left behind in these chambers give us the names of the teams that built them. Interesting is the fact that Kheops' name is also present in the grafitti. As these chambers were completely sealed off since they were built only to be accessed again for the first time in the 19th Century, the graffiti provide the ultimate proof that this pyramid was indeed built for Kheops.Graffito showing the name of Kheops, left behind by a team of builders in one of the relief chambers.
Additional confirmation that the Great Pyramid was built during the reign of Kheops comes from the 2013 find of administrative documents that irrevocably link Kheops to the building of this monument.
Both the Queen's and the King's chambers have so-called air-shafts leading up from the northern and southern walls through the pyramid's core, a unique feature of Kheops' pyramid.The air-shafts of the King's Chamber lead all the way up to the outside, but as the outer casing is missing, it is not certain if the casing stones locked these shafts or not.The shafts of the Queen's Chamber stop somewhere inside the pyramid. A small camera riding up one of these shafts stumbled upon what looked like a stone door. A hole drilled in that stone door, revealed that the shaft continued after it, only to be blocked again by another stone door.It should also be remarked that the northern air-shafts point to the circumpolar stars, while the southern ones were oriented towards the stars that form what we call the belt of the constellation Orion. The circumpolar stars where visible every night of the year and were considered to be indestructible stars. It was hoped that the king's spiritual remains would travel to these stars after his burial, and share in their indestructibility. The shafts pointing to Orion's belt may have played an important part in the king's burial ritual.
Queens' Pyramids
To the southeast of the main pyramid, there are three Queens' Pyramids. The foundations of the these three pyramids were not levelled out, causing their bases not to be completely square and level.Each pyramid had a stepped core, which was then encased in limestone to complete the pyramid shape. The entrance was located in the northern face of the pyramids, with a descending passage leading down to a subterranean burial chamber.
The identity of the queens for whom these monuments were built, is not known for certain. The presence of a cache just north of the northernmost pyramid containing objects that belonged to Hetepheres I, Kheops' mother, has led to the assumption that she may have been buried in this pyramid.
An inscription found in the chapel of the mastaba of Kawab, one of Kheops' sons, may indicate that the middle pyramid was built for Kawab's mother, a queen Meretites.
The mortuary chapel that was built to the east of the southernmost pyramid, was converted into a temple for Isis during the the Late Dynastic Period. Henutsen, whose name is known only from Late Dynastic sources, may perhaps have been the queen buried in this third pyramid.
The Late Dynastic Isis temple built to the East of the pyramid of a queen named Henutsen.
Satellite Pyramid
A satellite pyramid, measuring only 20m per side and almost totally demolished, was found next to the southeastern corner of the pyramid itself. It has a descending passage that ends in a small room that may, at one time, have housed a Ka-statue of the king.
Mortuary and Valley Temple
Mortuary Temple
The funerary chapels that Snofru built to the east of his pyramids, was extended into a small, squarish Mortuary Temple.
Unfortunately, this temple has been almost entirely destroyed over time, which makes it hard to identify the different elements that originally made up the temple. The general shape of the temple, however, does make it clear that this was just an intermediate monument between the funerary chapels of Snofru, and the traditional mortuary temple, as it would be defined just one generation later, during the reign of Khefren.
The Mortuary Temple was entered via a doorway in the eastern wall. Sockets in the basalt pavement mark the location of megalithic granite pillars that once surrounded an open court. Beyond the open court, there was an inner sanctuary, but no trace of a false door or perhaps a statue of the king, have been found.A floor made in basalt is one of the few things that remains of Kheops' Mortuary Temple.
Valley Temple
Only a vague outline of both the 739.8m long causeway and of the Valley Temple now remain.
Boat Pits
Several long and narrow pits were found south and east of the king's pyramid, north of the causeway and between the queens' pyramids as well. Some pits were found to contain the dismantled remains of the boats which were presumably used in the king's last journey, his burial.One boat, buried in one of the southern pits, has been rebuilt and can now be seen in the Boat Museum, next to the king's pyramid.
The reassembled boat, made of cedar wood that was imported from the Lebanon, measures 43.3m in length. Its prow and stern were shaped like papyrus stalks.
The reassembled funerary boat of Kheops, now in a museum next to the Great Pyramid.
The other southern boat pit was examined in the 1980s and was also found to contain a dismantled boat, which was left in situ.
Contrary to the eastern pits, the two southern pits are located outside of the now lost enclosure wall that marked the boundaries of the pyramid complex. This seems to imply that the boats of the eastern pits may once have been part of the deceased king's funerary cult, for his transportation in the hereafter, while the southern boats were not.The southern pits also differ from the eastern pits, in that they were rectangular rather than boat-shaped. The fact that they were dismantled is seen as an indication that they had been part of the royal funeral. Any objects that participated in the royal funeral were considered improper for further use and appear to have been ritually taken apart, as opposed to destroyed, and buried. If this also applies to the two boats in the southern pits, then we may well have here the two boats that once carried the mortal remains of the king, along with some of the objects that he would need in his afterlife, to their final resting place.
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