Pyramid of Menkaure: The Third and Smallest Pyramid of Giza

The Pyramid of Menkaure is the smallest of the three main pyramids of Giza, built around 2530 BC for Menkaure, a king of Egypt’s Fourth Dynasty. Its lower courses were cased in red granite from Aswan, an expensive choice for an Old Kingdom pyramid. Its temples produced some of the finest royal statues of ancient Egypt.

Background: the last great Giza pyramid

Menkaure, called Mycerinus by the Greeks, came after Khufu and Khafre, builders of the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Pyramid of Khafre. Most Egyptologists think he was Khafre’s son. His reign is often dated roughly 2532–2503 BC, though chronologies vary.

His pyramid stands at the south-western end of the Giza group. It was the last royal pyramid built at Giza on a large scale. His successor Shepseskaf chose a different tomb altogether, a huge stone structure shaped like a sarcophagus at South Saqqara, known as the Mastabat al-Fir’aun.

Size and casing

The pyramid was originally about 65 metres (213 feet) high, and today it stands at about 61 metres (200 feet). Its base measures roughly 103 by 105 metres. In volume it is less than a tenth the size of the Great Pyramid.

What it lacked in size it made up for in materials. The lowest 16 courses of casing were of red granite, brought about 800 kilometres down the Nile from Aswan. The upper casing was of white Tura limestone. Much of the granite was never fully smoothed, which suggests that work stopped before the casing was finished, possibly because the king died.

The pyramid has a large vertical gash in its north face. It was made in 1196, when Al-Aziz Uthman, a son of Saladin who ruled Egypt, ordered the pyramid to be demolished. According to the medieval scholar Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi, the workers struggled for about eight months and removed only a small part before giving up.

Inside the pyramid

The entrance is on the north face. A descending passage leads to a chamber decorated with carved panels, the only decoration inside any of the Giza pyramids. Beyond it lies a larger chamber, and below that the granite-lined burial chamber with a ceiling of granite slabs cut into a curved vault.

In 1837 the British officer Richard Howard Vyse, working with the engineer John Shae Perring, found a stone sarcophagus there, carved with a “palace facade” design of recessed panels. It was sent to Britain aboard the ship Beatrice, which sank in 1838 off the coast of Spain near Cartagena. The sarcophagus has never been recovered.

Vyse also found parts of a wooden coffin lid inscribed with Menkaure’s name, now in the British Museum. Its style shows that it was made much later, during the Saite period (the 26th Dynasty, 664–525 BC), when Egyptians restored ancient royal burials. Human bones found with it have been dated to the early Christian era and are not the king’s.

The temples and the triads

Menkaure’s mortuary temple and valley temple were left unfinished at his death. Shepseskaf completed them quickly in mud brick instead of stone. Between 1906 and 1910 the American archaeologist George Reisner, for Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, excavated both temples.

In the valley temple in 1908 he found a group of superb statues in greywacke, a hard dark stone. They include the famous triads, showing Menkaure standing between the goddess Hathor and a goddess personifying one of Egypt’s provinces. Four complete triads survive, divided between the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Reisner also found the pair statue of Menkaure and a queen, usually identified as Khamerernebty II, now in Boston. It is one of the most admired sculptures of the Old Kingdom. South of the main pyramid stand three small queens’ pyramids, also part of the complex.

Myths and facts

The Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BC, presented Mycerinus as a just and pious king, in contrast to his harsh predecessors. This is a later legend, not a record from Menkaure’s time. Herodotus also mentioned a story that the pyramid was built by Rhodopis, a famous courtesan, and rejected it himself, since she lived about 2,000 years later.

Timeline

• c. 2530 BC: Work on Menkaure’s pyramid complex at Giza.
• c. 2500 BC: Menkaure dies; Shepseskaf completes the temples in mud brick.
• 26th Dynasty (664–525 BC): The burial is restored with a new wooden coffin.
• 1196: Al-Aziz Uthman tries to demolish the pyramid and leaves a gash in the north face.
• 1837: Richard Howard Vyse and John Shae Perring enter the burial chamber.
• 1838: The sarcophagus is lost when the Beatrice sinks off Spain.
• 1908: George Reisner finds the triads in the valley temple.

Why it matters

The Pyramid of Menkaure closes the great age of pyramid building at Giza. Its granite casing and its statues show that Egypt’s royal workshops were at their artistic peak, even as the scale of royal tombs began to shrink. Its complex, beside the Great Sphinx of Giza, completes the most famous group of monuments of the ancient world.