History of archaeological exploration

1839: John Shae Perring, a British engineer and Egyptologist, was the first to clear off, extensively explore and take measurements of the Pyramid. The excavation was limited to the central pit and descending ramp. During the excavations the pit was unearthed to a depth of 13.7 m. Perring suggested that the structure of the burial chamber was similar to that of the King’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid.

1843: Karl Richard Lepsius, a German archaeologist and Egyptologist, carried out archaeological excavations of Egyptian pyramids, including the Pyramid of Djedefre. He recorded the Pyramid in the list of Egyptian pyramids as number II (2). On the southwest side of the Pyramid, Lepsius discovered the ruins of a satellite pyramid and listed it as number III (3), and marked the location of the pyramids on the map.

1883: William Matthew Flinders Petrie, a British Egyptologist, conducted archaeological studies and took certain accurate measurements of the Pyramid of Djedefre, paying attention mostly to the central pit. At the bottom of the pit, Petrie found a fragment of pink granite stone, which he thought was a fragment of a sarcophagus. Based on his measurements of the pit, Petrie suggested that the burial chamber was about 16 ft wide and 56 ft long, and it may have been divided into several chambers which had a vaulted ceiling, like the pyramids at Saqqara and Giza.

1901-1903: Emile Gaston Chassinat, a French Egyptologist and the director of the French Institute for Oriental Archaeology in Cairo, carried out the first full-scale archaeological excavations of the complex of the Pyramid of Djedefre at Abu Rawash. The excavations were mainly confined to the eastern side of the Pyramid, where the ruins of the upper temple (chapel) and funerary settlement, the paved courtyard and the boat pit were unearthed. At the temple site, Chassinat discovered statues of the king's three sons and two daughters, a sculpture of a sphinx and a wooden hippopotamus. Fragments of quartzite statues with inscriptions were found allowing the monument to be attributed to the period of Radjedef, a pharaoh of Dynasty 4. The detailed results of Chassinat's excavations have never been published.

1912-1913: Pierre Lacau, a French Egyptologist and philologist, director of the Department of Antiquities in Egypt, as head of the French Institute for Oriental Archaeology in Cairo, excavated the Pyramid of Djedefre. The excavations were focused mainly to the east of the Pyramid, in the area of the mortuary chapel built of mudbrick and rubble. The foundations of the walls covered in plaster and painted over, gave an idea of the decoration of the buildings dated Dynasty 4. The excavations unearthed many temple vessels and 20 lamps identical to Phoenician lamps. Lacau's records of the excavations were never published, but passed on to the architects V. Maragioglio and C. A. Rinaldi.

1921-1924: Fernand Bisson de La Roque, a French Egyptologist, excavated the necropolis at Abu Rawash.

1964: Vito Maragioglio and Celesta Ambrogio Rinaldi, Italian architects, published detailed descriptions and large-scale drawings of the interior and exterior of the Pyramid as a follow-up to their two-decade exploration of the Memphis pyramids.

1994-2007: Michel Valloggia, a Swiss archaeologist and the head of the archaeological mission of the French Institute for Oriental Archaeology in Cairo and the University of Geneva, carried out an extensive excavation of the burial complex of Pharaoh Radjedef. The excavation entirely unearthed both the Pyramid itself and the complex around it. On the eastern and south-eastern sides of the Pyramid, the mortuary temple, the boat pit and the satellite pyramid were excavated and restored. Detailed reports on the excavations were published annually.

2018: with the consent of the Egyptian authorities, a photogrammetric survey was carried out by the French company Iconem, commissioned by Label News for a documentary, ‘Pyramids: Solving the mysteries’. The architectural consultant was the French engineer and architect Franck Monnier.