Pyramid of Menkaure
Description: The Pyramid of Menkaure is like a little gem among the great pyramids of the Giza Plateau. The well-preserved granite casing stones at the bottom of the Pyramid, as well as the extraordinary interior structure, and the temple built of the huge limestone blocks, make it unique among others. Some scientists explain the specific location of the internal passages and chambers by the construction process which took a few stages. However, not all researchers support that idea. In 1837, Colonel Howard Vyse and the British engineer and Egyptologist John Shae Perring became the first explorers to get inside the Pyramid, but it turned out to be empty. The most valuable discovered items were the fragments of human bones and a well-polished basalt sarcophagus. Unfortunately, on the way to England, it sank with the ship in the Mediterranean Sea off the Spanish coast. Alternative names: Third Pyramid,Pyramid of Mykerinos
Lepsius No: 9
Type: True Pyramid
Location: Giza Plateau
Country: Egypt
History of archaeological exploration
Year 430 BCE: Herodotus, an ancient Greek historian, first mentions the Pyramid of Menkaure (Mycerinus) in his first full-length historical work ‘Histories’: “Then the king of Egypt, according to the priests, was Mycerinus, son of Cheops. He was not happy with his father's deeds. He opened the temples and freed the trouble-worn people, letting them go to work (in their fields) and offer sacrifices. He was the most righteous judge of all the kings, for which he is especially praised by the Egyptians among all the kings who ever ruled over them... And this king also left a pyramid, though considerably smaller than his father's: each side of it is 20 feet shorter than 3 plethra. It is also quadrangular and half built of Ethiopian stone (granite). Some Hellenes think it is the pyramid of the hetaera Rhodopis, but this is wrong. They claim so obviously not knowing who Rhodopis was. Otherwise they could not have attributed to her the building of such a pyramid, which, by and large, would have required thousands and thousands of talents. Besides, Rhodopis lived in the time of King Amasis and not under Menkaure, i.e. many generations later than the builders of these pyramids.”
Year 60-30 BCE: Diodorus Siculus, an ancient Greek historian, writes the following about the Pyramid in his ‘Bibliotheca Historica’: “Each side at the base was three plethra, the walls were made of 50 courses of black stone similar to that of Thebes, otherwise it was made of stones similar to those used to build the rest of the pyramids. Although it was inferior in size to its predecessors (the pyramids of Chephren and Cheops), it surpassed them in skill and luxury of stone. The north side of the Pyramid was inscribed that it was built by Menkaure. He is said to have hated the cruelty of his predecessors and sought to live in peace, doing good deeds to his people and doing many other things that would have made the common people favour him, as well as spending considerable resources on public affairs, giving gifts to those of worthy men who seemed to have been judged improperly by the courts."
1196: Al-Malik al-Aziz Uthman, son of Salah ad-Din Yusuf, second sultan of the Ayyubid dynasty and ruler of Egypt, spent eight months demolishing and removing the blocks of the Pyramid's northern face. This was made known through the personal observations of the Arab scholar Abd el-Latif (1162-1231) of Baghdad, who mentions the destruction of the 'red pyramid', by which G. A. Reisner refers to the Pyramid of Menkaure.
1546: Pierre Belon, a French naturalist and traveller, having visited the pyramids of the Giza Plateau, mentions that the Third Pyramid was in perfect condition, as if it had just been built.
1589: Jacques De Villamont, a French traveller, visiting the pyramids of the Giza Plateau, said that the Third Pyramid was perfectly lined and no steps were visible.
1610: George Sandys, an English traveller, visited the pyramids and agreed with the assumption that they were the tombs of kings.
1637: John Greaves, an English scholar, traveller and professor of astronomy at Oxford University, mentions in his book ‘Pyramidographia’ that much of the Pyramid's casing was already missing, and that 24 courses of the Pyramid's casing were of Aswan granite. However, Greaves only saw the core of the Pyramid itself. He disagreed with the view that the pyramids had been built by biblical figures or legendary kings. Based on classical sources, Greaves concluded that the Pyramids had been built by Cheops, Chephren and Menkaure as tombs.
1799: Dominique Vivant Denon, Jomard and Malus, as part of Napoleon's expedition to Egypt, drafted a brief description and made some sketches of the pyramids at Giza.
1801: Jean-Marie-Joseph Coutelle, a French scientist and engineer, together with Jean-Baptiste Lepère, a French architect, began dismantling the GIII-c satellite pyramid in the hope of discovering an intact tomb. After removing the upper northern part of the Pyramid, they gave up the attempt.
1805-1848: Muhammad Ali Pasha, governor of Egypt, used blocks of pink granite taken from the casing of the Pyramid to build an arsenal in Alexandria.
1817: Giovanni Battista Caviglia, an Italian explorer, dug a hole in a pre-existing crevice on its northern face in search of the entrance to the Pyramid.
1818: Giovanni Battista Belzoni, an Italian traveller and discoverer, sent a team of workers to search for the entrance to the Third Pyramid (Menkaure's one) while exploring the Second Pyramid (Chephren) on the Giza Plateau. However, due to a disagreement between Belzoni and H. Salt, the work was discontinued.
1837: Howard Vyse, a British Army major, together with John Shae Perring, a British engineer and Egyptologist, were the first to carry out the clearance, extensive survey and measurement of the Third Pyramid and part of the upper temple. After an unsuccessful search and further destruction inside the broken-through passages in the crevices in the Pyramid's northern face, they were the first to discover the entrance to the Pyramid 13 feet above its base. However, the Arabic inscriptions found on the walls indicated that Vyse and Perring were not the first to enter the Pyramid. In the burial chamber they found an empty basalt sarcophagus and fragments of its lid. Along with the fragments of the sarcophagus lid, the archaeologists also found human bones, a linen wrapper and parts of a wooden coffin with Menkaure's cartouche. The sarcophagus sank with the ship in the sea off the coast of Spain during its journey to England. The coffin and bones are now in the British Museum.
1843: Karl Richard Lepsius, a German archaeologist and Egyptologist, carried out archaeological excavations of Egyptian pyramids, including the Pyramid of Menkaure. He drew up a layout of the visible walls of the upper temple and listed the Pyramid as number IX (9) among the Egyptian pyramids.
1880-1882: William Matthew Flinders Petrie, a British Egyptologist, conducted archaeological studies and took certain accurate measurements of the Giza Plateau including the Pyramid of Menkaure. Petrie suggested that Pyramid had never been finished. Its granite facing blocks are likely to have remained in the same condition in which they were delivered from Aswan. The Pyramid was originally the same size as the satellite pyramids on the same hill. This is evidenced by the dead-end descending corridor. For whatever reason, the builders decided to enlarge the Pyramid and deepen the chamber. Accordingly, they cut a new passage from the new floor level in the chamber, making this passage from the inside, while the old entrance passage was built up from the outside. The builders also cut a sloping passage to the future granite burial chamber.
1906-1924: George Andrew Reisner, an American archaeologist, together with a team from Harvard University and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, carried out a full-scale excavation of the complex of the Pyramid of Menkaure. He was able to carefully study and document the upper and lower temples, the causeway and other parts of the complex. Based on the artefacts discovered and the ruins excavated, Reisner suggested dividing the construction of the complex into several phases in time: 1. Dynasty 4 - time of Menkaure’s reign 2. Dynasty 4 - time of Shepseskaf’s reign 3. Time of Dynasty 5; 4. Time of Dynasty 6. When excavating the temples, Reisner discovered several statues of the pharaoh, including the famous Triads of Menkaure.
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.
1971-1972: Abdel-Aziz Saleh, an Egyptian archaeologist, carried out archaeological studies in the area adjacent to the Pyramid complex in collaboration with the University of Cairo. The excavation site extended south of the Pyramid up to the ridge of desert cliffs, and east down to the Muslim cemetery of the village of Nazlet el-Semman. The main objective of the excavation was to investigate both sides of the causeway leading to the Pyramid of Menkaure.
1996: Zahi Hawass, Egyptian archaeologist and head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, while clearing the west and south sides of the Pyramid, discovered a roughly unfinished Ramesside granite statue. This find confirms that during the New Kingdom, the pharaohs used the pyramids of the Giza Plateau as quarries. In the same year, a number of large blocks of the limestone base were discovered along the southern side of the Pyramid.
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.
Field studies
In 2007, the National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics (Helwan, Egypt) and the Center of Geophysics at the University of Lisbon (Portugal) conducted a geophysical survey at the site of the Pyramid of Mycerinus. An area of 47 x 26 m adjacent to the satellite pyramids nearby the Pyramid of Mycerinus at Giza was used to measure soil resistivity using the Wenner test method. Most 3D inverted models show moderate resistivity values at shallow depth. However, in two places, a higher resistance value indicated two elongated sections. One may refer to the 2 x 8 m long solar boat near the Pyramid, while the other may suggest a 5 x 20 m chamber extending north-south, with a ceiling made of mudbrick.
Date: 2007
Researcher: Abbas, A. Mohamed, and Sultan, S. Awad, and Santos, F. A. Monteiro
In 1974, Ain Shams University (Egypt) worked with the Stanford Research Institute (USA) to conduct electromagnetic sounder experiments at the Pyramids of Giza to search for hidden chambers and voids in and around the pyramids. Special echo sounders operating in the frequency range of 10 to 150 MHz have been developed for the survey. The idea was that the pyramids might be a suitable low-loss medium for the underground propagation of radio waves because the Giza Plateau area is extremely dry, with less than an inch of precipitation per year. However, this survey was unsuccessful. The study of the Pyramids of Khafre and Great Pyramid has definitively confirmed that the limestone of both of these large pyramids has a high radio frequency loss due to the high moisture content of the limestone.
Instrumental surveys were also carried out in the corridors of the Pyramid of Menkaure. From the measurements, the scientists were able to plot the correlation of frequency and wave attenuation in the rock. Preliminary data suggests a very high degree of wave dispersion in the rock. A more in-depth study of the recorded signals and a comprehensive analysis of the data are required to refine the initial conclusions.
In addition, an inspection of the northern face of the Pyramid of Menkaure uncovered ancient quarry and builder marks beneath the rubble on the inner steps of the core and in the passage within large cut-through crevices. Horizontal lines were also found on several blocks, which may have served as alignment guides to place the blocks on the exterior of the stepped core structure. This may have helped with the completion of the true pyramid. These marks were made after the blocks had been put in place because they were applied to the mortar between and on these blocks. One of the images found on the wall strongly resembles an overview painting.
Date: 1974
Researcher: Ain Shams University, Stanford Research Institute
Laboratory studies
Between 1984 and 1995, more than 450 organic specimens were collected from monuments built in the Old and Middle Kingdoms. The most suitable samples have been selected for dating. The objective is to establish a radiocarbon chronology of the monuments. This chronology has been compared with the historical chronology established through the reconstruction of written sources. The analysis of 35 samples obtained from the Pyramid of Menkaure suggests that the average age of the samples and presumably the Pyramid itself is 4127 years (ranging from 3685 to 4489 years). The reign of Pharaoh Menkaure, to whom the Pyramid is attributed, is dated 2532-2504 BCE according to the chronology by P.A. Clayton (1994).
Date: 1984-1995
Researcher: Bonani G., Haas H., Hawass Z., Lehner M.
About 1,500 samples from the pyramids and quarries of the Old Kingdom were analysed by geochemical and petrographic test methods in order to identify the provenance of the building material of the pyramids. The research showed that the limestone used to build the core of most of the great pyramids had been mined in quarries found quite nearby.
The Pyramid of Menkaure is at the furthest end of Giza’s diagonal crossline and at the very edge of the Mokattam formation, where it breaks off to the south and passes into the younger Maadi formation. Macroscopic and geochemical correlation diagrams made for the core material of the Pyramid of Menkaure clearly indicate that the blocks originate from a quarry located to the south-east of the Pyramid. A limited area of this quarry belongs stratigraphically to the same unit as the large section of the quarry used by Khufu and Khafre, but it is located at a higher level. It is almost impossible to distinguish the blocks of the Pyramid's core from other quarries on the Giza Plateau.
Granite (16 lower courses) and fine white limestone (upper rows) were used to encase the Pyramid. When mining granite from Aswan, same colour tone was important to maintain, which is why the stones with a pinkish-red hue were chosen. A comparison of the properties of the lining and casing limestone blocks with the limestone from the Tura quarry suggests that Menkaura mined these blocks from a very limited area of the quarry.
Date: 2010
Researcher: Klemm D., Klemm R.
