In some places, the water surface in the irrigation canals through the trees can be seen. The path then goes steeply to a plateau, makes a sharp turn to the left, and… the beautiful pyramid of Cheops comes into view.
In the background is the pyramid of Khafre, and in third place is the pyramid of Menkaur (Mykerin).
The pyramid of Cheops in Egypt (Khufu)
The oldest and biggest pyramid on the Giza plateau is the pyramid of the second king of the Fourth Dynasty. The pyramid is made up of 2.3 million pieces of limestone, and each one weighs about 2.3 tonnes.
This makes the pyramid 137 m tall altogether.
When you walk into the pyramid, you have to go down a long, narrow hallway and then up a similarly small set of stairs to get to the burial room, where you will find an empty pink granite sarcophagus. Near Cheops’ pyramid, there is a boat that people say he took to the afterlife at the Museum of the Solar Boat.
In 1954, scientists found Rook, or more specifically, 1,224 of the pieces that make it up. The boat is 43.6 meters long, and its foremost restorer, Ahmed Yousef, is sure that it carried the pharaoh’s body from Memphis to the royal cemetery. The pyramids get taller as you move from south to north.
Each of the smaller pyramids was surrounded by a stone wall with a funeral chapel, burial chamber, entrance hall, and vertical shaft. Most people think that these pyramids were built for the wives of Cheops. Old stories say that his sister was the first wife and that she was called the “Great Wife.”
History has forgotten the names of Khufu’s first two wives, but we know that his third wife’s name was Henutsen and that rulers of the XX dynasty worshipped her as the goddess Isis.
During the Sais dynasty, her tomb was turned into a shrine, and she was known as the “Lady of the Pyramids.” There’s the Solar Boat Museum, a few small satellite pyramids, an illuminated Cheops pyramid, and more.
Khafre’s Pyramid (Khafra)
The Great Pyramid is next to the pyramid of Cheops’s son, Khafre. The middle pyramid seems taller than Cheops’s monument because it was built on a hill.
She is half a meter shorter than her more famous next-door neighbor, which is true (136.5 m). The Pyramid of Khafre is the only building left from what used to be a single complex with a temple, and it can be found near the Great Sphinx.
One of the most recognizable parts of the Khafre pyramid is the “cap” of the facing at the top. The north-facing doors to the pyramid of Khafre lead to one of two rooms inside. The first entrance was cut 15 meters above the ground, and the second was cut right below it, on the floor.
The only way to get to the burial chamber, which now has an empty sarcophagus with a lid, is through the higher entrance along the passage, which is right next to the foundation. The pyramid was just one part of a larger funeral complex that also included a mortuary temple, a causeway, a valley temple, an entrance, and a smaller companion pyramid (G2-a) that was probably built for Khafre’s wife.
From how things look now, we can safely assume that the whole structure was finished at one point, but not all of its parts have survived.
Menkaure pyramid (Menkaure)
Menkaure’s pyramid is the smallest of the three at Giza. It is on the far west side of the city, 66 meters tall and 108 meters wide at its base. Today, only a tiny piece of the north face, which was made of granite and had the bottom stages of the pyramid, is left.
The three smaller pyramids that make up the pyramid complex of Pharaoh Menkaure are next to it. Molek and al-Aziz Osman ben Yousef, Saladin’s son, attacked the pyramid of Menkaur in 1196. After eight months of hard work, he could only cut a hole in the pyramid’s north side above the entrance.
The entrance to the pyramid can be found right above where the Mamluks gave up on their plans. The casket was supposed to go in the tomb, but it went down with the ship taking it to England around Cape Trafalgar.
On the east side of the pyramid, you can see the foundations of the mortuary temple and part of the procession path. Because it is near the Muslim cemetery in Nazlet el-Samman, it might be hard to find your way around the lower temple. The tomb of Queen Khentkaus, the mother of Userkaf and Sakhur, can be found next to the group of tombs for Menkaur.
The Great Sphinx:
I have seen the sun god’s dawn cult on the Nile’s banks for the last 5,000 years. As the sun comes up, its rays warm my skin. I was there when Egyptian history started to take shape, and I’ll be there again tomorrow to watch the sunrise on a whole new day. Because I am so careful and loyal to my lord, he even gave me his face as a reward for serving him at his feet.
To put it simply, I am not just the pharaoh’s assistant; I am the pharaoh. The many followers who have come to me over the years have given me a lot of different names… Herodotus, a Greek explorer who is often called the “father of history,” is the one who gave me the name I now have. He called me the Sphinx, as if I had always lived in his country, and I still remember that name to this day.
The Arabic name for the Great Sphinx is Abu el-Khol, which means “father of fear.” It is about 350 meters from the Pyramid of Cheops The Great Sphinx is the enormous statue ever made and may ever be made. This animal is almost 53 meters long and can grow 20 meters tall from paw to tail.
The figure was cut out of a single piece of stone that had been used to build the pyramids of Khufu and Khafre. The stone had been left in the quarry after it was used to make those pyramids. When it was first built, the Sphinx was buried in the sand for many years. Thutmose IV and Ramses II, two pharaohs of ancient Egypt, tried to find it. The Italians were able to uncover the Sphinx’s breast in 1817 ultimately.
In 1925, the rest of the monument was finally cleaned of sand that had been there for thousands of years. A sphinx temple is at ground level, right in front of the Sphinx. Sadly, the temple is almost destroyed, and there are no writings on it that could tell us about how people worshipped during the time of the pyramids. The temple has two entrances, one on the north wall and one on the south wall of the complex.
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