The Pyramid of Menkaure

There are three possible reasons why the Pyramid of Menkaure is smaller than the Cheops and Chephren's pyramid:

1. Space problems on the Giza Plateau
2. Too high construction costs (the successor Shepseskaf built only a Grabmastaba)
3. The turn to the sun cult of Re, promoted the building of the temple to the sun god.

The Pyramid of Menkaure was built with local limestone and then, as usual, covered with polished limestone slabs. In the lower 16 layers were used, however, granite slabs that remained untouched until a few polished bodies at the entrance and mortuary temple. The previously advocated believe the pyramid was completely covered with granite slabs, is now disproved. The lack of editing is one of the indications that the king died before the completion of his tomb.

The fragment
The entrance of the pyramid is about. four meters in height on the north side. A diagonally downward extending key slot from 32 meters in length opens into a vestibule of 3.63 x 3.16 meters with slender false doors, called the panel chamber. Behind this chamber three case-lock blocks are installed. From here, the tunnel leads horizontally into the center of the structure, the anterior chamber, carved below ground level in the bedrock was. Above that access to pre-chamber flows coming from above, a further access shaft, which, however, ends blindly in the base plate and was given up during the construction. An entry point in the floor of the antechamber a short passage leads into the lower-lying actual grave chamber. The passage of several steps lower branches off one side of Appeal, the American Chamber, with six slots (each measuring about 2.50 x 0.60 meters and 1.4 meters high which is provided), whose significance is unclear. The actual grave chamber measuring 6.59 x 2.62 meters and 3.43 meters high. She was completely covered with granite, the granite beams of the ceiling have been processed so that the ceiling looks like a barrel vault.

In the grave chamber Richard William Howard Vyse discovered in 1837 when he penetrated into the pyramid, an ornate, palace facade with ornate patterns of dark stone coffin without a lid before. When the ship came to England Beatrice but a storm and sank in 1838, complete with his precious cargo. Vyse also discovered the remains of an anthropomorphic wooden coffin with the name of Menkaure, and human bones. The coffin comes from Kurt Sethe from the Saite period, the bones for radiocarbon tests before the Christian period.

A thorough examination of the pyramid took place only in the years 1906 to 1924 by a team from Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston under the direction of George Andrew Reisner. The main results of the studies is the insight that the substructure has been amended three times during construction.