THE PYRAMID COMPLEX OF KHUFU
Who is Khufu?
2nd king of the 4th Dynasty.
Son of Snfrw and Hetepheres I.
Although he is known to have built the Great Pyramid of Giza, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, many other aspects of his reign are rather poorly documented.
According to Turin Canon: 23 years
According to Manetho: 63 years.
Modern historians credited him a reign between 23-43 years.
Statuette of Khufu
Achievements
The great pyramid.
A graffito in Wadi Maghara shows that he continued his father’s work at Sinai.
A stela in the diorite quarries west of Abu Simbel testifies his activity south of the 1st cataract.
Wadi Maghara
Giza
Necropolis
40 km
Why did Khufu choose the
site?
He abandoned Dahshur
because it lacked sufficient
The pyramid of Khufu
The location provided a stable subsoil for the pyramid.
And supply for high-quality limestone.
Middle Kingdom kings used the pyramids of Giza as quarries for the northern pyramid of Lisht.
That’s why the casing of the pyramid is missing.
m-iwnw is the cousin of khufu and the architect of the Great Pyramid.
All the standard elements of Khufu complex were present, though they have since mostly disappeared.
Mortuary temple: once consisted of sanctuary and storage rooms. It has now demolished.
Causeway of Khufu: didn’t survive, but must have been covered with fine relief carving.
Valley temple: only remains have survived. The pavement was made of basalt.
Satellite pyramid: discovered in 1991 by Zahi Hawass.
The Great Pyramid-Complex(Khufu)
the Great Pyramid
Axt xw.f w(i)
The Horizon of Khufu.
Construction of the Pyramid
Stadelmann mentions: In a reign of 30-32 years, the estimated combined mass of 2,700,000 cubic m for the pyramid, causeway, two temples, and officials mastabas means that Khufu’s builders had to set in place 230 cm of stone per day – a rate of one block every 2 or 3 minutes in a ten hour day.
Khufu pyramid contained 2,300,000 blocks of stone weighing 2.5 tons.
The great pyramid Khufu consisted of casing and core stones laid in horizontal courses with backing blocks in between.
Large quantities of gypsum mortar were poured into the core stones.
The casing was of fine white limestone.
Inside Khufu’s Pyramid
The entrance lies in the east side and was built of same limestone blocks of the casing.
The new entrance was cut during the time of El-Khalifa el
Ma’amon.
The modern entrance of Khufu
Subterranean Chamber
A descending corridor (30 m) leads to the subterranean chamber, cut from the rock below ground level.
The room is unfinished and leads to another short horizontal passage.
No sarcophagus was found inside the room and it is too small to introduce a sarcophagus.
What is the purpose of the Subterranean Chamber?
Stadelmann: believes that it represents the symbolic cavern of the death god Sokar, whose main cult center was near the modern Giza. (The dead king was supposed to merge symbolically with Sokar.)
An underworld cavern. (symbolic room).
Many experts: consider it a burial chamber intended as a back-up in the event that the king died before the true burial chamber was completed.
Queen’s Chamber
A descending passage (1.05 m) leads to the Grand Gallery and opens into a horizontal passage that leads to the so-called Queen's chamber.
The junction between the ascending corridor and the horizontal passage was roofed.
The chamber is built of limestone blocks.
It has a corbelled roof and a vaulted niche.
It is 4.7 m high.
Queen’s
Chamber
What is the purpose of the
Queen’s Chamber?
Since it was closed off and contained a vaulted niche, it was assumed that it functioned as a serdab to house the Ka statue of the king.
The Grand Gallery
8.7 m
high
The King’s chamber
The entrance to the king’s chamber was blocked with 3 pink granite blocks.
This chamber, which measures 10.45 meters long, 5.20 meters wide and 5.80 meters high, is truly a masterpiece of ancient Egyptian architecture, made entirely of pink granite.
It had to be built to resist an enormous amount of pressure. Its flat ceiling is composed of nine huge blocks with a combined weight of over four hundred tons.
Above it are 5 carefully designed stress-relieving chambers.
On the walls of these chambers, many builders graffiti were preserved, along with the graffiti of modern visitors.
Petrie claims to have found a cattle census of the 17th year.
These graffiti, provide us with the most compelling evidence of the ownership of Khufu pyramid.
Inside the chamber, a pink granite sarcophagus was found.
It is 2.24 meters long and .96 meters wide. The cover of the sarcophagus, which would have weight about two tons, is missing, and neither it nor the king's mummy has ever been found.
The sarcophagus is very large, weighing about 3.75 tons, and so it was almost certainly installed during the construction of the chamber, rather than having been moved to this location afterward.
Air shafts
Some have believed that these shafts served for ventilation.
Stadelmann believes that the shafts were in fact model corridors, through which the king's soul could rise to the "stars that never are extinguished“. In other words, he reasoned that the shafts were built for the dead king's journey up to heaven.
The Orion Mystery
The shafts in the Queen's Chamber were explored in 1993 by the German engineer Rudolf Gantenbrink using a crawler robot he designed, Upuaut 2.
After a climb of 65m he discovered that one of the shafts was blocked by limestone "doors" with two eroded copper "handles".
Sealing the Tomb
The workmen after completing the king’s chamber they sealed the tomb by sliding granite slaps in the side wall of the antechamber.
As a second line of defense, they released the huge granite blocks stored in the Grand Gallery by knocking the beams that were holding
them, this slid down the ascending passage and blocked it.
The entrance in the face of Khufu pyramid was sealed with a limestone block indistinguishable from the casing of the pyramid.
Boat Pits
5 boats pits have been discovered in the immediate area around Khufu’s pyramid.
2 are on the southern side of the main pyramid, 2 are on its eastern side flanking the Mortuary temple and the last is to the north of the causeway of Khufu.
In the southeastern pit, the first intact boat was found dismantled in the pit. This was reassembled and now resides in the museum on the south side of the main pyramid.
The southwestern pit has been found to contain yet another boat which still remains in situ.
One ship was discovered and reconstructed in 1954 by Kamal el-Mallakh – undisturbed since it was sealed into a pit carved out of the Giza bedrock.
It was built largely of Lebanon cedar wood.
The ship has been reconstructed from 1,224 pieces which had been laid in a logical, disassembled order in the pit beside the pyramid of Khufu.
The boat is 43.3 m long
The ship has been on display to the public in a specially built museum at the Giza pyramid complex since 1982.
The 2nd solar boat of Khufu is being excavated in 2012-2013 and is going to be reconstructed.
Sakuji Yoshimura, a Waseda University professor who is leading the restoration project with Egypt's Antiquities Council, said (June 2011) that scientists discovered that this second ship is inscribed with Khufu's name.
Purpose of the boats
W. Emery and S. Hassan: considered the boat as sun boat and believed that the king will use it to travel over the heavenly ocean following the sun god Ra.
Abu Bakr believes that it was used by the king to travel to holy places for ceremonial occasions especially that it bears some signs of having been used in water.
Other believe that it was used to carry the king’s funerary equipment and mummy.
Boat pit
The boat at the time of
discovery.
Museum of Boats
Massive limestone blocks over the original pit.
The boat’s
sterna prow are in the form of papyrus stalks.
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