The Pyramid Proper

Pyramid of Menkaure is at the end of a country on the brink of Giza Mokattam professional, where banks and disappears south and train young people in Maadi. As is the case with his father, near the pyramid of Khafre, Menkaure construction was to have the soles of the rock very well prepared, especially around the north-eastern corner. This rule is two and a half meters from the top of the pyramid of his father, and occupies nearly a quarter of the area consumed by the Pyramids of Khufu, Khafre. We have a core set of blocks of local sandstone, covered with unfinished Aswan granite, rose to a height of fifty feet. Above, maybe the cover was made of fine limestone held Tora. Because fully completed residential buildings and may have been damaged during transportation and installation, especially in the peripheries, the finalization of the final touches were not completed until the end of the construction process. This also led to the amendment very accurate over the entire surface of the walls of the pyramid. There is a pattern on the plate of granite from the northern wall, which dates back to the last moment, and can Diodorus.
The original access was submitted to the interior rooms by entering at the center of the north wall, about four meters above ground level. From there, the vestibule, only partially covered with pink granite, and was based at an angle of just over 26 degrees for 31 meters through the basic structure of the circles below. This "low rider" ends in a room with walls that were provided with ports. The aim of this unusual room is still being debated among scientists. However, the cracks are the first element of purely decorative inside the pyramid pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara. At the beginning of the next corridor, there is a barrier made of three granite blocks, which reduced after completion. Corridor continues to the next angle slightly downward until the room is relatively small in the top, from east to west wall is decorated entirely. At the eastern end of this camera is located directly under the vertical axis in the pyramid.

Then another corridor runner known as "runs" is superior to the lower corridor "through the horizontal section short before getting on the north and south in the heart of the pyramid, has ended. It is likely that this system of double-row refers to a change in the original construction plans. And" hostility substantial "may have been abandoned when he got off the floor of the waiting room. this, Petrie believed that the pyramid is the original was only half the size it is today, although others such as Stadelmann doubt in his analysis.
In fact, the infrastructure of this pyramid has undergone major changes. Investigations in the hierarchy, all of this, and tombs of the royal family, who are closer in time (Mastabat Faraun went Khentkaues tomb) refers to the evolution of this subchambers in three phases, during which extended the original plan.
In the waiting room, Vyse discovered the remains of a wooden coffin man, the name of Menkaure was inside the human bones. Most scientists today believe that the coffin was introduced, perhaps in an attempt to restore, in the pyramid during the Saite period late in the history of ancient Egypt. However, the more carbon the bone fragments were recently unveiled by radio dating, which indicates hat may return to the Coptic Christian period of about two thousand years ago. There is a rectangular indentation in the western part of the lobby floor, which suggests that the coffin may have been assigned to this room.
However, since half of the floor waiting room, and another corridor leading to reduction of granite by the horizontal, shortly before the actual burial chamber. Before the entrance to the burial chamber, a short flight of steps leading to the area with six deep niches, sometimes known as the basement ", which has the role of non-specific, although there is a similarity with the architectural elements in Mastabat Faraun of Shepseskaf and left the tomb of Queen Khentkaues I . Four of the niches and on the east side, and Rick thinks it is holding four canopic vessels that contain the bowels of Menkaure. he believed the two additional ports in the north may have been honored with crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt. However, others believe that it may be a portent of the three chambers to the left (east) on the foundation level pyramids 5th and 6th beds, although it may be simply was used to store equipment and supplies for the funeral.
Unlike the pyramids of his father and grandfather (Cheops), and the tomb of a rectangular room from the north to the south. It is fully covered by pink granite, including the roof, and even two of water, which was dug under actually round, barrel vault. Camera is about 15.5 meters below the base of the pyramid so that the limit could be nine pairs of large lumps of granite. This construction was carried out after amend the plan for infrastructure, which makes it difficult and hard to complete. It requires a significant decline tunnel to be built on the west side of the upper lobby, where visitors can see the day already at the top of domed burial chamber.
It is very possible that the granite burial chamber and a set of niches, built after the death of Menkaure On the instructions of his son and successor, Shepseskaf.
The western wall of the burial chamber, Vyse found a wonderful black basalt sarcophagus, was decorated with niches in the pattern of the palace facade. The sarcophagus was empty and the cover was missing. However, the parts of the cover and found, indicating that it was adorned with a concave cornice. Rick saw this design has some similarities with the decorations in the tombs of the god Anubis, and I think it was an attempt to provide additional protection for the serious through theology. Oh, we're left only with the development of this piece of funerary furniture, ships, and Beatrice, who was taken from Egypt to the British Museum leaves Livorno sank somewhere between Malta and Spain in 1838. Fortunately, the coffin of the man was sent on board a vessel separate access to the destination.
Interestingly, unlike the pyramids of Cheops, Chephren, there was no boat pits discovered in the pyramid of Menkaure, in spite of intensive investigations by an Egyptian archaeologist named Abdel Aziz Saleh, who obviously believed that it should be.
Already in the late 1630s, the researcher and the English traveler, John Graves, said that the ship had been eliminated to a large extent. Destruction of the pyramid took a long time in the century 19th, when Muhammad Ali Pasha (1805-1848) used some of the blocks of pink granite, which has taken its case to build an arsenal of Alexandria.