Pompey's Pillar

The Memorial of Diocletian (Pompey's Pillar)

The so-called "Pompey Pillar" is the biggest memorial column in Egypt. It is a huge column of red granite, its total height is about 28 m with a diameter at the base of 2.7 m, and towards the capital at the top it tapers to 2.3 m.

On the upper part at the western side is an inscription in Greek, which reads:

"To the most just Emperor, tutelary of Alexandria Diocletian, the invincible, Postumus, the Prefect of Egypt (has erected this monument)".

The Roman ruler of Egypt, during the reign of the Roman Emperor Diocletian, erected this memorial column between 284-305A.D in honour of the Roman Emperor, as a sign of gratitude. A serious revolt in the city took place and Diocletian came himself, ordering the city to be besieged. After 8 months of resistance, the city finally surrendered. As a result of the siege, there was famine in the city; therefore the Emperor ordered that a portion of the corn, which was sent to Rome annually, be given to the people of Alexandria. He exempted them from paying taxes during these hard times. For that they erected, in his honour, this memorial column. In the middle ages the Crusaders believed, mistakenly, that the ashes, or the remains, of the great Roman general Pompey were in a pot at the top of the column. Thus today it is called "Pompey's Pillar".
Around the commemorative Column of Diocletian there are some monuments that can be seen. On the backside, there is the remains of a Serapium, or a temple of the God Serapis, now badly damaged. It was built during the reigns of Ptolemy II and Ptolemy III, but was damaged due to the revolts of the Jewish population in Alexandria, during the reign of the Emperor Trajan (89-118 A.D). It was rebuilt again during the reign of Hadrian (117-137 A.D). It was likely was destroyed, once more, after the appearance of Christianity. It consisted mainly of a high platform accessed by a staircase of 100 steps.

At the side of the platform there was a basin, which was used for purification. There were 2 galleries at the back of the temple, cut completely into the rock.

In the 1st gallery a black statue of basalt, dating back to the reign of Hadrian, was discovered. It represents the God Serapis, in a shape of a bull, and it is now exhibited in the Greco-Roman Museum in Alexandria. The 2nd gallery is known mistakenly as the Daughter Library, but it seems that it was an Anubidiun, or a burial for the mummies of Anubis, which was considered until the a reign of Ptolemy IV, a member of the Pantheon of Alexandria.

Read More

Pyramid of Menkaure

On the south-western corner of the Giza Plateau, the Pyramid of Menkaure (Mycerinus) stands in alignment with its larger neighbours. Menkaure was Khafre’s son and his monument, by far the smallest of the three Giza pyramids, was called ‘Menkaure is Divine’.

The pyramid appears to have been unfinished at the death of the king and was completed in mudbrick by Menkaure’s son Shepseskaf, and later additions were built to his temples during Dynasties V and VI, suggesting that his mortuary cult was still flourishing then. The king ruled for around eighteen years and an inscription in the pyramid’s entrance (thought to have been carved by Khaemwaset, son of Rameses II) gives the day and month of his death. The casing blocks on the upper parts of the pyramid were probably of white limestone, but the lower courses were sheathed in rougher pink granite. This suggests that the final casing was done from the top, downwards and adds to the theories of the pyramid being unfinished. The granite casing blocks can still be seen around the modern entrance.

A great gash was made in the northern side of the pyramid during the Mamaluke era, in the 12th century AD, but the first Europeans to enter the monument were Perring and Vyse in 1837, who found a basalt sarcophagus which was shipped off to England in the Beatrice – only to meet with the disastrous fate of being lost at sea when the ship was wrecked in the Mediterranean. The pyramid was later properly excavated by Reisner and the Harvard University Expedition from 1906 to 1924.

The entrance to Menkaure’s pyramid, on the northern side about 4m above ground level, leads to a descending corridor opening into a short horizontal passage and a decorated chamber with carved stone panels, reminiscent of palace façade motifs, but the significance of this unusual decoration is unknown. A horizontal corridor leads into a large rectangular antechamber, oriented east to west, which seems to have undergone a number of changes before being completed and may have been intended as an earlier burial chamber. This room was also reached by another descending passage (known as the upper corridor) which runs above the lower corridor from the pyramid’s base. When the plan was changed, the floor of the large antechamber was lowered which meant that the upper corridor came out near the ceiling and so was abandoned. Vyse discovered remains of a wooden anthropoid coffin in this room, which bore the name of Menkaure and contained human remains, but these have subsequently proven to be of a much later date than the pyramid. Another passage leads down from the floor of the antechamber to the burial chamber. Before the burial chamber is reached there is another room which has six deep niches – four in the east and two in the north – which may have been used to hold funerary goods, or the canopic jars of the king.

The rectangular barrel-vaulted burial chamber in the bedrock below the pyramid is lined with pink granite and oriented north to south and it was here on the west wall that Vyse found the beautiful basalt sarcophagus of the king. The

 lost sarcophagus had carved panel decoration in a recessed ‘palace-façade’ design.

Menkaure built three queen’s pyramids on the southern side of his monument, though the largest eastern one (G3-a), which has a T-shaped substructure, was perhaps first intended as a satellite cult pyramid, but later presumably used for the burial of a queen, as were all three satellite pyramids, which had mudbrick chapels attached. The rock-cut burial chamber in G3-a once contained a pink granite sarcophagus embedded into the floor, and charred remains of wood and matting were found there. It was possibly the burial place of Menkaure’s Chief Wife, Khamerernebty II, who is thought to be buried at Giza. The central queen’s pyramid (G3-b) was found to contain a pink granite sarcophagus and the bones of a young woman, while the third pyramid (G3-c) was unfinished and had no traces of a burial.

The remains of the king’s mortuary temple are still visible on the eastern side of the pyramid and this was also found to have been hastily completed. It appears that it was begun in locally quarried massive blocks of limestone, with the intention of facing the inner and outer walls with black granite, but in fact they were mostly finished in painted plaster over mudbrick, presumably by Shepseskaf. The structure was built around a rectangular courtyard, leading to a portico with a double colonnade flanked to the north and south by store-rooms and niches and to the inner sanctuary. The temple is actually better preserved that Khafre’s mortuary temple and Reisner’s team found the evidence of construction techniques very interesting. Fragments of royal statues were found in the temple.

Menkaure’s causeway was apparently completed by Shepseskaf, in mudbrick rather than limestone, but never reaching as far as his valley temple. Reisner’s excavations of the sand-covered valley temple revealed several very fine statues of Menkaure which display the superb quality of Egyptian art from this period. Three complete triads and one fragmentary, showing the king wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt with the goddess Hathor and four different nome deities (now in Cairo and Boston Museums), were uncovered in 1908 and the famous perfectly preserved dyad depicting Menkaure with an unnamed queen (possibly his Chief Wife Khamerernebty II), were found in 1910 (Cairo Museum). Two different phases of construction were found in the valley temple, the earlier parts built from stone and the later parts in mudbrick. An inscription in the valley temple indicated how Shepseskaf completed the temple in memory of his father. It was completely rebuilt during Dynasty VI, probably by Pepy II.

Reisner found evidence of huge clay walls, workshops and lodgings of the pyramid-builders in front of Menkaure’s valley temple and houses which later invaded the temple walls. It is not surprising that recent excavations by Mark Lehner’s team have again begun to uncover this vast city of workers who built and maintained the pyramids for generations afterwards. Since 1988 excavations have been concentrated around the area about 300m south of the Sphinx and the gigantic structure known as the ‘Wall of the Crow’, near to a recently discovered ‘worker’s cemetery’. So far they have uncovered bakeries, a copper workshop, and worker’s houses which, in the year 2000 were found to belong to a vast royal complex comprising huge galleries or corridors, separated by a paved street. The royal palace?

Other recent excavations around the pyramid of Menkaure have been conducted by the Egyptian Antiquities Organisation in search of evidence of the king’s funerary boats and the pyramid’s construction ramp. They have discovered an unfinished double-statue of Rameses II, sculpted from a single block of stone and measuring over 3m tall – the first large New Kingdom statues to be discovered at Giza, and yet another mystery.

For details and a virtual tour of Menkaure’s Pyramid see Guardians Giza.
Information on Mark Lehner’s excavations in the pyramid town can be found at The Lost City.

Entrance

The three main pyramids are open on an annual rotation with one of them being closed for restoration each year. Tickets on sale at 8:00am and 1:00pm and cost EGP 50.

Read More

Pyramid of Khufu

The Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) has been known as an immense impressive structure since ancient times and is the only one of the original seven wonders of the world still in existence. Khufu, whose monument ‘Akhet Khufu’ (Horizon of Khufu), known today as The Great Pyramid, was the son of Snefru and he reigned for about 23 years. He was the first pharaoh to construct a pyramid on the Giza Plateau – his father had built three great burial monuments at Meidum and Dashur to the south – and at the height of Dynasty IV, Giza became the new extension to the Memphite necropolis.

The base of the pyramid measures 230.37m and its height was originally 146.6m, with an angle of slope of 51° 50′ 40”. The structure consists of an enormous quantity of limestone blocks (estimated at around 2,300,000), quarried from an area south-east of the pyramid and transported over a ramp to the construction site. The casing blocks were of fine white limestone, probably from the Tura quarries on the east bank of the river. There are, and probably always will be, many arguments and debates on the subject of the method of pyramid construction, and even whether they were built by human hands at all, but the precision of the design and perfection of its construction has always fascinated scholars and visitors.

The pyramid’s northern entrance was built at the level of the nineteenth layer of core blocks, but today visitors enter by a tunnel cut into the core, so Arabic legend tells us, by Caliph el-Ma’amun in the 9th century AD, which is below the original. The cave-like tunnel connects to a passage which the first time visitor almost expects to be lit with blazing torches – such is the atmosphere evoked – but is now lit by electric light. The passage splits into two parts, a lower corridor leading down into the pyramids bowels in the bedrock of the plateau and a subterranean chamber which was abandoned, perhaps due to lack of air, or for ritual reasons. This is usually kept locked.

The other passage ascends in a corridor so low that you almost have to crawl on your hands and knees towards a high 

processional way leading upwards into the Grand Gallery and the heart of the yramid. My first experience of the Great Pyramid was at a time before the recently improved lighting and ventlation, when I could feel the pressure of millions of tons of stone bearing down on me from above, its high limestone walls leaning inwards to form a co

rbelled vault about 8.5m above the stair ramp. Higher and higher you go (the Great Pyramid is not for the faint-hearted or unfit visitor) until the entrance to the cathedral-like Grand Galley is reached. A horizontal passage at the bottom of this hall leads south into the so-called Queen’s Chamber.

The Queen’s Chamber is a small room with a gabled ceiling and lies exactly on the pyramid’s vertical east-west axis. 

This chamber seems not to have been intended for the burial of a queen and was left unfinished when the pyramid was sealed, suggesting that it was originally designed as the king’s burial chamber or a serdab (statue chamber) for the king’s ka, or spirit. The black-walled room at the heart of the pyramid produced an eerily solemn feeling when I entered the chamber alone and evokes a feeling of the insignificance of man and a strong sense of infinity.

Onwards and upwards into the Grand Gallery, another ascending passage, 47m long, which is so narrow that you wouldn’t wish to encounter a party of fifty Egyptian schoolboys (as I did) coming in the opposite direction. This is considered to be one of the greatest masterpieces of ancient Egypt and its corbelled roof is a stupendous achievement in architecture and engineering from any age. At the top of the gallery another very low passage leads to the room known as the King’s Chamber, built entirely of red granite, where Khufu’s uncovered sarcophagus still stands against the western wall. The room is undecorated and contains no inscriptions, so how do we know who was the owner of the pyramid? The weight of the masonry above the ceiling of this chamber is relieved by five compartments covering the same area as the floor below. These are believed to have been constructed to relieve the stress of the enormous mass of stone above the burial chamber. The highest of these chambers has a cantilevered roof, and it was in this chamber that the early excavators Vyse and Perring found a graffiti left by the pyramid workmen, which included the cartouche of Khnum-Khuf (Khufu).

One interesting phenomenon I discovered in the king’s chamber, is the distortion of sound. If you hum a single note very quietly, it is amplified as it would be in the soundbox of a musical instrument and is thrown back at you from each of the walls. I would recommend that you are alone for this experiment!!

There has been an enormous amount of discussion and theorising about ‘air shafts’ in both the King’s Chamber and the Queen’s Chamber. The significance of these structures which lead steeply upwards, though not in a straight line, is still unknown and recent investigations with robot cameras have not really clarified their purpose.

The Great Pyramid continues to retain its many mysteries. On a first visit it is better to just experience the awesomeness of this mighty structure rather than look for explanations of its secrets. It is almost a relief to get back into the sunlight and fresh air and the hassle of guides and hawkers for which the plateau is renowned. You may feel however, as I did, like an astronaut returning from a trip to another galaxy!
Pyramid Complex

Khufu’s pyramid complex has all of the elements of the traditional pyramid, though many are now long gone. Around the pyramid’s walls there are five large boat-shaped pits. In 1954 the pit on the south-eastern side was found to contain a completely dismantled wooden boat, the ‘Solar Boat’, thought to be used in the king’s funerary procession. This boat has now been reconstructed and is now on display in a purpose-built museum near where it was found. Although it has not yet been excavated, in 1987 the Egyptian Antiquities Organisation examined the second boat pit on the south-east, using a special probe. This was also found to contain a boat similar to the first.

The mortuary temple on the eastern side of the pyramid today consists only of the remains of a large rectangular courtyard covered with basalt paving, which must have been over 50m wide. It was destroyed in antiquity and its plan is now difficult to reconstruct, but of the few fragments of reliefs found there, motifs include the sed-festival and the festival of the white hippopotamus.

Khufu’s causeway has now virtually disappeared and has only been partly examined. Its original length has been estimated at around 810m, abruptly changing direction before it reached the valley temple. The ruins of the valley temple, which was mostly destroyed in antiquity, are now engulfed by the modern village of Nazlet es-Simman to the 

north-east. Recent excavations by the Egyptian Antiquities Organisation in 1990 have revealed the remains of a dark green basalt paving and the continuation of the causeway at the base of the escarpment. At the edge of the pavement a 

mudbrick wall thought to be 8m thick, suggests that a pyramid-town may have existed near the valley temple.

Read More

Pyramid of Khafre

Khafre (Chephren) sited his pyramid at Giza, a short distance to the south-west of the monument of his father Khufu. Khafre’s brother Djedefre had succeeded their father on the throne but only reigned for around eight years and had chosen to site his own pyramid at Abu Roash to the north. Returning to Giza, Khafre’s monuments have survived better than most and his pyramid makes an impressive backdrop to the Great Sphinx which lies next to his causeway and was probably part of the pyramid complex.

 Appearing to be bigger than Khufu’s pyramid because of the rising ground on which it was built and its steeper angle of slope, Khafre’s pyramid actually had a base measurement of 215m and a height of 143.5m, making it slightly smaller than his father’s. It is the only pyramid to be preserved almost to its full height by the casing stones remaining at its apex. Belzoni, in 1816, was the first to enter the pyramid in modern times. He discovered the upper entrance and underground chambers and is commemorated in an inscription by the English Colonel Fitzclarence on the upper entrance. In 1860 Auguste Mariette found seven statues of Khafre while excavating the valley temple, including a wonderfully preserved diorite statue of the king protected by a Horus falcon, one of the great masterpieces of Egyptian sculpture now in the Cairo Museum. More recent investigations of Khafre’s pyramid complex, using modern archaeological techniques, have been undertaken by the Giza Plateau Mapping Project under the directorships of Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass.
The core of the pyramid, which was built on a levelled terrace, was of rough irregular limestone blocks, left behind when the casing blocks of Tura limestone were stripped off in antiquity, although a band of more regular-shaped stone can be seen just below the remaining casing. A lower course of the pyramid’s outer skin is composed of red granite which are well preserved on the southern side.

There are two entrances on the northern side of the pyramid. The first or ‘upper entrance’, found at a height of 11.5m, leads to a descending corridor which straightens out to join an ascending passage from the ‘lower entrance’. It is the lower entrance, at ground level which is used today to access the structure. This leads to a lower corridor which has an unfinished chamber cut into its western side and it is suggested that the lower gallery w

as begun on the assumption that the pyramid was to be built further north, or was intended to be larger, as the two entrances show. This may have been a serdab chamber however, similar the the ‘Queens Chamber’ in Khufu’s pyramid. The lower passage then ascends to meet the entrance corridor from above, and continues horizontally to the burial chamber.

Khafre’s burial chamber lies on the vertical axis of the pyramid and is simply constructed in a pit in the bedrock. The roof of the chamber is composed of pented limestone blocks, similar to those used in Khufu’s pyramid to relieve the weight of stone. The words ‘Discovered by G Belzoni – March 2 1816’ (in Italian) appear on the south wall of the burial chamber, although he had already discovered writing on the west wall showing that the pyramid had been entered previously, probably around the 12th century AD. The burial chamber was found to contain Khafre’s red granite sarcophagus, sunk slightly into the floor, it’s cover broken and a nearby pit which would have contained the canopic chest.

A satellite pyramid (G2-a) belonging to Khafre’s complex is now almost gone, with only the foundations remaining on the southern side of the king’s pyramid. It is currently believed to have been a cult pyramid and not to contain a burial.

The huge mortuary temple of Khafre’s complex is separated from the east face of the pyramid by a limestone pavement, which runs around all four sides of the pyramid. The temple was excavated in 1910 by Holscher and von Sieglin and shown to have consisted of an entrance hall, courtyard, five statue chapels, store-rooms and an offering hall. Sadly the structure was quarried for its stone in ancient times, but the surviving foundations show its innovative construction method, using massive core blocks of limestone cased with finer quality stone and lined on the inside with red granite. In the massive open courtyard there were recesses for huge statues of the king. Five boat pits were discovered to the north and south of the mortuary temple, but all of them had been plundered.

The ruined causeway leads from the mortuary temple, 494m south to Khafre’s valley temple, which is in a better state of preservation – the only well preserved valley temple found to date. This too was constructed from huge limestone monoliths, faced with granite and was discovered by Mariette in 1852 who wrongly described it as the Temple of the Sphinx. Huge rectangular blocks of Aswan granite form pillars and lintels, giving the structure a very distinctive style, reminiscent of the Osirion at Abydos. Originally there were 24 diorite statues of the king seated on his throne around the walls, of which only one survives to be seen in Cairo Egyptian Museum. Although it’s function is not yet clear, it is thought that the valley temple may have been used for the embalming rites before the king’s funeral and in 1995, traces of a ‘purification tent’ were found near the temple, along with two ramps and underground tunnels.

To the north of Khafre’s valley temple lies the Great Sphinx, inside its own enclosure. It is currently thought to have been modelled during Khafre’s reign, and would have been the first colossal statue in ancient Egypt.

For details and a virtual tour of Khafre’s Pyramid see Guardians Giza.

Entrance

The three main pyramids are open on an annual rotation with one of them usually being closed for restoration each year. Tickets for Khafre’s Pyramid cost EGP 30 and are on sale at 8.00am and 1.00pm. The numbers may be limited.

Read More