Cult and Pyramid Construction after Cheops

Cult and Pyramid Construction after Cheops

Never before or afterward in Egyptian history are the claims of divine kingship so powerfully expressed. That this could be completed in the twenty-three to twenty-six, or more likely thirty, years of his reign, is the result of the remarkable training of the managers, architects, and workers engaged in undertakings that had continued for half a century. This enabled the participants to accomplish astonishing achievements: the hollowing-out of rock beds to distances of 100 m; the preparation and storage of incredibly heavy stones to provide a constant supply for the teams of workers; the design of ramps and transport routes that cost a minimum in time and materials and which still did not hinder the continuing process of surveying as the pyramids rose upwards. The details of how this was done are still largely unknown, although recent research into pyramid building using models by the German Archeological Institute in Cairo (DAT) has resulted in small initial ramps that could later be adapted. Although mention is still made of hundreds of thousands of workers, slaves, and bonded laborers, it is clear that the narrow building sites did not leave sufficient room for such large numbers of people. Our calculations suggest a number of workers not exceeding 20,000—25,000: quarrymen and stonemasons, sappers and carriers, bricklayers and plasterers, suppliers and servers of food, and then many engineers and architects. With the estimated total population of Egypt at around two million people, their numbers would have lain just below one percent of people who spent the whole year round building the pyramids. The main population of the country was hardly affected by the pyramid-building program. Even the costs and material assets for the building and its teams of workers remain within reason with this percentage.

A new class of men and their families, professional members of the court, administrators, and craftsmen, occupied the towns that surrounded the palace and pyramids. They were employed as priests and officers of the mortuary temple. It is these people who shaped the state, and enabled it to achieve ever greater accomplishments.

For a better understanding of the pyramids we must distance ourselves once and for all from the positivist viewpoint of the nineteenth century, and remember that the construction of the pyramids, the layout of the tomb chambers and the form and size of the mortuary temple were determined by religious ceremonies and the needs of the cult and by nothing else. The burial chamber system inside the pyramid and the form of the mortuary temple outside are interrelated. A complicated arrangement of the burial chambers corresponds to simple architecture in the mortuary temple and vice versa. The size of a pyramid is in no way a measure of the power and position of its builder. So for example, Djedefre, the son and successor of Cheops, began building his pyramid on a much smaller scale, but in such a commanding position at Abu Roash (north of Giza) that it dominates the landscape because of its location in just the same way that Cheops’ pyramid does at Giza. Although unfinished, the mortuary temple of Djedefre was nevertheless adorned with many statues of the king of the highest quality.
This can be demonstrated more clearly by example of the complexes of Chephren and Mycerinus. Chephren was one of Cheops’ younger sons, and he came to the throne unexpectedly early after the death of his brother Djedefre. His pyramid was intended to equal the height of that of his father, which he achieved in fact through the choice of a slightly higher site and a steeper angle of slope. The system of chambers is so unusually simple that in the 1960s serious (but unsuccessful) attempts were made using the most modern scientific equipment to locate additional rooms. On the other hand, his pyramid temple and valley temple were very lavishly constructed.

In contrast, the burial chamber system in the considerably smaller pyramid of his son Mycerinus is characterized by an extraordinary succession of rooms that can only be compared with those in the Pyramid of Cheops. The chambers in the Mycerinus pyramid lead down into the solid rock, unlike those in the Cheops pyramid. But the mortuary temple of Mycerinus resembles that of Cheops in being dominated by a wide open court closed to the west by a chapel for offerings to the dead. Between Chephren and Mycerinus fits the four-year reign of Baka (Bikheris), one of Djedefre’s sons, who planned and started work on a large pyramid in Zawiyet el-Aryan.