Temporal and Spatial Structure of Tomb Images of Egypt

Temporal and Spatial Structure of Tomb Images

The images in the tombs of the Old Kingdom set out to portray the existence of the deceased in the hereafter and their content is ordered accordingly. Because the afterlife was conceived in more or less the same way for all non-royal persons, the range of images found in the tombs of viziers, high state officials, court singers, royal hairdressers, and tradesmen does not differ greatly. The most important difference lay in their execution, which took into account the size of the tomb and the availability of the wall surfaces; this depended ultimately on the financial means of the deceased.

The wall surfaces of an Old Kingdom chapel intended for a planned series of images were composed down to the last detail. The wall was organized into sections and these sections linked with one another. The most important element for ordering the entire structure of the wall was the horizontal register. A wall area had several registers, generally of the same height. The horizontal registers were framed at the side by a long rectangular field, the height of the entire wall. This contains the enormous image of the deceased that bracketed the registers oriented toward it. The registers show individual scenes that can be arranged into groups or series. Depending on the availability of space to be decorated the depiction could be either detailed or brief:
The scenes could be portrayed in abridged form or long narrative sequences.

While the image of the deceased does not occupy any definable time frame, the time sequence of registers is so arranged that the earlier event is at the top while the later one is in a lower register. Good examples of temporal ordering are to be found in images of agricultural labor. The scenes are linked in the same order as the seasons; plowing, sowing, stamping in of the seed, harvesting, threshing, filling of the storehouses, and calculating the yield of the harvest are all depicted one after the other. The sequence concludes with images showing the further processing of grain into bread and beer. A similar temporal order can be seen in images of cattle-rearing where one continuous chain of events is portrayed in a single register: a bull mounts a co a calf is born, the cow is milked and calves are raised. A somewhat shorter series can be seen for the production of wine where individual events extend from harvesting to the wine-pressing through to the filling of wine barrels.

Most image sequences express the spatial as well as the temporal dimension. In images of farming, depictions of labor in the fields are followed by those of work in barns or storehouses. Similar relationships can be found where fishing and fowling with a throwing net are depicted; rural scenes are combined with those occurring in other contexts.

Occasionally the temporal and spatial dimensions overlap. In depictions of hunting in the desert, the prey is sometimes desert animals and sometimes that of the steppes. These animals are shown copulating and then giving birth. Similar displacements of time and space occur in boat journeys. In images of a river boat journey, the deceased appears as the passenger of a sailing ship in the same frame and at the same time as he is shown as the passenger of a galley.

Funerary Repast Scene and False Door In Egypt Art

Funerary Repast Scene and False Door

The earliest examples of the adornment of a tomb chapel come from the end of the Third and the beginning of the Fourth Dynasties. Initially, interrelated scenes are still lacking, a few pictorial themes being indicated in key scenes. The oldest and most important example of this kind is the funerary repast scene that appears on the outside of the tomb, at first on a sacrificial plaque or slab and later in association with the false door of the tomb.

The early type of funerary repast scene depicts the deceased to the left of a table covered with bread. He or she reaches out with the right hand to the bread loaves spread out on the table and lays the left hand on his or her breast. The scene contains all the important information needed for its function. Inscriptions of names and titles make the necessary statements about the status of the deceased during his or her life. The funerary repast scene refers to the function of the tomb as the eternal dwelling place of the deceased. Its images and texts tell us about the quality of the offerings made since it lists by name the sacrifices placed on the table and distinguishes between these according to type and number. This depiction was standardized at an early date and established, in a legally binding way, just which offerings were to be brought to the deceased.

The funerary repast scene forms the departure point for the entire wall decoration of the tomb chapel. Out of concern that the items listed in the funerary repast scene, which were required daily, might arrive too late or, at some time in the future, cease altogether, their continued provision was guaranteed by means of magical images. These include pictures of defiles of offering bearers as well as other images showing the production of gifts intended as offerings.

Depictions of offerings and their presentation by mortuary priests were originally found on the false door itself and were therefore directly related to the funerary repast scene. From there, however, they spread on to the surrounding walls of the tomb chapel until, finally, they fill up the entire cult chamber. The range of images of the early chapels therefore consists mainly of defiles of offering bearers and images of the sacrifice of cattle. In hindsight, the depictions in the early chapels can be seen to be representations of the items contained in the lists of the funerary repast scene. The essential role of these images lay in ensuring the continued production of offerings intended for sacrifice.

The production of sacrificial offerings transformed into images and their presentation refers to actions carried out in this life on behalf of the deceased in the next life. Series of images portraying the existence and social role of the deceased in the next life appear with increasing frequency in the Fifth Dynasty and are placed on an equal footing beside images that ensure the provision of offerings to him. The new images then set the tone for the type of images in the cult chamber. Pictorial cycles of agriculture and livestock prove particularly useful for the extension of the pictorial program because their output in the shape of bread and beer or in the form of animals for slaughter can be sacrificed to the tomb owner. Images of craftsmanship fulfill a similar function. These show the production of objects that, in the end, will be used for the construction of tombs.

The Development of Funerary Architecture

The Development of Funerary Architecture

The cemeteries of the Old Kingdom (2700—2200 BC) in Giza, Abusir. Saqqara, and Dahshur are but parts of a single, great royal cemetery at Memphis where high officials of the Old Kingdom were interred next to their kings. They are home-to--tomb structures characteristic of the Old Kingdom. In the provinces tombs of a similar size only appear toward the end of the Old Kingdom, from around 2200 BC. While royal tombs developed into the pyramid, the tomb architecture of officialdom retained the form of the mastaba. But here, too, stone building techniques began to take on new dimensions at the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty (2640 BC); the first nonroyal tombs in stone replaced funerary complexes constructed from mudbrick. In spite of the new construction techniques, however, the basic conception of the tomb changed little from the old mudbrick methods. The tomb continued to have two main areas, one above ground and the other below The subterranean area was at first the more important one. It contained the burial chamber with an intricately fashioned sarcophagus of stone for the body of the deceased. In some tombs the exterior of these sarcophagi were formed like a palace (niche) facade. It seems likely that the person buried in it was to be identified as the inhabitant of a palace and this type of adornment indicated his personal rank.

At first, the sarcophagus below ground was surrounded by stored provisions. These were not intended for direct consumption by the dead but were to serve as reserves for eternity. Daily needs were met by the mortuary cult whose priests carried out their rites in the upper part of the tomb. Offerings were placed at a sacrificial site and taken up by the soul of the deceased. This cult site was marked by a “false door, which from the time of Cheops was protected by a tomb chapel that fronted the main structure. The walls of this tomb chapel were adorned with illustrations and texts whose primary representation was the deceased. He or she was shown either engaging in certain activities or as the focus of the actions of others. The individual nature of the scenes is evident from inscriptions containing the names and titles of the tomb owner.

Tomb decoration depicted themes suited to the deceased’s status. At the center of these were images of daily life. Because life in the hereafter was thought of in much the same way as mortal life, these images are uniquely able to depict the type of afterlife that the deceased imagined awaited him.

Further development of the range of images led to an increase in those depictions that applied themes from this life to the hereafter. The greater range of pictorial themes meant a greater need for rooms and wall space. This development temporarily came to an end with the tomb of the vizier Mereruka in Saqqara at the onset of the Sixth Dynasty around 2330 BC. The superstructure of his tomb consisted of a funerary palace of thirty-two decorated rooms, twenty-one of which, were intended for Mereruka, six for his wife and five for his son Meriteti.

From the second half of the Old Kingdom, decorated tombs had long since ceased to be the privilege of the upper class of the court. Monumental tomb structures arose in the provinces on the model of the capital’s necropolis. Because geography did not always allow for the building of a mastaba, tomb chapels were often designed as rock-cut tombs.

The Great Sphinx — A Puzzle is Solved

The Great Sphinx — A Puzzle is Solved

At 73.5 m long and over 20 m high the Great Sphinx is the most immense sculpture ever made by man. It shows a being that is part—lion and part—man, a creature metamorphosed into a divine being by the combined strength of a powerful wild animal and the intelligence of a human ruler. Earlier two—dimensional images of this creature as a griffin show it in action destroying the enemy. In the sculpture this power is tamed, controlled by human intelligence, and it has transformed into a divine, magisterial calm. Even if one agrees today that the Sphinx is a work of the Fourth Dynasty, the attribution to either Cheops, Djedefre or Chephren remains a matter of dispute. So far there is no inscriptional evidence that clearly names any of these three kings as the statue’s creator. The mention made of Chephren on the sphinx stela of Thutmosis IV (Eighteenth Dynasty) was, first of all, made a good thousand years later and, secondly, stands today out of context: in light of a similar text on the sphinx stela of Amenophis II it should probably be explained as “resting place/horizon of Cheops and of Chephren,” in other words the necropolis of Giza. A small, unique stela from the time of Ramesses of an “excellent scribe Monthu-her” bears the earliest image of the two pyramids, of Cheops and Chephren, with the Sphinx correctly shown in front of the Pyramid of Cheops. The area in which the Sphinx stands was undoubtedly ground quarried for stone to build the Cheops pyramid. Yet even this point is not unequivocal evidence that Cheops constructed the Sphinx.

Some reevaluations and an analysis of stylistic criteria can take us further. After Snefru in Dahshui it was Cheops in Giza whose designs and achievements are ultimately the finest. His pyramids, his temple, and even his statues, as surviving fragments show, are at once innovative and supreme achievements. He is the great originatoi the sun god; his sons follow him. He is therefore the most obvious candidate to be the inventor of the form of the Sphinx. The layout of the entire plateau argues for this interpretation. The causeway of Chephren takes account in its slanting course of something earlier, something important that already stood there; from the situation as it stands this can only have been the Sphinx. Stylistic considerations also point indisputedly toward Cheops. The overall form of the Sphinx’s face is broad, almost square. On the other hand the features of Chephren were long, noticeably narrower, the chin almost pointed. The Sphinx has the earlier, fully pleated type of nemes headcloth as does the head fragment of a statue of Cheops in The Metropolitan Museum, and still no band in the form of a raised hem over the brow. This is the norm from Djedefre onward. Under Chephren only the lappets of the nemes headcloth are pleated and never the hood. The side wings of the Sphinx’s nemes headcloth are deeply hollowed, but with Chephren hardly at all. With Chephren the headcloth corners curl up, but they do not do so with the Sphinx.

The Sphinx has a uraeus cobra placed on the lower edge of the headcloth and in contrast to those of Chephren and Mycerinus it shows high relief with naturalistic detailing of the serpent’s neck and the scales of its hood. The eyebrows of the Sphinx bulge powerfully forward, and they are pitched high and slope down toward the temples. The eyes are deep-set, but strongly modeled. They are large and wide open, to which perhaps the monumentality of the head owes something. These wide- open eyes are absolutely typical of sculpted heads from the time of Cheops. The ears are fundamentally different from those of the statue of Chephren. The ears of the Sphinx are very broad and folded forward, those of Chephren elongated and situated closer to the temples.

A decisive criterion is the absence of a beard. Since the Sphinx has no indications of hair on its chin, there certainly would not have been one in the Old Kingdom. The god’s beard is an innovation of the New Kingdom, and it also included a platform, which was adorned with a royal figure of the Eighteenth Dynasty. The small ivory statuette of Cheops does not have a beard, nor do the heads attributed to him (Brooklyn 46.167 and Berlin 14396), or the relief images. Whereas the kings of the Fourth Dynasty that follow — Djedefre, Chephren, and Mycerinus — all wear the ceremonial beard in relief and in modeled form. Therefore all evidence suggests that the Great Sphinx, like the great pyramids, is an original creation of Cheops.

Complexes of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties (Egypt Arts)

Complexes of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties

The transition from the Fourth to the Fifth Dynasties passed peacefully, as is indicated by the biographies of high officials, which provide valuable historical sources. The few inscriptions do not reveal whether Khentkaus, mother of the first three kings of the Fifth Dynasty, Userkaf, Sahure, and Neferirkare, was the wife or daughter of Shepseskaf last king of the Fourth Dynasty. Shepseskaf did not build a pyramid, but rather a huge stone mastaba at south Saqqara. It would be unwise to conclude from this that there were political or religious conflicts, for Shepseskaf had decreed the enactment of the mortuary cult, with offerings at the pyramids of his predecessors. The form of Shepseskaf’s name cannot be distinguished from that of Userkaf the first king of the Fifth Dynasty, who again chose the pyramid form for his tomb.

The shift of importance from pyramid to mortuary temple, which had established itself with Mycerinus, became the norm in the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties. The pyramids, which the kings of these dynasties constructed at Abusir and later at Saqqara, were considerably smaller, while the mortuary temples grew in size. The temples absorbed the entire east side of the pyramid. In this period there is hardly any further alteration in the architecture into an open temple for worship and an intimate temple for offerings, where the deceased king would receive the daily gifts in the company of the gods. The interior walls were richly painted with scenes on every surface. These showed the king’s entry in the world of the gods, his rebirth through the heavenly goddesses, his triumph over the chaotic world beyond Egypt’s borders and the daily gifts of offerings.

Administrative documents from the mortuary temples at Abusir tell us in detail about the bureaucracy that organized the supply and distribution of the considerable quantities of the offerings, from which the staff and priests ultimately lived, as in fact did the entire population of the pyramid town. The focal point of the pyramid town was the valley temple, whence the causeway ascended to the pyramid temple. In the valley temple the deceased king was also worshipped as a local divinity.

The offerings came first from the shrines of the sun god, temples that from the beginning of the Fifth Dynasty were built next to each of the royal mortuary complexes in the area of Abusir. These are “mortuary temples” for the daily setting of the sun god in the west. Architecturally they indeed resemble a royal mortuary temple, with a broad offering court, the main feature of which, however, was an obelisk, raised on a podium, in place of a pyramid. The offering was placed here first for the sun god, and then was taken to the royal mortuary temples in a kind of cult procession. We can conclude from the reliefs in the solar temples that the offerings made there to the sun god ensured the continuing cycle of rebirth of the world order.

The custom of building a new shrine to the sun god each time was abandoned at the end of the Fifth Dynasty, but this hardly represents a departure from the worship of the sun god Re that dominated Egyptian theology. The kings’ names provide evidence here: they are all supplemented with “Re” and “Son of Re.” But in the Sixth Dynasty there seems to have been a growing interest in the cult of Osiris and the concept of the afterlife in the underworld. This is not reflected in the architecture, but all the more in the pyramid texts that first appear at the end of the Fifth Dynasty, and in the prayers and wishes of private people. However, pyramid and temple architecture freezes into the pattern and scale found in the Fifth Dynasty.

Yet it would be wrong to speak of a decline. The pyramids and temples of Kings Teti, Pepi I and Pepi II are technically perfect constructions, maintaining in their scale and proportions the standards of the Fifth Dynasty.

The causes of the end of the Old Kingdom are certainly not to be found in the exhaustion of the state and its resources through excessive pyramid building. The decline of the Old Kingdom began with the disintegration of the central administration during the exceptionally long reign of Pepi II. After his mortuary complex was completed the country lay idle for decades. During these years the provincial governors discovered that they could maintain their administration and rule without royal command and they became more or less independent. Thus the central administration was cut off from the resources of the provinces.

The construction of the pyramids was a moment that united belief in the person of the king and in the role of kingship, as well as an opportunity for individuals to progress through their own ability and be assured of a safe life both in society and in the afterlife. One can best compare the building of the pyramids with the construction of the great cathedrals in European cities of the Middle Ages, which were the work of religious urban communities on a scale similar to the pyramids, the product of a state united by religion. The cathedrals are the gathering places for a community of believers for common prayer and a common cult, the hope and preparation for salvation in the afterlife. The pyramid complexes are comparable to the extent that they ensured an afterlife for the people through the person of the king and his mortuary cult.

One could go so far as to compare the cult of the deified king in his pyramid complex, and here especially in the valley temple, with the cult of the saints to whom a cathedral is consecrated. Just as the saints share through their devotion in God’s heavenly life after death, and the congregations strive to achieve the same through prayer good deeds, and offerings, so the king’s ascent into heaven and his union with the sun god ensures that his devout subjects will be able to share in the eternal afterlife. The intermediary role that the king had in the daily cult in this life, between the gods and the world order, is the same role he fulfills in the afterlife. The differences between the king’s heavenly afterlife and that of his subjects in the “beautiful west” may seem great to us; yet in reality they are just a projection into the future existence of the divisions that exist in this world.


The Great Sphinx — A Puzzle is Solved

At 73.5 m long and over 20 m high the Great Sphinx is the most immense sculpture ever made by man. It shows a being that is part-lion and part-man, a creature metamorphosed into a divine being by the combined strength of a powerful wild animal and the intelligence of a human ruler. Earlier two-dimensional images of this creature as a griffin show it in action destroying the enemy. In the sculpture this power is tamed, controlled by human intelligence, and it has transformed into a divine, magisterial calm. Even if one agrees today that the Sphinx is a work of the Fourth Dynasty, the attribution to either Cheops, Djedefre or Chephren remains a matter of dispute. So far there is no inscriptional evidence that clearly names any of these three kings as the statue’s creator. The mention made of Chephren on the sphinx stela of Thutmosis IV (Eighteenth Dynasty) was, first of all, made a good thousand years later and, secondly, stands today out of context: in light of a similar text on the sphinx stela of Amenophis II it should probably be explained as “resting place/horizon of Cheops and of Chephren,” in other words the necropolis of Giza. A small, unique stela from the time of Ramesses of an “excellent scribe Monthu-her” bears the earliest image of the two pyramids, of Cheops and Chephren, with the Sphinx correctly shown in front of the Pyramid of Cheops. The area in which the Sphinx stands was undoubtedly ground quarried for stone to build the Cheops pyramid. Yet even this point is not unequivocal evidence that Cheops constructed the Sphinx.

Some reevaluations and an analysis of stylistic criteria can take us further. After Snefru in Dahshur, it was Cheops in Giza whose designs and achievements are ultimately the finest. His pyramids, his temple, and even his statues, as surviving fragments shox are at once innovative and supreme achievements. He is the great originator, the sun god; his sons follow him. He is therefore the most obvious candidate to be the inventor of the form of the Sphinx. The layout of the entire plateau argues for this interpretation. The causeway of Chephren takes account in its slanting course of something earlier, something important that already stood there; from the situation as it stands this can only have been the Sphinx. Stylistic considerations also point indisputedly toward Cheops. The overall form of the Sphinx’s face is broad, almost square. On the other hand the features of Chephren were long, noticeably narrower the chin almost pointed. The Sphinx has the earliei fully pleated type of nemes headcloth as does the head fragment of a statue of Cheops in The Metropolitan Museum, and still no band in the form of a raised hem over the brow This is the norm from Djedefre onward. Under Chephren only the lappets of the nemes headcloth are pleated and never the hood. The side wings of the Sphinx’s nemes headcloth are deeply hollowed, but with Chephren hardly at all. With Chephren the headcloth corners curl up, but they do not do so with the Sphinx.

The Sphinx has a uraeus cobra placed on the lower edge of the headcloth and in contrast to those of Chephren and Mycerinus it shows high relief with naturalistic detailing of the serpent’s neck and the scales of its hood. The eyebrows of the Sphinx bulge powerfully forward, and they are pitched high and slope down toward the temples. The eyes are deep—set, but strongly modeled. They are large and wide open, to which perhaps the monumentality of the head owes something. These wide- open eyes are absolutely typical of sculpted heads from the time of Cheops. The ears are fundamentally different from those of the statue of Chephren. The ears of the Sphinx are very broad and folded forward, those of Chephren elongated and situated closer to the temples.

A decisive criterion is the absence of a beard. Since the Sphinx has no indications of hair on its chin, there certainly would not have been one in the Old Kingdom. The god’s beard is an innovation of the New Kingdom, and it also included a platform, which was adorned with a royal figure of the Eighteenth Dynasty. The small ivory statuette of Cheops does not have a beard, nor do the heads attributed to him (Brooklyn 46.167 and Berlin 14396), or the relief images. Whereas the kings of the Fourth Dynasty that follow — Djedefre, Chephren, and Mycerinus — all wear the ceremonial beard in relief and in modeled form. Therefore all evidence suggests that the Great Sphinx, like the great pyramids, is an original creation of Cheops.

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.

The Pyramid of Cheops -Wonder of the Ancient World

The Pyramid of Cheops — Wonder of the Ancient World

Snefru’s son and successor thus benefited from the best examples he could have in order to plan an even more ambitious pyramid for his own tomb. In order to avoid another ruined building he settled on a solid rock foundation, which he found in a commanding position on the ridge above what is now Giza. The new royal palace was erected to the east.

The perfection of the proportions and construction of the superstructure exactly matches the planning of the system of corridors and chambers inside. To the present day, scholars have tried in a broadly positive spirit to attribute the pyramid’s three chambers to three successive changes in the design. But it does not do justice to the architects who designed and executed this unique building so perfectly to suggest that, in the essential element of the pyramid’s construction, that is the system of tomb chambers, they had proceeded without concept or design. Against this view is a conclusive argument in that the exterior construction and the layout of the chamber system work in perfect accord, and that neither inside nor out is there any suggestion of a change of plan. Recent research has shown that since the Thinite era royal tombs have had not just a single burial chamber but a series of three rooms or spaces, whose function has so far been only partially understood. Recently this realization has also provided evidence against pyramid mysticism, an epidemic of which is breaking out again, which suggests that hidden secrets, or even further treasure chambers, the “chambers of knowledge,” were built into the chamber system of the pyramid of Cheops.

The upper granite burial chamber stands more or less isolated in the interior of the pyramid. Five relief chambers with granite beams weighing up to forty tons served to relieve the pressure. The uppermost has a gabled roof of magnificent limestone blocks that rest on the stones of the core construction. In the relief chambers are to be found various pieces of graffiti by construction workers that name Cheops, the only authentic evidence of the builder found in this pyramid. From the middle of the south and north walls of the burial chamber — and in the same way from the middle chamber — mock corridors lead toward the southern and northern skies. They provide a direct route up to heaven for the deceased king’s soul. Previously these had been seen as ventilation shafts or telescopes for observing the skies. But it is certain that these corridors were originally sealed off and could only have served for the flight to heaven of the deceased king’s soul.

It is characteristic of the conservative beliefs of the ancient Egyptians that alongside the predominant theology centered on worship of the sun, older ideas about an underworld afterlife in the depths of the earth were tolerated. This “chthonic” (underworldly) aspect is manifested in the rock chamber cut 30 m deep into the solid ground underneath. The corridor on the east side of the rock chamber, which would have led to a southern tomb underneath the pyramid, was never completed, which is why Cheops later built a small southern pyramid on the southeast corner of his pyramid enclosure, only discovered and excavated a few years ago. The middle chamber has a statue niche on the east side for a ka statue of the king and, like the granite chamber has mock corridors leading to heaven. This chamber cannot ever have served as an actual burial chamber since it was not provided with a stone sarcophagus or a magical sealing by portcullises (stone plugs released from above in the entrance corridors). Through the inclusion of a closed cult area in the body of the pyramid, the precinct outside was reduced to the mortuary temple, of which today only the basalt paving remains. From the pattern of markings in the paving it can be seen that the temple once consisted of a broad court surrounded by columns and a chapel for mortuary offerings. Also added late, and only after the south tomb in the rock beneath the pyramid had been abandoned, was a small cult pyramid in the southeast corner of the complex. Fragments of statues of limestone and other stones are evidence of its rich decoration. The necropolis was planned just as precisely and carefully as the pyramid complex itself. Five shafts in the rock to the east and south of the pyramid once contained funerary barques — not solar barques — for Cheops. Both of the shafts to the south were originally found sealed. The eastern shaft contained a royal ship complete with rudder and rigging, broken into over 1,200 pieces. Now reassembled, it measures 43.40 m long. The other barque burial has not yet been opened, although recently video images were taken through a bore hole that show that the ship it contains has been badly damaged by conditions underground. Undoubtedly both ships provided transport for the king while he was alive and were to be at his disposal in the afterlife. These are not the only ships found in this way. As early as the First and Second Dynasties, kings were provided with ships for the afterlife. To the east also lie three small pyramids, one to the king’s mother Hetepheres, main consort of Snefru, who outlived him and died in her son’s palace at Giza and was buried there; and the others to the two main queens, Meretites and Henutsen, mothers of Cheops’ sons and successors, Djedefre and Chephren. The illegitimate sons and daughters of the king were given huge, solid double mastabas to the east of the queens’ pyramids. High court officials, the architects and even prince Hemiunu, the influential building manager of the pyramids, were given tombs in the west cemetery.

The king himself was involved in the form of the tomb chapels and their decoration, which is limited to scenes of the most important offerings. These form a unique representation in monumental form of state and society, in the strict hierarchies of the royal court and in the imaginary world of the king’s afterlife, in order that they might forever serve him. They are also recipients of royal largesse and offerings from the central royal mortuary temple.

We know as little about the person of Cheops as we do of other kings of the Old Kingdom. The critique of his reign and achievements handed down by Herodotus is a purely Greek reaction to architecture that towers above everything on a human scale, and which for a Greek could only signal mortal hubris. That he was Snefru’s son, we know only from the chance find of tomb equipment of his mother Hetepheres in a shaft burial at Giza. When she died, the queen was initially buried in this shaft tomb, while her pyramid, the northernmost of the queens’ pyramids, was being completed to the east of the pyramid of Cheops. Cheops is one of the younger generation of Snefru’s sons and was probably born when Dahshur was in the middle of its building program, which would mean that he came to the throne when he was about 25—30 years old. By this time, his older brothers the princes Nefermaat and Rahotep, who were the architects of the pyramids at Meidum and Dahshur, were already dead.