statues of Khafre had been found in the Valley Temple therefore the
Valley Temple had been built by Khafre. The normally sensible Flinders
1 Measurements from The Pyramids of Egypt, p. 106.
2 W. B. Yeats, ‘The Second Coming’.
3 The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh, p. 48.
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Petrie summed up: ‘The fact that the only dateable remains found in the
Temple were statues of Khafre shows that it is of his period; since the
idea of his appropriating an earlier building is very unlikely.’4
But why was the idea so unlikely?
Throughout the history of Dynastic Egypt many pharaohs appropriated
the buildings of their predecessors, sometimes deliberately striking out
the cartouches of the original builders and replacing them with their
own.5 There was no good reason to assume that Khafre would have been
deterred from linking himself to the Valley Temple, particularly if it had
not been associated in his mind with any previous historical ruler but with
the great ‘gods’ said by the Ancient Egyptians to have brought civilization
to the Nile Valley in the distant and mythical epoch they spoke of as the
First Time.6 In such a place of archaic and mysterious power, which he
does not appear to have interfered with in any other way, Khafre might
have thought that the setting up of beautiful and lifelike statues of
himself could bring eternal benefits. And if, among the gods, the Valley
Temple had been associated with Osiris (whom it was every pharaoh’s
objective to join in the afterlife),7 Khafre’s use of statues to forge a strong
symbolic link would be even more understandable.
Temple of the giants
After crossing the causeway, the route I had chosen to reach the Valley
Temple took me through the rubble of a ‘mastaba’ field, where lesser
notables of the Fourth Dynasty had been buried in subterranean tombs
under bench-shaped platforms of stone ( mastaba is a modern Arabic
word meaning bench, hence the name given to these tombs). I walked
along the southern wall of the Temple itself, recalling that this ancient
building was almost as perfectly oriented north to south as was the Great
Pyramid (with an error of just 12 arc minutes).8
The Temple was square in plan, 147 feet along each side. It was built in
to the slope of the plateau, which was higher in the west than in the east.
In consequence, while its western wall stood only a little over 20 feet tall,
its eastern wall exceeded 40 feet.9
Viewed from the south, the impression was of a wedge-shaped
structure, squat and powerful, resting firmly on bedrock. A closer
4 Ibid., p. 50.
5 Margaret A. Murray, The Splendour that was Egypt, Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1987,
pp. 160-1.
6 See Part VII, for a full discussion of the ‘First Time’.
7 Discussed in Part VII; see also Part III for a comparison of the Osirian rebirth cult and of
the rebirth beliefs of Ancient Mexico.
8 The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh, p. 47.
9 Measurements from The Pyramids and Temples of Egypt, p. 48, and The Pyramids of
Egypt, p. 108.
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examination revealed that it incorporated several characteristics quite
alien and inexplicable to the modern eye, which that must have seemed
almost as alien and inexplicable to the Ancient Egyptians. For a start,
there was the stark absence, both inside and out, of inscriptions and
other identifying marks. In this respect, as the reader will appreciate, the
Valley Temple could be compared with a few of the other anonymous and
frankly undatable monuments on the Giza plateau, including the great
pyramids (and also with a mysterious structure at Abydos known as the
Osireion, which we consider in detail in a later chapter) but otherwise
bore no resemblance to the typical and well-known products of Ancient
Egyptian art and architecture—all copiously decorated, embellished and
inscribed.10
its core structure was built entirely, entirely, of gigantic limestone
megaliths. The majority of these measured about 18 feet long x 10 feet
wide x 8 feet high and some were as large as 30 feet long x 12 feet wide
x 10 feet high.11 Routinely exceeding 200 tons in weight, each was
heavier than a modern diesel locomotive—and there were hundreds of
blocks.12
Was this in any way mysterious?
Egyptologists did not seem to think so; indeed few of them had
bothered to comment, except in the most superficial manner—either on
the staggering size of these blocks or the mind-bending logistics of how
they might have been put in place. As we have seen, monoliths of up to
70 tons, each about as heavy as 100 family-sized cars, had been lifted to
the level of the King’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid—again without
provoking much comment from the Egyptological fraternity—so the lack
of curiosity about the Valley Temple was perhaps no surprise.
Nevertheless, the block size was truly extraordinary, seeming to belong
not just to another epoch but to another ethic altogether—one that
reflected incomprehensible aesthetic and structural concerns and
suggested a scale of priorities utterly different from our own. Why, for
example, insist on using these cumbersome 200-ton monoliths when you
could simply slice each of them up into 10 or 20 or 40 or 80 smaller and
more manoeuvrable blocks? Why make things so difficult for yourself
when you could achieve much the same visual effect with much less
effort?
And how had the builders of the Valley Temple lifted these colossal
megaliths to heights of more than 40 feet?
10 In addition to the three Giza pyramids, the Mortuary Temples of Khafre and Menkaure
can be compared with the Valley Temple in terms of their absence of adornment and use
of megaliths weighing 200 tons or more.
11 Serpent in the Sky, p. 211; also Mystery of the Sphinx, NBC-TV, 1993.
12 For block weights see The Pyramids of Egypt, p. 215; Serpent in the Sky, p. 242; The
Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt, p. 144; The Pyramids: An Enigma Solved, p. 51;
Mystery of the Sphinx, NBC-TV, 1993.
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At present there are only two land-based cranes in the world that could
lift weights of this magnitude. At the very frontiers of construction
technology, these are both vast, industrialized machines, with booms
reaching more than 220 feet into the air, which require on-board
counterweights of 160 tons to prevent them from tipping over. The
preparation-time for a single lift is around six weeks and calls for the
skills of specialized teams of up to 20 men.13
In other words, modern builders with all the advantages of high-tech
engineering at their disposal, can barely hoist weights of 200 tons. Was it
not, therefore, somewhat surprising that the builders at Giza had hoisted
such weights on an almost routine basis?
Moving closer to the T
emple’s looming southern wall I observed
something else about the huge limestone blocks: not only were they
ridiculously large but, as though to complicate still further an almost
impossible task, they had been cut and fitted into multi-angled jigsawpuzzle patterns similar to those employed in the cyclopean stone
structures at Sacsayhuaman and Machu Picchu in Peru (see Part II).
Another point I noticed was that the Temple walls appeared to have
been constructed in two stages. The first stage, most of which was intact
(though deeply eroded), consisted of the strong and heavy core of 200ton limestone blocks. On to both sides of these had been grafted a
façade of dressed granite which (as we shall see) was largely intact in the
interior of the building but had mainly fallen away on the outside. A
closer look at some of the remaining exterior facing blocks where they
had become detached from the core revealed a curious fact. When they
had been placed here in antiquity the backs of these blocks had been cut
to fit into and around the deep coves and scallops of existing weathering
patterns on the limestone core. The presence of those patterns seemed
to imply that the core blocks must have stood here, exposed to the
elements, for an immense span of time before they had been faced with
granite.
13 Personal communication from John Anthony West. See also Mystery of the Sphinx,
NBC-TV.
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The Sphinx and the Sphinx Temple with the Valley Temple of Khafre.
Lord of Rostau
I now moved around to the entrance of the Valley Temple, located near
the northern end of the 43-foot high eastern wall. Here I saw that the
granite facing was still in perfect condition, consisting of huge slabs
weighing between 70 and 80 tons apiece which protected the underlying
limestone core blocks like a suit of armour. Incorporating a tall, narrow,
roofless corridor, this dark and imposing portal ran east to west at first,
then made a right-angle turn to the south, leading me into a spacious
antechamber. It was here that the life-size diorite statue of Khafre had
been found, upside down and apparently ritually buried, at the bottom of
a deep pit.
Lining the entire interior of the antechamber was a majestic jigsaw
puzzle of smoothly polished granite facing blocks (which continued
through the whole building). Exactly like the blocks on some of the
bigger and more bizarre pre-Inca monuments in Peru, these incorporated
multiple, finely chiselled angles in the joints and presented a complex
overall pattern. Of particular note was the way certain blocks wrapped
around corners and were received by re-entering angles cut into other
blocks.
From the antechamber I passed through an elegant corridor which led
west into a spacious T-shaped hall. I found myself standing at the head of
the T looking further westwards along an imposing avenue of monolithic
columns. Reaching almost 15 feet in height and measuring 41 inches on
each side, all these columns supported granite beams, which were again
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41 inches square. A row of six further columns, also supporting beams,
ran along the north-south axis of the T; the overall effect was of massive
but refined simplicity.
What was this building for? According to the Egyptologists who
attributed it to Khafre its purpose was obvious. It had been designed,
they said, as a venue for certain of the purification and rebirth rituals
required for the funeral of the pharaoh. The Ancient Egyptians
themselves, however, had left no inscriptions confirming this. On the
contrary, the only written evidence that has come down to us indicated
that the Valley Temple could not (originally at any rate) have had anything
to do with Khafre, for the simple reason that it was built before his reign.
This written evidence is the Inventory Stela, (referred to in Chapter Thirtyfive), which also indicated a much greater age for the Great Pyramid and
the Sphinx.
What the Inventory Stela had to say about the Valley Temple was that it
had been standing during the reign of Khafre’s predecessor Khufu, when
it had been regarded not as a recent but as a remotely ancient building.
Moreover, it was clear from the context that it was not thought to have
been the work of any earlier pharaoh. Instead, it was believed to have
come down from the ‘First Time’ and to have been built by the ‘gods’
who had settled in the Nile Valley in that remote epoch. It was referred to
quite explicitly as the ‘House of Osiris, Lord of Rostau14 (Rostau being an
archaic name for the Giza necropolis).15
As we shall see in Part VII, Osiris was in many respects the Egyptian
counterpart of Viracocha and Quetzalcoatl, the civilizing deities of the
Andes and of Central America. With them he shared not only a common
mission but a vast heritage of common symbolism. It seemed
appropriate, therefore, that the ‘House’ (or sanctuary, or temple) of such
a wise teacher and lawgiver should have been established at Giza within
sight of the Great Pyramid and in the immediate vicinity of the Great
Sphinx.
Vastly, remotely, fabulously ancient
Following the directions given in the Inventory Stela—which stated that
the Sphinx lay ‘on the north-west of the House of Osiris’16—I made my
way to the north end of the western wall that enclosed the Valley
Temple’s T-shaped hall. I passed through a monolithic doorway and
entered a long, sloping, alabaster floored corridor (also oriented northwest) which eventually opened out on to the lower end of the causeway
14 Ancient Records of Egypt, volume I, p. 85.
15 See, for example, Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, University of
California Press, 1976, volume II, pp. 85-6.
16 Ancient Records of Egypt, volume I, p. 85.
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that led up to the Second Pyramid.
From the edge of the causeway I had an unimpeded view of the Sphinx
immediately to my north. As long as a city block, as high as a six-storey
building it was perfectly oriented due east and thus faced the rising sun
on the two equinoctial days of the year. Man-headed, lion-bodied,
crouched as though ready at last to move its slow thighs after millennia
of stony sleep, it had been carved in one piece out of a single ridge of
limestone on a site that must have been meticulously preselected. The
exceptional characteristic of this site, as well as overlooking the Valley of
the Nile, was that its geological make-up incorporated a knoll of hard
rock jutting at least 30 feet above the general level of the limestone
ridge. From this knoll the head and neck of the Sphinx had been carved,
while beneath it the vast rectangle of limestone that would be shaped
into the body had been isolated from the surrounding bedrock. The
builders had done this by excavating an 18-foot wide, 25-foot deep
trench all around it, creating a free-standing monolith.
The first and lasting impression
of the Sphinx, and of its enclosure, is
that it is very, very old—not a mere handful of thousands of years, like
the Fourth Dynasty of Egyptian pharaohs, but vastly, remotely, fabulously
old. This was how the Ancient Egyptians in all periods of their history
regarded the monument, which they believed guarded the ‘Splendid Place
of The Beginning of all Time’ and which they revered as the focus of ‘a
great magical power extending over the whole region’.17
This, as we have already seen, is the general message of the Inventory
Stela. More specifically, it is also the message of the ‘Sphinx Stela’
erected here in around 1400 BC by Thutmosis IV, an Eighteenth Dynasty
pharaoh. Still standing between the paws of the Sphinx, this granite
tablet records that prior to Thutmosis’s rule the monument had been
covered up to its neck in sand. Thutmosis liberated it by clearing all the
sand, and erected the stela to commemorate his work.18
There have been no significant changes in the climate of the Giza
plateau over the last 5000 years.19 It therefore follows that throughout
this entire period the Sphinx enclosure must have been as susceptible to
sand encroachment as when Thutmosis cleared it—and, indeed, as it still
is today. Recent history proves that the enclosure can fill up rapidly if left
unattended. In 1818 Captain Caviglia had it cleared of sand for the
purposes of his excavations, and in 1886, when Gaston Maspero came to
re-excavate the site, he was obliged to have it cleared of sand once again.
Thirty-nine years later, in 1925, the sands had returned in full force and
the Sphinx was buried to its neck when the Egyptian Service des
17 A History of Egypt, 1902, volume 4, p. 80ff, ‘Stela of the Sphinx’.
18 Ibid.
19 Karl W. Butzer, Early Hydraulic Civilization in Egypt: A Study in Cultural Ecology,
University of Chicago Press, 1976.
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Antiquités undertook its clearance and restoration once more.20
Does this not suggest that the climate could have been very different
when the Sphinx enclosure was carved out? What would have been the
sense of creating this immense statue if its destiny were merely to be
engulfed by the shifting sands of the eastern Sahara? However, since the