Page 160 - اثار مصر الفرعونية2

courtyard with inner walls decorated with niches (similar to the
mortuary temple's courtyard). A path, paved with limestone
slabs, ran from the pillared antechamber through the center of the
courtyard to a low stairway, which in turn led through a portico
with two rows of wooden columns. This terminated at an offering
hall, in which an alabaster altar may have once stood. To the
north of the offering hall were twelve storerooms, and to its south
were five additional storerooms. This was the area where Reisner
found the famous, mostly triad statues of the ruler, along with
four unfinished statuettes of Menkaure, fragments of other
statues and stone vessels. Three of the statues discovered by
Reisner depicted the goddess Hathor on the ruler's right side,
with divinities symbolizing three Upper Egyptian nomes on his
left. These may have been part of a larger collection of statues for
each of the provinces of Egypt, or perhaps only the nomes that
provided endowments for the complex.

Perhaps curiously, the function of the valley temple changed
over time. Reisner retraced the process by which houses of the
pyramid town first crowded up against the front wall of the
temple, and then began to be built within it. People began living
in the temple itself, particularly in the courtyard, where grain
storehouses and lodgings were built.

Perhaps as early as the 5th Dynasty, the temple was badly
damaged by water after a particularly heavy rain tore away the

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