Page 44 - اثار مصر الفرعونية2

courtyard with an altar, a T-shaped offering hall with a false door
and several chambers which were probably magazines. The later
mudbrick parts had a large courtyard built to the east with niches
decorating the inner walls.

Shepseskafs causeway, constructed from white-painted
mudbrick, adjoined the mortuary temple at the south-eastern
corner of the courtyard wall. When built, the long causeway
resembled vaulted passage which must have led down to the
King's valley temple this gas not yet been discovered.

The burial monument of Shepskef remains a mystery to
Egyptologists. It is not clear why this king chose South Saqqara
as the site of his tomb rather than Giza, or why he chose to
construct a mastabs rather than the traditional pyramid. Jequier
suggested that this unusual form of royal tomb was built as a
protest against the increasing influence of the priesthood of the
sun-god-Rê the pyramid form was considered as a sun symbol.
As further evidence to his theory he also that Giza had no
appropriate site for another pyramid and the king rherefore chose
to site his tomb near Dashur where his ancestor Snefru, the
founder of Dynasty IV was buried . Shepseskaf reigned for only
around four years and was perhaps also limited by economic
factors in a time which for may well have been unstable,
choosing to construct a provisional monument which may have
been later intended to become a larger tomb or pyramid.

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