Page 93 - آثار مصر الفرعونية الجزء الأول

mortuary temple. Two of these stood on the north of the temple,
while three were to its south. Another pit may have been planned.
All of these were carved into the rock in the shape of a boat. Two
of the pits still retained their roofing slabs, though all of the pits
had been looted, probably during antiquity.

The Pyramid Proper

Kafre's pyramid is surrounded by an inner, huge stone
perimeter wall, within which is an open courtyard barely ten
meters wide that bounds the four sides of the pyramid proper.
This courtyard is paved with limestone slabs of irregular form.

Because of the two different entrances to this structure, some
Egyptologists believe that the main Pyramid of Khafre was
originally meant to be larger and to stand slightly farther north
then its completed position. However, modern scholars with
considerable expertise on this pyramid, such as Lehner, doubt
this assumption. Like the pyramid of Khufu and others in Egypt,
Khafre's structure takes advantage of a rock outcropping to both
increase the stability of its core, as well as to conserve the
amount of necessary building materials needed for its
construction. In fact, the lowest levels of its southwest corner are
actually hacked out of the rock subsoil. The bedrock surface to
the northwest had to be cut down some 10 meters by its ancient
builders, while the southeast corner had to be built up using
mammoth blocks of masonry. However, by far the substance of

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