About The Valley Temple
The Khafre Valley Temple in the Pyramids Giza complex is one of the best-preserved temples or structures from the Old Kingdom in Egypt, particularly the Fourth Dynasty. After being buried in the desert sand, it was cleared of sand in the 19th century.
It is an absolute engineering marvel and a masterpiece of ancient Egyptian architecture. Its distinctive architectural style identifies it as one of the oldest stone buildings in Egypt, if not the world.
Khafre’s mortuary temple was made in an organized manner. It consisted of an entrance hall, an open court with large columns, five niches from the second chamber of the temple where the Pharaoh’s statues were probably placed, five storerooms behind these five niches, and finally, an innermost sanctuary containing a pair of upright stelae or rocks with inscriptions written on them and a false door through which the dead Pharaoh was believed to have entered from the burial chamber to collect the offerings given to him.
The front of this temple was made of large limestone blocks covered by a layer of finer limestone. Thick and robust pillars supported the ceilings of the entrance and second rectangular halls. Supposedly there were 12 statues of Khafre in the courtyard, some of which could have been captured by kings of later dynasties. Five boat pits are found before this mortuary temple, carved into the rock base, which contained the boats that brought the Pharaoh’s mortal remains to preserve as a mummy in the Pyramid.
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