Giza pyramid complex

Giza is in Egypt, a country in Africa.

It is a high, rocky place at the edge of the desert. Three giant pyramids stand there. A huge stone lion with a man's face lies nearby. It is called the Great Sphinx. There are also lots of smaller tombs all around.

The Giza pyramid complex stands on a rocky plateau, a high, flat area of land, on the west bank of the Nile River in northern Egypt. It is a necropolis, a city of tombs, not a city of homes.

Three kings built giant pyramids here: Khufu, his son Khafre and his grandson Menkaure. Each pyramid was the center of a group of buildings, with temples, small pyramids and a long sloping road. Around them are rows of tombs for royal relatives and officials. The Great Sphinx lies nearby, and archaeologists have found the town where the builders lived. Khufu's pyramid, the Great Pyramid, has its own page.

Britannica describes the Pyramids of Giza as three 4th Dynasty pyramids on a rocky plateau on the west bank of the Nile near Al-Jizah (Giza). Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities dates the dynasty to about 2613 to 2494 BCE; Britannica gives about 2575 to 2465 BCE, a reminder that ancient Egyptian dates are still debated.

The ministry stresses that the three pyramids, for Khufu, his son Khafre and his grandson Menkaure, are only the largest parts of a crowded landscape: subsidiary pyramids, mastaba tombs, boat burials, temples and causeways. To these the site adds the Great Sphinx and, to the southeast, the settlement and cemetery of the people who built the later complexes. In 1979 UNESCO inscribed the ruins of the Memphis area, from Giza to Dahshur, as one World Heritage Site; its necropolis holds more than 38 pyramids. The Great Pyramid itself has its own page.

The three pyramids are not the same size.

Khufu's pyramid is the biggest. Khafre's is almost as big. Menkaure's is much smaller. Look at the top of Khafre's pyramid. It still has some smooth stones, like a cap!

Britannica gives the sizes when the pyramids were new. Khufu's was about 147 meters high, Khafre's about 143 meters and Menkaure's only about 66 meters, less than half as tall.

Khafre's pyramid is the one with a smooth patch at the top. That is the last of its casing, the polished white limestone that once covered all three. Robbers broke into all three pyramids long ago and took what had been placed in the burial rooms. Their inside walls have no carved writing: kings began to have spells carved inside their pyramids later, starting with a king named Unas.

Britannica's figures: Khufu's pyramid averages 230 m a side and was originally 147 m high (now about 138 m); Khafre's measures 216 m a side and was 143 m high; Menkaure's measures 109 m a side and was 66 m high. Khafre's alone keeps a section of its outer limestone casing, at the very top.

All three were plundered inside and out in ancient and medieval times, so the grave goods once placed in their burial chambers are missing; Khufu's King's Chamber, high in the masonry, is described on the Great Pyramid's own page. Their chamber walls carry no texts: the earliest known Pyramid Texts, spells carved on the walls of a pyramid's inner chambers, are in the pyramid of Unas, last king of the 5th Dynasty, at Saqqara.

The Great Sphinx is a giant stone statue.

It has the body of a lion lying down. It has the head of a king. It was carved from the rock of the hill. Long ago, it was probably painted.

The Great Sphinx lies beside the road that leads up to Khafre's pyramid. It was carved straight out of the rock of the plateau, and it is about 73 meters long and 20 meters high. It has a lion's body and a human head wearing a royal headdress. In ancient Egypt, a sphinx showed the king as a lion, to show his power.

Most experts think it was carved for Khafre. Tiny traces of paint show it was once colorful. Its nose is missing, and nobody knows for sure how it was lost. Drawings made before the soldiers of the French general Napoleon came to Egypt already show it without a nose.

The Sphinx was carved from the bedrock beside Khafre's valley temple and the lower end of his causeway, with its own Sphinx Temple in front. The ministry notes that the valley temple was finished before work on the Sphinx began and that its face closely resembles Khafre's statues; Britannica adds that most scholars credit Khafre, while others argue for his older brother Redjedef or for Khufu.

Britannica describes it as about 73 m long and 20 m high, one of the world's largest sculptures, with pigment residue suggesting the whole statue was painted; one estimate is that 100 workers with stone hammers and copper chisels would have needed about three years to finish it. The body has eroded most. Efforts to preserve it may go back to the reign of Thutmose IV, around 1400 BCE. The story that Napoleon's soldiers shot off the nose is doubtful, because drawings made before their time already show it missing.