Menkaure

Egyptian pharaoh (r. 2532-c. 2503 b.c.e.)

• Born: fl. 2532-c. 2503 b.c.e.

An important king of the Fourth Dynasty, Menkaure was the successor to the pharaohs Khafre and Khufu and builder of the third great pyramid.

Early Life

Menkaure (mehn-KEW-ray) was the fourth (possibly fifth) Egyptian king of the Fourth Dynasty (c. 2613-c. 2494 b.c.e.), son of the pharaoh Khafre (r. 2558-2532) and nephew of the pharaoh Khufu (r. 2589-2566 b.c.e.). The exact duration of Menkaure’s reign—eighteen or twenty-eight years—remains unclear. It has been noted that another short-lived monarch may have intervened between Khafre and Menkaure; this, however, remains speculation. The Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484-c. 425 b.c.e.) speaks of the Old Kingdom pharaoh as a man of refinement and beneficence, a pious, kind individual perhaps less forceful in character than his immediate predecessors. It must be noted, however, that Herodotus’s rather damning descriptions of Khafre and Khufu as impious tyrants may be inaccurate. Their great pyramid-building projects may have functioned more as relief work to keep Egyptian farmers busy during their off-seasons rather than the forced slave-labor projects they were once thought to have been.

Life’s Work

Menkaure’s most lasting contributions, like those of his predecessors, were in the areas of art and architecture. Shortly after beginning his reign, Menkaure took the customary steps to ensure his continued existence in the afterlife by erecting a massive tomb in the form of a stone pyramid. Menkaure’s pyramid still stands today, along with those of Khufu and Khafre, near the banks of the Nile River, the last surviving remnants of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The pyramid of Menkaure is conspicuously smaller in volume (totaling 9 million cubic feet, or 4 million cubic meters) than the great pyramids of his more famous pharaonic predecessors, Khufu (78 million cubic feet; 34 million cubic meters) and Khafre (94 million cubic feet; 41 million cubic meters), that stand immediately to the northeast on the plateau at Giza.

Although less than half as tall as Khufu’s Great Pyramid, Menkaure’s has the distinction, along with one of its three smaller satellite pyramids, of having once been sheathed in costly rose-colored Ethiopian granite, of which, today, only the lowest courses remain; the rest is finished in common mud brick. As the pioneering Egyptologist James Henry Breasted (1865-1935) pointed out, the pyramids of Menkaure’s two predecessors may have so depleted the resources of the state that he was unable to erect a more extravagant tomb. The financial strain that this type of labor-intensive construction exacted on the royal treasury was considerable enough to necessitate a reversion to simple sun-dried mud brick for the pharaoh’s causeway and his unfinished mortuary temple, both of which were completed at the direction of Menkaure’s son and successor. Even the casual observer is left with the impression of a monument hastened to completion during the eclipse of a dynastic era.

Menkaure’s pyramid was opened and entered sometime during the seventh century b.c.e., probably by curious Egyptian antiquaries of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty who, finding the royal tomb already had been looted, replaced the scattered bones in a later style sarcophagus. In the mid-twentieth century, radiocarbon dating of these same human remains established that they were too recent to be those of Menkaure and may be, in all probability, those of an ill-fated looter who met his demise in the pharaoh’s tomb. Unfortunately, the original basalt sarcophagus of Menkaure was lost off the coast of Spain in 1838 while being transported by sea to England.

Although the building projects of Menkaure appear comparatively modest by Old Kingdom standards, his sculptural artifacts are of very high quality and outnumber those produced under Khufu and Khafre. Surviving portraits from this era are predominantly either of the smaller freestanding sculptural type or larger semi-engaged carvings in relief. Ka portraits, believed to provide a dwelling place for the pharaoh’s shadow-self, are typical. In these representations, Menkaure is portrayed in an idealized manner, as was common practice in Old Kingdom statuary. Certain characteristic features, however, most notably his bulging eyes and snubbed-nose expression, are effectively conveyed as distinctive idiosyncratic traits. Notable representations of Menkaure include a sculptural dyadic portrait (now in the Boston Museum) of the royal couple, slightly under life size, showing Menkaure in the customary stiff-backed striding pose, accompanied by his sister-wife Khamerernebty II, who embraces the pharaoh with one arm while resting her left hand tenderly on his upper arm.

A much smaller triadic sculptural portrait in slate (now in the Cairo Museum) depicts Menkaure in company with Hathor, the Egyptian Venus, appearing in the guise of his favorite wife and accompanied, at his left, by one of the lesser female deities of the provinces (nomes). The evident regard that these female figures exhibit toward the central figure of the pharaoh, evidenced by their simultaneous embrace of him, conveys a sense of high esteem. Many similar sculptural portraits of Menkaure survive in fragmentary form and appear to have been abandoned as works-in-progress, perhaps lending credibility to the belief that the pharaoh’s death came suddenly and without warning. Of all these similar works, of which there may have been as many as forty-two, only four have survived intact.

Herodotus tells that Menkaure suffered grievously over the death of a young daughter, then his only child. The pharaoh ordered built for her a wooden sarcophagus, covered in hammered gold, in the form of a heifer bearing the sun orb between its horns. Draped in scarlet cloth, this sacred effigy was said to have been brought forth into the sunlight one day each year in accordance with the daughter’s dying wishes. Later authors, including the Roman Plutarch (c. 46-after 120 c.e.), have suggested that this story may actually allude to an annual agricultural ritual of rebirth and fertility associated with Osiris, green-skinned god of the Underworld, and his beautiful consort, Isis. Another ritual, which may actually allude to the sun’s “return” in its yearly seasonal cycle, was said to have been inspired by an incident in the pharaoh’s later life. An oracle decreed that Menkaure’s beneficence had angered the ancient gods, who rather desired the people to be treated severely, and announced that the pharaoh had, as punishment, just six more years to live. The indignant pharaoh ordered all lamps to be lit unceasingly that he might live both by day as well as by night, thus doubling his effective remaining lifetime. In the end the prophecy proved false.

Significance

Menkaure was the last of the three builders of the Great Pyramids. At his death, Menkaure was succeeded not by his oldest son (who may have predeceased him) but rather by Shepsekhaf (r. c. 2503-c. 2498 b.c.e.), a younger son by an unknown wife. Shepsekhaf’s reign was only five years in duration and brought the Fourth Dynasty to a close. An indication that things began to go wrong at about this time is provided by Shepsekhaf’s choice of Saqqara, rather than Giza, as his final resting place. Instead of erecting a pyramid as his forebears had done, he had built a tomb shaped like a plain sarcophagus with beveled sides whose simplicity echoed the prepyramid tomb style known as the mastaba (meaning “bench”). Ironically, this style of tomb was later copied at Giza in a monument, situated between the causeways of Khafre and Menkaure, that has come to be known as the fourth or “unfinished pyramid.” This fourth pyramid is that of Menkaure’s notable daughter, Khentkawes. Born of a second unknown 3wife, Khentkawes became a wife to the pharaoh Userkaf (r. 2494-c. 2487 b.c.e.), initiator of the Fifth Dynasty, and perhaps another, lesser pharaoh as well. A cult dedicated to Khentkawes flourished during the Fifth Dynasty, calling her the “mother of two kings, not only of one.”

Major Kings of the Fourth Dynasty

c. 2613-2589

• Snefru

c. 2589-2566

• Khufu

2558-2532

• Khafre

2532-c. 2503

• Menkaure

c. 2503-c. 2498

• Shepsekhaf

Note: Dynastic research is ongoing; data is approximate.

Bibliography

David, Rosalie. The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt: A Modern Investigation of Pharaoh’s Workforce. New York: Routledge, 1996. Using archaeological evidence from one of the first towns inhabited by pyramid laborers to be investigated, this book corrects many of the assumptions about the ways in which pyramids were built and the social conditions of their laborers.

Lepre, J. P. The Egyptian Pyramids: A Comprehensive Reference. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1990. A precise and detailed examination of ancient Egyptian pyramid construction from the predynastic era mastabas through the Twelfth and Thirteenth Dynasty revival. Well-illustrated with photos and architectural diagrams and containing appendices on hieroglyphics, principal explorers, and mathematical aspects of the various pyramid plans, etc.

Traunecker, Claude. The Gods of Egypt. Translated by David Lorton. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001. A concise guide to Egyptian religion, including its significance in burial rituals and the mythology of death.

Verner, Miroslav. The Pyramids: The Mystery, Culture, and Science of Egypt’s Great Monuments. Translated by Steven Rendall. New York: Grove, 2001. A very thorough review of the pyramids of Egypt, by a well-known Czech archaeologist, covering both cultural context and architectural properties. Bibliography, indexes, and appendices of the dimensions of the various pyramids, a list of Egyptologists and Egyptological scholars, a chronology of rulers and dynasties, and a glossary.