In May, 1968, the Antiquities Department decided to prepare the Pyramid of Menkure, as it had the Pyramid of Khafre, and entrusted the work to its inspector of the pyramids, Aly Hassan. Now its interior is clean and illuminated and can be easily visited.
Upon removing the great heaps of debris against the north face, near the entrance, archeologists had more than one surprise. Since 1839, when the entrance of this pyramid was found by Perring and Vyse, many visitors, especially Egyptologists, have visited the interior, but none ever suspected that at a distance of half a meter from the entrance (below and to the east) there was a hieroglyphic text on the granite casing of the pyramid.
The text is composed of at least five lines of sunken relief. The western part of it has deteriorated badly and only a few signs are visible, but the eastern half of the text, i.e., the part which is furthest from the entrance, is in better condition. It gives us the date on which the king was buried in his eternal abode, his tomb, though, unfortunately, the year is missing. The stone has weathered badly in the place where the year ought to be, but from the preserved part we know that his burial took place on the twenty-third day of the fourth month of the winter season. This month begins roughly in the middle of February, and thus we can say that Menkure was buried in his pyramid in March. His death must have occurred some months earlier since mummifying the body and preparing the funerary furniture took several months (see above, pp. 16-17). The length of Menkure's reign is generally accepted as not less than 21 years and not more than 28; and this deteriorated hieroglyphic text was our best chance to discover the exact date.
Four cartouches containing royal names can be distinguished, with some difficulty because they are very badly preserved. The names in two of them are beyond recognition, and a third is not certain. The preserved cartouche contains the name "Menkure." We can expect that one of the three other cartouches is that of his son Shepseskaf, because it was he who succeeded Menkure to the throne, performed all the ceremonies of the burial and completed Menkure's unfinished monuments, including the pyramid and its temples (see above, p. 139).
Around the entrance we can see eight courses of granite blocks remaining from the ancient casing; three of these courses are above the entrance, which is cut in the fifth from the base. The granite casing blocks were left rough; the ancient masons smoothed only the part which contains the entrance and the text. Menkure, however, died before his pyramid was finished.
In June, 1968, almost in front of the entrance, remains of brick walls and a great number of small chips of stone were found. The work is not yet complete, but in my opinion we have here in all probability the remains of a chapel in which stood an offering table. Several examples of these chapels, which stood before the entrances of the pyramids at the north side, are known to us; a good example was found in front of the entrance to the Bent Pyramid of Sneferu at Dahshur (Ahmed Fakhry, The Monuments of Sneferu at Dahshur, I [Cairo, 1959], 41 ff).
From, "The Pyramids", By Ahmed Fakhry, Fourth Impression 1975, pp 257- 8
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