Valley Temple of Khafre

Built around 2550 BC for Pharaoh Khafre, the Valley Temple stands just south of the Sphinx at the foot of the Giza plateau. Its limestone core is faced with huge blocks of pink Aswan granite, some weighing well over 100 tonnes, and its T-shaped hall rests on sixteen square granite pillars over a floor of white alabaster.

From here a causeway climbed to the mortuary temple at the base of Khafre's pyramid. It is one of the best-preserved buildings of the Old Kingdom, and a short walk takes you through its halls before or after the Sphinx terrace.

The temple is thought to have received the king's body before burial, for purification and the rites that prepared it for the tomb. It was buried by sand for millennia; Auguste Mariette cleared it in the 1850s, and in 1860 the famous seated diorite statue of Khafre, protected by the falcon god Horus, was found in a pit inside the temple. The statue is now one of the great pieces of the Egyptian Museum's collection.