2500 BC

Pyramid of Khafre

Construction of Khafre’s Pyramid Complex at Giza

Khafre's pyramid is shorter than Khufu's but wins the skyline illusion: his builders put it on higher ground and gave it a steeper slope.

A reign, not a year

No inscription records a groundbreaking or completion day, so circa 2500 BCE is a reign-based convention covering a construction interval.

Published chronologies differ substantially: the Metropolitan Museum puts Khafre's reign at approximately 2520–2494 BCE, while Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities gives roughly 2558–2532.

The owner is securely identified as Khafre, but no evidence survives that his body was actually interred there.

What the complex contained

The finished complex comprised the pyramid, a pyramid temple, a causeway, a valley temple and a satellite pyramid — the standard Fourth-Dynasty east–west arrangement.

The pyramid rose approximately 143.5 metres on a base of about 215.25 metres, at a slope near 53°10′. Its casing combined a lowest granite course with fine Tura limestone above; the patch still hanging near the summit is a remnant of a skin that once covered almost the whole monument.

Inside, two northern entrances and passage systems lead toward a burial chamber with a granite sarcophagus sunk into the floor. Giovanni Battista Belzoni reopened the upper entrance in 1818 and found the chamber already robbed — the animal bones he reported were inside the sarcophagus, and they are not evidence of Khafre's burial.

The Sphinx, by sequence

Archaeological sequencing places the Sphinx and Sphinx Temple late in Khafre's building programme with high probability, while allowing that Khufu may have initiated some work.

That conclusion rests on geology: stone removed while carving the Sphinx can be matched to core blocks in Khafre's lower temples — not to the main pyramid.

Some of those limestone core blocks weigh up to about 100 tons, large enough to preserve several geological layers within a single block.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 7 sources not yet audited Traditional date

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →

Traditional date. Conventionally dated here; the research places it at ~-2500.

What the sources leave uncertain

No inscription records a precise groundbreaking or completion day, so c. 2500 BCE is a reign-based conventional date.
Published reign chronologies differ substantially: the Metropolitan Museum uses approximately 2520–2494 BCE, while Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities gives approximately 2558–2532 BCE.
The monument’s intended owner is securely identified as Khafre, but direct evidence that his body was actually interred there has not survived.
AERA’s archaeological sequencing strongly favors Khafre for most of the Great Sphinx, while allowing that Khufu may have initiated some work.