Menkaure’s Pyramid Temple is a part of the pyramid complex for the Pharaoh Menkaure’s burial, which included Menkaure’s Pyramid, Pyramid Temple, Valley Temple, and a monumental causeway between the Valley Temple and Pyramid Temple.
Menkaure’s Pyramid is the smallest of the major three pyramids on the Giza Plateau, and the Pyramid Temple was placed directly next to the east side of Menkaure’s Pyramid. The temple was much better preserved than the other pyramid temples, and there is more architecture remaining of the temple than the Pyramid Temples of Khafre or Khufu.
During Menkaure’s burial, his body would have been brought to the Valley Temple, where various religious ceremonies and rituals were performed, and then taken up a monumental causeway to the Pyramid Temple, before being buried in the burial chamber in the pyramid.
You can see excavation photos taken of the Pyramid Temple from standing on top of the Pyramid. The archaeologists that excavated Menkaure’s Pyramid Temple took daily photographs that provide a valuable record of the excavations and the state of the temple when it was uncovered in our contemporary time.
