The valley temple of Khafre at Giza complex is one of the best preserved temples of the Old Kingdom in Egypt. As a masterpiece of ancient Egyptian monumental architecture, it has been cleared of sand and, in 1869, this temple, with other monuments at Giza, became the backdrop for the opening ceremony of the Suez Canal . The temple was in front by a large terrace is paved with slabs of limestone, through which two roads led from the channel of the Nile.
Just about the middle of the terrace, fragments of which may have been a small, simple wooden structure was unearthed and carpet may have been the site of a statue of Khafre. However, others believe it is a tent used for purification, although the known examples of such a structure found only in a few private tombs. In 1995, Zahi Hawass re-cleared the area in front of the temple valley and in so doing, discovered that the road passed over tunnels that were framed with brick walls and paved with limestone.
These tunnels have a slightly convex profile resembling that of a boat. They formed a narrow corridor or a north-south canal. Sphnix opposite the temple, the channel empties into a drain leading northeast, probably buried under a dock in place modern tourist. The road connected the Nile canal with two separate entrances on the facade of the temple valley which have been sealed by huge single doors probably of cedar wood and hung on copper hinges.
Each of these doors were protected by a Sphinx lying. The northernmost of these portals was dedicated to the goddess Bastet, while the southern portal was dedicated to Hathor. The temple was built in about a square plan. It is located just off the Great Sphinx and its temple is associated. It is not surprising, since the valley temple was a gateway or portal to the entire complex, it is very similar to the front of the mortuary temple of Khafre.
Each of these doors were protected by a Sphinx lying. The northernmost of these portals was dedicated to the goddess Bastet, while the southern portal was dedicated to Hathor. The temple was built in about a square plan. It is located just off the Great Sphinx and its temple is associated. It is not surprising, since the valley temple was a gateway or portal to the entire complex, it is very similar to the front of the mortuary temple of Khafre.
Its base wall was built of huge blocks that sometimes weighed as much as 150 tons. This inner core was then covered by slabs of pink granite, a material widely used throughout the complex that was extracted near Aswan far to the south. This wall was slightly inclined and rounded at the top, making the whole structure appear somewhat like a mastaba. Between the two entrances to the valley temple was a vestibule with single pink granite walls that were originally polished to a luster.
Its floors were paved with white alabaster. A door then led to a T-shaped room that has a majority of the temple. This area was too wrapped polished pink granite and open with white alabaster, although it was also decorated with sixteen-piece pink granite pillars, many of which are still in place today, which supported architrave blocks of the same material, interconnected with copper strips in the form of the dovetail. In turn, supported the roof.
Here in the darkness provided by slots at the tops of walls, up to 24 statues of the king (although a basic statue in the middle that is larger than the others may have been counted twice) made from diorite, slate and alabaster. This line of statues continues along the cross of the T-shaped room that ends at a door into a hallway from which a stair railing clockwise winds and above the corridor before terminate on the roof of the valley temple.
On the south side of the roof had a small yard, located directly over six storage chambers also built of pink granite and arranged in two stories of three units each. They were integrated into the main building of the T-shaped room Ducts lined symbolic alabaster, a material specifically identified in the purification, run from the court of the temple roof down into the rooms deep, dark below.
These symbolic circuits run through the entire temple, taking in both the chthonic and solar aspects of beliefs beyond the ritual of embalming and for which the valley temple was the scene, according to some Egyptologists . Therefore, the Polish scholar Bernhardt Grdseloff proposed that purification rituals were performed on the roof terrace in a tent specially built for this purpose. He then theorized that the body was embalmed in the antechamber of the temple.
A French Egyptologist, Etienne Drioton proposed a similar view, switching locations in the antechamber for the purification and the embalming of the roof terrace. However, Ricke correctly pointed out that these types of rituals required considerable water that was only available near the canal, so at best the valley temple priests would perform rituals that symbolically. At the other end of the cross in the T-shaped hall (north), an opening has given way to a passage, also paved with alabaster, that led to the northwest corner of the temple, and he joined the roadway.