“The sides are smooth and equall, the whole fabrick seeming very entire, free from any deformed ruptures or breaches.”
- Pyramidographia (1646) by the Englishman John Greaves, on the Pyramid of Khephren’s (Khafre) fully intact and polished limestone sheath based on his eyewitness account, proving that the sheath was removed between his 1639 visit and 1700, when it was described as being missing
“Back at the tent, skirting the base of the Pyramid of Khephren which seems to me inordinately huge and completely sheer; it’s like a cliff, like a thing of nature, a mountain- as though it had been created just as it is, and with something terrible about it, as if it were going to crush you.”
- Gustave Flaubert, diary entry from Cairo, Sunday 9 Dec 1849
In 1979 anyone could climb the Pyramid of Cheops. Dogs, monkeys, bears- just like climbing the Matterhorn. The Pyramid of Khephren was different- steeper by more than 1⁰, sitting on a higher bedrock base so that by trompe l’oeil it appeared taller, and topped by a forbidding overhang where the squared stones ended and the limestone sheath’s remains as smooth as slick rock began- what alpinists call a “death block” feature. That was the view of Cairo that I wanted, looking down on the Sphinx built by Khephren, son of Cheops, and over to the Nile.
Dave was game, so we set out before dawn by taxi knowing that it was better to avoid encountering the pyramids’ desultory guards altogether than to run into them and have to pay them off. No one deserved baksheesh just for permitting you to risk your neck.
I had already climbed Cheops so I knew the system. Block by block, each between 1.5 and 2 meters square, about two hundred of them in a kind of staircase- hoist oneself up to the next level and then hoist again. The same with Khephren.
I have forgotten its details but I doubt that I looked over my shoulder much on the way up anyway. The sun had risen and getting hot. And I was wondering about that overhang, where the easy steps ended and the slippery part began, only after you’d rounded yourself over the bulge and found toe and finger holds to help scoot up the last bit.
We sat down at that overhang and pondered a next move. We walked around it from underneath, lucky the blocks were mostly intact so we could walk on a level course of stones, and found a place where the overhang was less pronounced. I made a move up and over and found the smooth limestone sheath not to be as smooth as feared. It was an easy low crawl up the remaining few meters, belly flat, at 53⁰ of incline.
I remember the top being flat, the dimension of maybe two or three coffee tables, barely large enough for a group of two. We sat looking outwards, legs dangling, leaning back to the center and looking down at the Sphinx, which was the view I’d always wanted- straight down from Khephren, not at an angle as you see from Cheops. Cairo was already busy, loud, and smoggy. The Western Desert was hazy and just now waking up. We planned to go there next.
