The Great Pyramids of Giza rise from a limestone plateau on the edge of modern Cairo, where ancient royal monuments meet a sprawling contemporary city. The familiar trio consists of the pyramids built for Khufu, his son Khafre and his grandson Menkaure during Egypt’s Old Kingdom. They were not isolated structures: each stood within a wider funerary complex of temples, subsidiary pyramids, tombs and routes connecting the royal burial landscape.
The largest is the Great Pyramid, built as the tomb of King Khufu, whose reign the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities dates to about 2589–2566 BC. Its original height was 146.5 metres, making it the tallest human-made structure for roughly 3,800 years, according to the ministry. The outer casing that once gave the monument a smoother finish is largely gone, so its present stepped stone surface is not the appearance ancient visitors would have seen.
