Valley temple

American archaeologist George Andrew Resiner excavated the Menkaure Valley temple between 1908 and 1910. He found a large number of statues mostly of Menkaure alone and as a member of a group. These were all carved in the naturalistic style of the Old kingdom with a high degree of detail.

Queens’ pyramids

South of the pyramid of Menkaure are three smaller pyramids, designated G3-a,G3-b, and G3-c, each accompanied by a temple and substructure. The easternmost is the largest and a true pyramid. Its casing is partly of granite , and people believed engineers completed it due to the limestone pyramidion found close by. Neither of the other two progressed beyond the construction of the inner core.

Attempted demolition

In AD 1196, Al-Aziz Uthman,  Saladin’s son and the Sultan of Egypt, attempted to demolish the pyramids, starting with that of Menkaure. Workmen recruited to demolish the pyramid stayed at their job for eight months, but found it almost as expensive to destroy as to build. They could only remove one or two stones each day. Some used wedges and levers to move the stones, while others used ropes to pull them down. When a stone fell, it would bury itself in the sand, requiring extraordinary efforts to free it.People used wedges to split the stones into several pieces, and a cart to carry it to the foot of the escarpment. Despite their efforts, workmen were only able to damage the pyramid to the extent of leaving a large vertical gash at its northern face .