EGYPT: The stunning PYRAMID of CHEPHREN 😲 or KHAFRE, full tour with close up views!

Hello, this is Vic. Welcome to my channel and thank you for viewing my videos. Today I'm in the beautiful and spectacular country of Egypt here in the Middle East and I'm visiting the fascinating capital of Egypt, the city of Cairo. In this particular documentary we're going to go to the Great Pyramids of Giza. We're going to visit the second most important pyramid, the Pyramid of Kefren. So this is Vic. Let's go for a long walk. We have so much to see, so much to learn on a very hot and on a very humid day. Let's do it. Okay, let's orient ourselves. I'm in the complex of the Great Pyramids of Giza and in front of me you see the magnificent Great Pyramid of Cheops or Kufu, by far the most popular and the most famous of the pyramids here at this vast archaeological complex here at Giza. We have examined the Pyramid of Cheops or Kufu that you see in front of me in a separate video. In this particular video we're interested in the second most important pyramid here at Giza, the Pyramid of Kefren or Kafre, as you see there in the distance looking towards the western direction from the Pyramid of Keops. It is a very hot day, very humid day and it will be a very painful walk from here to get to the Pyramid of Kefren. But let's do it. Let's go examine its architecture. Let's enjoy the sight. Come on, let's do it. And here's a very first view of the magnificent Pyramid of Kefren here in Giza. A very easily recognizable pyramid and that's because the casing on top at the tip of the pyramid right up there still exists unlike the Pyramid of Keops that has been stripped of its casing. So let's go a little closer. Let's examine its architecture and let's admire this magnificent monument here in Giza. Come on. And here's a close-up view of the Pyramid of Kefren and as you can see we've got company here. Let's go back to the pyramid. Kefren of course was the son of Keops for whom the Great Pyramid of Giza was built for. And Kefren reigned between 2558 and 2533. So this pyramid was built right after his death and it is absolutely magnificent. It is just as magnificent as the Pyramid of Keops. It is the same height, about 140 meters, but it's much steeper. So let's go closer and let's check out the magnificent architecture of this beautiful tomb because this is what a pyramid is. The pyramid is actually a tomb. Come on. And here's a view of the southwestern corner of the Pyramid of Kefren looking upwards. And I'm sure you have never seen a pyramid up close and that's what we're going to do now. We're going to walk down to this bottom layer here so you can see the huge blocks that were used for the construction. There are over two million blocks here weighing anywhere from two and a half to 50 tons. And the whole pyramid here weighs about five million tons. You can see this huge block right here in the middle of the frame. This is about 50 tons right here. Now the pyramid used to extend all the way down to this line over here but it has been stripped and demolished. It has been stripped of its beautiful casing whereas when it was finished it would measure 230 meters on each side. It now measures 215 meters and that's because the casing is missing. As a matter of fact these red stones that you see here scattered all over are part of the original casing that used to enclose this beautiful pyramid. What a magnificent structure. If you come here take your time and walk around and enjoy the views from the sides of the pyramid. Look at this. You can see the red blocks that at one time used to cover the casing scattered all over. I read somewhere that there was an effort to demolish it during the Ottoman times here but they failed. So you can see a huge block here that used to be part of the base. What an incredible sight indeed. Look at that. And once again here's the pyramid of Cheops. And here's the western side of the pyramid of Kefren. Just to make one point, once again you see that the side here is very very uneven. You see thousands of blocks just hanging in there. And if there's a small earthquake quite a few of them are bound to roll down and end up here. What happened here is over the centuries the locals used the pyramids for materials for construction. And the very first layer that was removed was this beautiful layer of the casing. And later on subsequently they removed layer after layer of the yellow colored blocks that would make up the core of the pyramid. This is why you see so many blocks here in no specific order. There is no smooth side so to speak. Of course now nobody can remove anything here. You cannot even touch the blocks or even climb on them. You will be arrested. But that's why the sides of the pyramids present such a chaotic uneven surface as you can see here. And that's because a lot of materials have been removed for construction for buildings in Cairo. It's still a beautiful sight though isn't it? Now remember when I said that the sides have been reduced by 15 meters of length. And that's the bottom layer has been stripped from 15 meters of materials. Well that's the bottom layer of the pyramid. And I'm 15 meters away and look at this. On the ground here you see a hint of the foundation of the original pyramid. Right here you see the original blocks that form the foundation. You can see that at one point in time where I'm standing at right now this is where the pyramid used to extend to. Not anymore of course. You can see evidence all over. Look at this almost square structure here used to have a block over it which would form part of the foundation. And all these blocks are missing. Hundreds of thousands of them have been removed thus reducing the size of this beautiful pyramid. Well let's walk around this magnificent pyramid now and let's look at the northern side. Incidentally I did mention to you that the casing on the upper levels of the pyramid has now been removed. And this is the only pyramid that actually maintains part of its casing on top. So this is the northern side and this is where the entrance to the pyramid is located at. All the pyramids have their entrance on the northern side and they are facing the polar star or actually where the polar star used to be four and a half thousand years ago when they were first built. Here's the entrance to the pyramid. Up there you have to buy a separate ticket to go in. I think it's closed right now. When the entrance was discovered and archaeologists went down the corridor to the burial chamber of Kefren they found the sarcophagus and everything else was looted and empty. Everything had been stolen at least a thousand years before its discovery, before the discovery of the king's chamber in 1818 unfortunately. So even if you go in and you take the steps you buy the ticket all you're going to see is a huge chamber with a sarcophagus in it. Now let's look at these blocks over here for a second. That's the entrance here's a view of the northern side and let's look at these blocks right here. I'm still on the northern side of the pyramid and look at these blocks of granite sticking out of the ground here. This will give you an idea how far the pyramid used to extend and sure enough it's about 15 meters from the side. Let's go a little closer to the pyramid and you will see that over the years they have found some parts of the casing and they have put them over here. Now what's really important here is that the casing used to be beautiful red granite blocks from Aswan whereas the pyramid of Cheops was built out of beautiful bright white rocks. In this case we see almost purple colored blocks so you can imagine these blocks on all four sides of the pyramid extending right up to the top. It must have been an absolutely spectacular sight to see if you came here let's say around 25 20 before christ when the pyramid was completed. So they have discovered these little chunks of the casing and they have put them here on the northern side and I don't think too many people realize what these chunks represent. And once again that's the pyramid of Cheops that you see there in the distance and I want to show you this fascinating pyramid the pyramid of Khefrem from the southwestern corners. You can see how beautiful it looks from this angle here. Absolutely stunning. Incidentally if I move further west right there in the far distance the smallest of the three pyramids the pyramid of Nicarinus. We're going to examine that on a separate video but here's a very last view of the pyramid of Khefrem from the southwestern corner. When I first uploaded my video of the pyramid of Cheops here in Giza I got a lot of messages asking me for people to videotape up close the space between the blocks. Now a lot of you have been to Central America or Peru or you have seen the temples of the Incas and of the Mayans. You have seen the blocks the huge blocks of stone that fit perfectly. This is not the case here. You can see that there is quite a bit of space between the blocks. You can see a very good example right here and here as well. So the blocks are cut very roughly and they fit with each other but not with the precision that we saw in Machu Picchu or other places in South America. You can see that there is enough space here to fit three or four credit cards. Here's another good example here. So I don't know if this was intentional because of the earthquakes that take place here. Who knows? But you can see that there's quite a bit of space between the blocks. Here's a very good example here as well. And we see this all over. I would say the space between the blocks is somewhere between two millimeters to five millimeters in some cases. Right here too. Look at this. I hope that makes sense what I just said there as well. Let's just stay on the southern side of the pyramid for just a couple of minutes. I want to show you something very interesting. By looking at the side of the pyramid here you can see hundreds of thousands of rocks just hanging in there. And the slightest earth movement will cause these rocks to just come down like an avalanche. I've been sitting here, standing here for quite a few minutes just looking at this awesome sight. As I mentioned to you several times the outer layers were removed and looted. And now you have as a result many layers of rocks ready to come down, roll down the sides of the pyramid. Now here's a couple of huge rocks or boulders or blocks that were taken down from the pyramid. These must have been way up because when they came down they rolled down the side of the pyramid from somewhere up there. And they rolled down at such a speed they made it all the way here about 30 meters away from the pyramid. And look how huge they are. This will give an idea of the size of some of the blocks out of which the pyramid is made out of. These blocks have been here for hundreds of years. You can see they have been eroded. Here's another interesting observation here. Here are three blocks quite possibly from the bottom layers of the pyramid. And if you look at them very carefully, first you're going to see on the sides here the chiseling that took place right there to get them into shape. But here on the side you can see a groove. This was used to carry the block up the pyramid. So there was a mechanism according to which they would insert something right there in the middle of the block, possibly lift it and carry it. As you can see other blocks all around the place here. What an interesting sight. You can literally stand here, if you have a lot of water that is, because it's very hot, and look at this structure for hours. It is absolutely immense. It is stunning. It is almost incredible to visualize 100,000 people working on this for close to 20 years in order to build. Incredible. Absolutely incredible. And that's the eastern side of the pyramid that you're looking at right now. And here we find a huge funerary complex which used to be a series of temples. This is where the body of the pharaoh Khefren was taken to for a series of rituals after his death and before being placed in the pyramid. Unfortunately not much has remained here. Most of the materials have been looted throughout the centuries. But you can see how massive these temples must have been here at one time. This road that you see here in the middle of the temples, if you extend it straight behind me, it goes to the Sphinx. Now there is a theory that the face of the Sphinx, the legendary Sphinx, resembles that of the pharaoh Khefren and it was built during Khefren's times. You can see the huge blocks here. You can imagine at one time what I'm standing at right now, the huge temples that had been built in order to accept the body of the pharaoh before it was placed in the pyramid. And I'm crossing the center of that funerary complex right now. Here's another view of the beautiful pyramid. As I said on a very hot, on a very humid day. By the way you see the huge blocks here that used to form the causeway or the road that joined the center of the pyramid with the Sphinx. Which is about 500 meters behind me. Well this is Vek. Thank you for joining me. I hope you enjoyed this documentary of the legendary and very historic pyramid of Khefren here in Giza. Bye-bye.