The south side of menkaure which holds the quarry area on the floor which can be seen from satelite images. I wrote a paper abut this also link here. Still, or again, full of rubble/sand at the bottom. Source: Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_of_Menkaure
In 2019 I wrote a reseach paper speculating on the possibility of a second entrance into Menkaure. Link here.
This effort is now also explicitly mentioned on the above Wikipedia page on the Menkaure pyramid.
It was based on an identical flat area and also on the position of the bigger temple compared to the north side. My hypothesis was that there is a secondary entrance and that there perhaps is a “king and queen split.”
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I saw a video of Russ Allan from the @Snkbrs hinting at this posibility and dug a bit deeper.
So i was watching this video and it sparked a further interest. A statement was made that the west and south also might have “flattened areas”.
I did digging. This is what I found so far. The answer is: Yes, the south and west sides of the Pyramid of Menkaure have been cleared.
In 1996, Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass, then serving as the head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, led an extensive clearance project along the southern and western faces of the pyramid. The excavation and clearing of these specific sides yielded a few significant historical discoveries. One of these was the casing Insights: Clearing the debris allowed researchers to better study the lower courses of the pyramid’s unique red Aswan granite casing. It also helped verify that some granite blocks on the western face had been smoothed and polished. There is no mention so far I found on the south side.
Architects Vito Maragioglio and Celeste Rinaldi identified polished stone segments on the west side of the Pyramid of Menkaure, hinting at a planned finish of the granite casing. However this hypothesis still depends if any flat areas are “unfinished test areas” or, intentional to cover other entrances. Their research, published in L’Architettura delle Piramidi Menfite, concluded the builders intended to polish the entire exterior from the base up which is the current hypothesis. But the areas on the east and west are identical and uniform in size, exactly in the middle and do not at all give an “unfinished” appearance.
Photos and documented visual records of the flattened casing stones on the west side apparently exist, though they are significantly less famous than the popular tourist photos of the north and east faces. It is also not clear how deep the clearing effort was at the time and if a full face was vissible to study and make conclusions based on such.
Because the west side faces away from the main Giza Plateau tourist paths and borders the open desert, images showing these specific features are usually found within specialised archaeological archives rather than standard travel blogs.
The visual evidence of Menkaure’s flattened western casing stones is preserved across three primary sources: (again it didnt mention the south)
1. Maragioglio and Rinaldi’s Plates (1965)
The most precise visual records are the architectural plates, technical drawings, and published in Volume VI of L’Architettura delle Piramidi Menfite.
Volume VI of L’Architettura delle Piramidi Menfite, published in 1967 by Vito Maragioglio and Celeste Ambrogio Rinaldi, covers specific monumental structures of the Memphite necropolis. It is typically split into two physical books: text (Testo) and plates/drawings (Tavole).
Core Subjects Covered
La Grande Fossa di Zauiet el-Aryan: The massive rock-cut pit of the uncompleted Northern Pyramid of Zawyet el’Aryan.
La Piramide di Micerino: The Pyramid of Menkaure at Giza.
Il Mastabat Faraun: The massive stone mastaba tomb of 4th-Dynasty King Shepseskaf in South Saqqara.
La Tomba di Khentkaus: The tomb complex of Queen Khentkaus I at Giza.
Book Structure
Authors: Vito Maragioglio and Celeste Ambrogio Rinaldi
Publication Year: 1967
Format: Two volumes (Text with analytical descriptions and a separate volume of architectural plates/plans)
Accessing the Plates and Photos:
You can read or download the complete digitized text and photographic plates/drawings for Volume 6 directly via the Internet Archive:
Text volume scan: Maragioglio & Rinaldi – L’architettura delle piramidi Menfite Testo 6.1
Plates and visual documentation volume scan: Maragioglio & Rinaldi – L’architettura delle piramidi Menfite Tavole 6.2
I did find the last “plate version” but there is no pictures just drawings and not really clear on the west and south side. I haven’t found anything about hawass 1996 effort
https://share.google/NeTpmM3AQduAl8ija
https://share.google/9ved9qFbLDvTiqOT7
I haven’t ai translated the text version to see if there are mentions of such flat areas.
These records apparently highlight “witness patches”—small, flattened, and precisely levelled sections of granite that the ancient masons dressed to establish the true angle of the slope before halting work.
You can also browse these detailed plates online through the digital archives of The Giza Project at Harvard University.
2. The 1996 Supreme Council of Antiquities Clearance Photos
During Zahi Hawass’s 1996 excavation, his team heavily documented the newly cleared base of the south and west faces. These excavation photographs capture the granite blocks completely freed from the massive sand drifts that had buried them for centuries.
The images clearly show the contrast between the rough, bulbous “bosses” (left for workers to hook ropes and levers around) and the isolated, perfectly flattened blocks that were fully dressed down to the pyramid’s true incline. (This speaks about “isolated rocks” not a whole area, more like the previously mentioned patches.)
3. Alternative Research & Academic Repositories
Because copyright restrictions keep these specific archaeological survey images out of public search engines, the best places to view actual photographic evidence of the western face include:
The Giza Archives: Searching for “Menkaure west casing” on the Harvard Giza Project portal yields historical excavation imagery.
The ISIDA Project: This independent research group has a massive, publicly accessible photographic database documenting the less-visited sides of the Giza monuments, including high-resolution close-ups of the western granite courses.
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I also noted that no boat pit was ever found at Menkaure however research has been done and possible locations. This is also not easily available online and came from other papers I read. Link here, which gave a timeline of archeological excavation at Menkaure.
2007 2010 2018 National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics in Helwan (Egypt) and the Center of Geophysics at the University of Lisbon (Portugal) under the direction of Abbas Mohamed Abbas, Sultan Awad Sultan and Fernando A. Monteiro Santos conducted a geophysical survey at the site of the Pyramid of Menkaure. An area of 47 x 26 m adjacent to the satellite pyramids nearby the Pyramid was used to measure soil resistivity using the Wenner test method. Most 3D inverted models show moderate resistivity values at shallow depth. However, in two places, a higher resistance value indicated two elongated sections. One may refer to the 2 x 8 m long boat pit near the Pyramid, while the other may suggest a 5 x 20 m chamber extending north-south, with a ceiling made of mudbrick.