Countless archeologists throughout history have been fascinated by the Giza plateau, home to historic archeological sites including the iconic Pyramids of Giza and the Great Sphinx.
Over a century after its excavation by Harvard archeologist George Reisner, Mark Lehner, president of the Ancient Egypt Research Associates, or AERA, led an international team to reinvestigate the Menkaure Valley Temple, or MVT, part of the complex of the Pyramid of Menkaure, the smallest of the three main Pyramids of Giza. Armed with cutting-edge technology and new archeological approaches, Lehner’s team made groundbreaking discoveries about the Menkaure pyramid complex and surrounding area.
Lehner shared these findings and the questions still left to answer in his lecture titled “Rediscovering Sculptures of King Menkaure at the Giza Pyramids” Oct. 16 at Harvard University’s Geological Lecture Hall.
Lehner was introduced to attendees by fellow Egyptologist Peter Der Manuelian, director of the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East and author of the 2022 book “Walking Among Pharaohs: George Reisner and the Dawn of Modern Egyptology,” which Lehner said prompted a revelation about the timing of the lecture.
“This year, I realized while reading Peter Der Manuelian’s amazing biography of George Reisner that, my God, this is my 47th year of active archaeological fieldwork on the Giza plateau,” Lehner said. “I’m talking about the length of my experience not to toot my own horn, because at this age I feel tooted enough, but to set a certain context for the talk tonight.”
While Lehner merely glazed over the achievement of his experience, Manuelian highlighted its value, especially given the venue.
“Most of you have heard of our own George Reisner, who led the Harvard-MFA Expedition at Giza and elsewhere on the Nile for four decades plus. Tonight, we have the only archaeologist who has outlasted Reisner himself at Giza,” Manuelian said.
Manuelian also described the extent and influence of Lehner’s work throughout his career.
“Mark is the author of a host of articles, newsletters and annual reports that are way too numerous to mention,” Manuelian said. “He has appeared on television for National Geographic, NOVA and many other public television documentaries.”
Among all of his publications and appearances, Lehner expressed that his particular concentration is of a different nature than that of Reisner and most of the body of work in the field of Egyptology in general.
“Reisner focused primarily on the cemeteries of Giza, and a lot of Egyptology and Egyptian archaeology is very focused on the ancient Egyptians’ tombs, where people died and where they were buried,” Lehner said. “My archaeology has been very different. I focused more on the settlements where people lived.”
Lehner said that findings from the MVT are an example of this focus, and while the data he and Reisner aimed to collect were distinct, the MVT is the intersection of their work.
“We have amassed a data set, information probably as big as the information garnered from all of Reisner’s years. It’s a different kind of data. It’s not tombs and statuary and inscriptions,” Lehner said. “Our data is about what people are eating, animal bones, plant remains, a lot of mud brick architecture.”
Lehner described how the MVT set itself apart from other archeological sites he has studied and worked on.
“I went to the Menkaure Valley Temple for reasons I’ll talk about, firstly because it’s a settlement. It was part of the greater urban context of the ancient Egyptians who built the pyramids,” Lehner said. “I took Reisner up on his invitation that he wrote in his diary.”
The invitation in question is from the Feb. 18, 1910 entry in Reisner’s diary, which reads, “With regret, I have determined to cover up all the back or western part of the temple … Perhaps in another century some archaeologist may wish to test the accuracy of our work or to settle questions which may come up later.”
“I took him up on that challenge 111 years later,” Lehner said. “Risener worked at the Menkaure Valley Temple for five months total, maybe six. We’ve been working there for nine seasons and a total of about 18 months. It’s a hugely complicated place because it’s not just [a] settlement, it’s primarily architecture.”
Attendees such as Katherine Law, president of the northwest chapter of the American Research Center in Egypt, found this point to be of particular value in the field of Egyptology.
“His understanding of architecture — because Mark Lehner is very good at architecture — helps lead us to new insights and things we hadn’t thought of before,” Law said.
Lehner elaborated on the complexity of the MVT and how many of the “new insights” from his work bring with them more questions for which he is still searching for answers.
“The content of what I’m presenting is actually an exercise of some of the complexities and some of what we’ve learned and some of the broad stroke understandings that do change,” Lehner said.
Another attendee who admired the ever-changing nature of and questions raised by Lehner’s work was Walter Gilbert, artist, physicist, biochemist and winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Gilbert was mentioned in Lehner’s list of acknowledgments as a valued monetary supporter of AERA’s work.
“The story has gotten more and more confused as they excavate,” Gilbert said. “It seemed to be at one time a simple temple, then becomes something far more complicated as one realizes that it’s been built and rebuilt over the years. I find it actually quite astounding that two dynasties later, that particular temple can be rebuilt and reused.”
The cycle of rebuilding in question is represented, according to Lehner, by layers of structure within the temple uncovered over time which date from various different Egyptian dynasties. Reisner’s excavations resulted in a belief that the temple underwent two major periods: a First Temple which was partially destroyed by a flash flood, causing it to be abandoned until a Second Temple was built over what was left of the First two centuries later. This year, Lehner’s team uncovered the very bottom of the First Temple, overcoming years of obstacles due to groundwater.
“That’s part of the mystery of what we call the Menkaure Valley Temple, which begins with hidden statues,” Gilbert said.
The most famous of the hidden statues is one of Menkaure and his wife, referred to as a dyad, or pair statue, a term coined by lecture attendee and fellow Egyptologist Florence Dunn Friedman. Reisner claimed to have found the dyad, now displayed at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, in what he called the Thieves’ Hole, which was dug by treasure hunters after the Islamization of Egypt where they discarded the dyad.
However, in 2019, Lehner’s team discovered something Reisner missed: a deeper, older hole slightly further east, likely dug in ancient times during or after the flood event that damaged the First Temple. It was in this hole the dyad was actually found, a separate structure from the Thieves’ Hole. Lehner, citing images of where the dyad was found, said Reisner’s overlook was significant for future archeologists’ understanding of the nature of the temple.
“Reisner conflated the hole where the dyad really was found with the Thieves’ Hole, and that makes a difference for the context of the dyad,” Lehner said. “In general, Reisner knew from all his excavations, and that’s why he’s so perceptive, that he was dealing with two [layers of] temples.”
Though the mystery of the two holes has been solved, it’s only one piece of the ancient puzzle. It’s unlikely that other pieces will be hidden away in diary entries like Reisner’s, in the opinion of Lehner’s partner, Frances Dilks, who is also the development coordinator of AERA.
“[Lehner] is dedicated and he’s a very humble man, but he’s very free with all his knowledge,” Dilks said. “Some people tend to want to hide their stuff or keep it to themselves.”
Lehner’s next lectures will inevitably captivate a new crop of experts and enthusiasts, and he will have even more answers; though perhaps also even more questions.
