The Pyramid of Mycerinus is much smaller than the other two, but must have looked very splendid when its lower half was cased with red Aswan granite. Many of the casing blocks are still in place; others strew the ground round about. It is to be noted that they are still rough on the face, an excess of thickness having been left when they were quarried ; also that they all were intended to be dressed down, for a slanting line has been marked on the side, showing how much had to be cut away. There is some presumption from this that Mycerinus did not live long enough to finish his Pyramid completely, and this is confirmed by the state of the two temples.

The upper part of the casing was of Moqattam limestone.

The present height of the Pyramid is 204 feet, its former height was 218. The length of the sides is 356feet. It, like the two larger Pyramids, shows evidence of a change of plan and an enlargement of the first design, but in this case there are some features which differ from any others.

The original entrance is seen, far inside the masonry, and a short sloping passage leads down from it to the burial chamber. The present entrance is on the side of the Pyramid, but not so high as in that of Cheops or of Chephren ; the passage is granite-lined till the point when it penetrates the rock. After sloping downwards for 104 feet, it runs for a few feet horizontally, passes through an antechamber, under three portculhsses, continuing for forty-one and a half feet almost on the level, then enters the chamber. This had been further excavated in the rock, and the lower passage enters below the opening to the earlier passage.

This was probably the burial chamber of the king, but in this pyramid there is a curious feature different from any of the others, for here we have yet another chamber excavated on a lower level. This, however, was almost certainly made much later. About 600 B.C. there was a sort of Renaissance in Egypt, and not only did the artists of that comparatively late period greatly admire the art of very early times and imitate it to the best of their ability, but they even revived the worship of the old kings, and it is likely, that they found that the pyramid had been plundered but that the kings body was still inside and that they hollowed out a new burial chamber for him and placed the body in a fine new coffin. A large stone sarcophagus was, as a matter of fact, found in this chamber by Col. Vyse, one of the earlier explorers in the nineteenth century, and was removed by him and sent off to the British Museum, but unfortunatetly it was lost at sea, and no drawing of it remains from which its period could be recognised.