All the parts of a pyramid complex were included in Reisner's excavation of the Third Giza Pyramid, build ca. 2490 - 2472 B.C. by the Pharoah Menkaure (or Mycerinus as the Greeks called him):

1. The PYRAMID itself symbolized both the sun's rays on which the king would ascend to heaven, and the primeval earth mound from which the body of the dead king would be resurrected.
2. The SUBSIDIARY PYRAMIDS were for the burial of the most important queen.
3. The PYRAMID TEMPLE (or MORTUARY TEMPLE) was for the funeral and the subsequent worship of the king.
4. The CAUSEWAY connected the Mortuary Temple to the Valley Temple down near the Nile Valley floor.
5. The VALLEY TEMPLE was close to a harbor and served as a portal for the whole pyramid complex.

For untold generations after Menkaure's funeral, the pyramid complex was both a tomb and a temple for the continuing worship of the deified king.

Reisner found the dyad of Menkaure and his queen in the Valley Temple. The king's workmen began to make the Valley Temple from huge limestone blocks, but they did not finish before Menkaure died. The next pharaoh, Shepseskaf, completed his father's Valley Temple with mudbrick.

The sculptors also did not finish the dyad. They still had to polish the lower parts of the queen's legs and the base, where they would have later incised the royal hieroglyphic names and titles of the pair. Lacking hard metal tools, Egyptian sculptors roughed out the form of the statue with pounding stones. They used smaller hammer stones as they worked the stone down to the desired surface and detail. The pounding technique is indicated by the pitted surface on the back of the dyad. The smooth surface was achieved by sanding with pieces of quartzite, followed by abrasive powder. Sanding with fine clay produced the final polished surface.

Old Kingdom mastaba tombs were flat-topped stone or mudbrick superstructures which marked the tombs of wealthy individuals and their families. A chapel with at least one symbolic "false" door and a chamber for the statues of the deceased was either built against the side of the mastaba or contained within it. A stelae of the deceased seated before a table of offerings was commonly placed above the false door. A vertical shaft led into the rock-cut burial chamber below ground. The early mastabas were mostly solid buildings formed of a rubble core encased with masonry. The tomb shafts were built through the core of the mastaba and down through rock to the burial chambers which were sometimes lined with fine masonry.

The scenes on the walls of the chapels not only served as memorials to the deceased. The pictures of plentiful food and drink, and the vignettes of daily life, provided them with everything they needed in the afterlife. The statue in the tomb served as a substitute for the mortal body and a focus for friends and relatives to make offerings, which they placed in the tray set in front of the false door, the central focus of the door through which the spirit of the deceased could pass to gain sustenance.

This drum, belonging to a man named Ka-Aper, may have come from Saqqara and dates to the early 4th Dynasty, ca. 2550 BCE. It is inscribed with the official titles and name of the tomb owner. Representing a rolled up mat, it was placed above a "false door" (a stone representation of a real door) in the chapel of the tomb, where offerings for the deceased were placed. It was through the false door that the spirit (ka) of the dead person could leave the netherworld to communicate with the world of the living.