The second largest pyramid in Egypt stands just to the southwest of the Great Pyramid. It is the Pyramid of Khafre (Egyptian name) or the Pyramid of Chephren (Greek name). It is 446 feet tall, so it is also a huge structure. The Giza plateau rises up to the southwest, so this pyramid actually looks larger than the Great Pyramid much of the time. And since the Great Pyramid has lost 30 feet off the top, the two are very close in size.

Khafre built this pyramid and he was the son of Khufu, the builder of the Great Pyramid.

In the first photo, you can see both pyramids. Khufu is on the left and the pyramid of Khafre is on the right.

Originally, the Khufu and Khafre pyramids were covered with a polished white limestone casing and they gleamed in the sunlight like giant crystals. I suspect that they could be seen for many miles gleaming in the sunlight. In the next photos, you can see that Khafre still has some of its original limestone covering up near the top of the pyramid.

Egyptologists speculate that the original plan for the Khafre pyramid was for it to be larger than Khufu’s pyramid. That’s because the base of it is actually larger than that of the Great Pyramid. But it got built smaller than the base. You can somewhat see this in the last photo. I’m standing on what was actually built as part of the pyramid base but not used. You can also see that there were some very large stones used as part of the base for the Khafre pyramid and that some of them were facing lengthwise which we didn’t see in the Khufu Pyramid.