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Sited on higher ground, with an intact summit and steeper sides, the middle or Second Pyramid seems taller than Khufu's. Built by his son Khafre (known to posterity as Chephren), its base originally covered 214.8 square metres and its weight is estimated at 4,883,000 tons. As with Khufu's Pyramid, the original rock-hewn burial chamber was never finished and an upper chamber was subsequently constructed. Classical writers such as Pliny believed that the pyramid had no entrance, but when Belzoni located and blasted open the sealed portal on its north face in 1818, he found that Arab tomb robbers had somehow gained access nearly a thousand years earlier, undeterred by legends of an idol "with fierce and sparkling eyes", bent on slaying intruders. In March 1993, several tourists were injured by an explosion inside Chephren's Pyramid, probably caused by a bomb. If the pyramid is open, you can follow one of the two entry corridors downwards, and then upwards, into a long horizontal passage leading to Chephren's burial chamber , where Belzoni celebrated his discovery by writing his name in black letters. This ebullient circus strongman-turned-explorer went on to find Seti I's tomb in the Valley of the Kings, and died searching for the source of the River Niger. Set into the chamber's granite floor is the sarcophagus of Khafre, who reigned c.2558-2533 BC. The square cavity near the southern wall may have marked the position of a canopic chest containing the pharaoh's viscera.
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