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The smallest of the three Great Pyramids was King Menkaura’s (reigned ca. 2532-2503 BC), known to the Greeks as Mykerinos. After Menkaura, the high point of the Pyramid Age had peaked, but it was not completely done.
====Later Pyramids====The pyramids constructed after the Fourth Dynasty were inferior in size, but not so in theological religious importance. The last king of the Fifth Dynasty, Unas (ruled ca, 2375-2345 BC), introduced a new an innovation to the pyramids known as the Pyramid Texts. The Pyramid Texts were a collection of hieroglyphic texts, known as Utterances, inscribed on the walls of the pyramid’s tomb chamber, which served to unite the king in death with Osiris and the different manifestations of the sun-god. <ref> Malek, Jaromir. “Old Kingdom (c. 2686-2125 BC).” In <i>The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt.</i> Edited by Ian Shaw. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pgs. 112-13</ref> One Utterance describes how the rides an ethereal barque with the sun gods Re and Atum and Isis, who was the goddess of magic and Osiris’ wife.:<blockquote>“He goes aboard the bark like Re at the banks of the Winding Waterway, this King rows in the Bark of Lightening, ; he navigates therein to the Field of the Lower Skies at this south of the Field of Rushes. His Re takes his hand is taken by Re, ; Atum lifts Isis takes his head is lifted up by Atum, the end of his bow-warp is taken by Isis, his stern-warp is coiled by Nepthys, the Celestial Serpent has placed him at her side, she drops him down among the khentyush as calf-herds.” <ref> Faulkner, Richard, trans. <i>The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts</i> (Stilwell, Kansas: Digireads.com Publishing, 2007), Utterance 548</ref></blockquote>
Pyramid building continued into the Middle Kingdom (ca. 1975-1640 BC), which comprised Egypt’s Twelfth and Thirteenth Dynasties. Most of the prominent pyramids from this period were built near the city of Lisht in Middle Egypt, but some were also constructed near Dashur. <ref> Lehner, pgs. 168-87</ref> These pyramids were but a shadow of those built during the Fourth Dynasty and by the New Kingdom the royals abandoned pyramids as royal burials in favor of more isolated and hidden tombs in the Valley of the Kings near Thebes in southern Egypt.
