How many main pyramids are there at the Giza complex? There are three: the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the Pyramid of Khafre, and the Pyramid of Menkaure.
These royal monuments were built during Egypt’s Fourth Dynasty, roughly between the 26th and 25th centuries BCE. They form the best-known part of the Giza necropolis, a much larger funerary landscape that also contained temples, causeways, cemeteries, smaller queens’ pyramids, and workers’ settlements.
“Three” refers specifically to the principal royal pyramids, not every pyramid-shaped structure at the site. Khufu’s complex includes three subsidiary queens’ pyramids, while Menkaure’s complex also has three smaller pyramids traditionally associated with queens. Counting those smaller monuments is the usual source of confusion.
The pyramids were built for Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure, rulers whose monuments were arranged across the plateau. Khafre’s pyramid can look taller because it stands on higher ground and retains some casing near its summit, but Khufu’s pyramid is the largest of the three.