The Giza Plateau is not only pyramids: scores of mastabas (flat-topped mud brick and stone tombs) of the high officials, priests, and family members who served the pyramid builders surround the three monuments. The Eastern Cemetery, beside the Great Pyramid, and the Western Cemetery, behind it, contain dozens of these tombs, some of which are open to visitors on rotating permits.
The best of the nobles' tombs offer a completely different experience from the royal monuments: instead of empty chambers, you find painted walls with detailed scenes of daily life — butchering animals, harvesting grain, musicians playing, servants carrying offerings. The tomb of Meresankh III is among the finest. These tombs also document the social world of pyramid-building Egypt in a way no royal monument does. Check at the ticket office which tombs are currently open; access rotates to protect the painted surfaces.