religion. The monument was used as a stone quarry from the New Kingdom period onwards, but was later preserved from further damages as its appearance of a rough unfinished and abandoned pyramid did not attract the attention of tomb robbers. Mortuary temple Works on the mortuary temple in which the funerary cult of the deceased king was to take place had not even started when Neferefe died. In the short 70-day period allowed between a king's death and his burial, Neferefre's successor—possibly the ephemeral Shepseskare—built a small limestone chapel. It was located on the pyramid base platform, in the gap left between the masonry and the platform edge, where the pyramid casing would have been put in the original plans. This small chapel was completed during Nyuserre's reign. This pharaoh also built a larger mortuary temple for his brother Neferefre, extending over the whole length of the pyramid side but built of cheaper mudbrick. The temple entrance comprised a courtyard adorned with two stone and 24 wooden columns. Behind was the earliest hypostyle hall of Ancient Egypt the remains of which can still be detected, its roof supported by wooden columns in the shape of lotus-clusters resting on limestone bases. This hall was possibly inspired by the royal palaces of the time. The structure housed a large wooden statue of the king as well as statues of prisoners of war. Storage rooms for the offerings were located to the north of the hall. In these rooms several statues of Neferefre were discovered, including six heads of the kings, making Neferefre the Fifth Dynasty king with the most surviving statues. East of the main hall was the "Sanctuary of the Knife" which served as a slaughterhouse for the rituals. Two narrow rooms on either sides of the central altar in front of the false door in the main hall may have housed long solar boats similar to Khufu's. A significant cache of administrative papyri, comparable in size to the Abusir Papyri found in the temples of Neferirkare and Khentkaus II, was discovered in a storeroom of the mortuary temple of Neferere during a 1982 University of Prague Egyptological Institute excavation. The presence of this cache is due to the peculiar historical circumstances of the mid-Fifth Dynasty. As both Neferirkare and Neferefre died before their pyramid complexes could be finished, Nyuserre altered their planned layout, diverting the causeway leading to Neferirkare's pyramid