He is well known under his Hellenized names Mykerinos (Ancient Greek: Μυκερῖνος, romanized: Mukerînos by Herodotus), in turn Latinized as Mycerinus, and Menkheres (Μεγχέρης, Menkhérēs by Manetho).

The Turin King List is damaged at the spot where it should present the full sum of years, but the remains allow a reconstruction of "..?..

[9] In 2013, a fragment of the sphinx of Menkaure was discovered at Tel Hazor at the entrance to the city palace.

[8] In 1837, English army officer Richard William Howard Vyse, and engineer John Shae Perring began excavations within the pyramid of Menkaure.

Adjacent to the burial chamber were found wooden fragments of a coffin bearing the name of Menkaure and a partial skeleton wrapped in a coarse cloth.

It is now thought that the coffin was a replacement made during the much later Saite period, nearly two millennia after the king's original interment.

[12] According to Herodotus (430 BC), Menkaure was the son of Khufu (Greek Cheops), and that he alleviated the suffering his father's reign had caused the inhabitants of ancient Egypt.

But a second utterance from the place of divination declared to him that his good deeds were the very cause of shortening his life; for he had done what was contrary to fate; Egypt should have been afflicted for an hundred and fifty years, whereof the two kings before him had been aware, but not Mycerinus.

Therefore he caused many lamps to be made, and would light these at nightfall and drink and make merry; by day or night he never ceased from revelling, roaming to the marsh country and the groves and wherever he heard of the likeliest places of pleasure.

Thus he planned, that by turning night into day he might make his six years into twelve and so prove the oracle false.