[1] The idea to build a monument in honour of the Voortrekkers was first discussed on 16 December 1888, when President Paul Kruger of the South African Republic attended the Day of the Covenant celebrations at Danskraal in Natal.

[2]: 13 Construction started on 13 July 1937 with a sod-turning ceremony performed by the chairman of the SVK, Advocate Ernest George Jansen, on what later became known as Monument Hill.

[citation needed] The building shares architectural resemblance with European monuments such the Dôme des Invalides in France and the Völkerschlachtdenkmal in Germany, but also contains African influences.

This massive space, flanked by four huge arched windows made from yellow Belgian glass, contains the unique marble Historical Frieze which is an intrinsic part of the design of the monument.

[4] The frieze consists of 27 bas-relief panels depicting the history of the Great Trek, but incorporating references to everyday life, work methods and religious beliefs of the Voortrekkers.

The set of panels illustrates key historical scenes starting from the first voortrekkers of 1835, up to the signing of the Sand River Convention in 1852.

After passing through the gate one finds oneself inside a big laager consisting of 64 ox-wagons made out of decorative granite.

[5] This Germanisation of the Voortrekker Monument occurred after Moerdijk's initial design had caused a public outcry in the South African press for its resemblance to an Egyptian temple.

Finalising his design of the Voortrekker Monument, Moerdijk visited Egypt in 1936, including the Karnak Temple Complex in Thebes.

The most prominent aspect of Moerdijk's monument is the annual mid noon sun illumination of the Benben stone, the encrypted cenotaph.In the years preceding World War II, several Afrikaner nationalists travelled to Germany for academic, political and cultural studies.

He instead announced the intention to use the Amarna bust as the central show piece of the thousand years Third Reich, in a revitalised Berlin to be renamed Germania.

[6]: 39, 122  Moerdijk created a similar central focus in the Voortrekker Monument, but in vertical instead of horizontal plane, and in African instead of European style.

The monument's huge upper dome features Egyptian backlighting[6]: 133  to simulate the sky, the heavenly abode of God.

Van Wouw and Frans Soff had earlier employed the Egyptian obelisk, a petrified ray of the African Aten, as central motif for the National Women's Monument in Bloemfontein, South Africa, itself likewise inaugurated on the Day of the Vow, 16 December 1913.

There he visited the Karnak Temple Complex at Thebes,[6]: 106  where an African Renaissance had flourished under Pharaoh Akhenaten, Nefertiti's husband.

The open air temples of Akhenaten to the Aten incorporated the Heliopolitan tradition of employing sun rays in architecture, as well as realistic wall reliefs or friezes.

Moerdijk's message as implied by the wall frieze: by exodus out of the British Cape Colony, God created a new civilisation inland.

In order to give thanks to this new creation of civilisation, Moerdijk, recalling Abraham of old, outwardly designed the Voortrekker Monument as an altar.