Sahure's mortuary temple became the object of a cult of Sekhmet around the Eighteenth Dynasty. This cult remained active through to the Ptolemaic Kingdom, though its influence had begun to wane following the reign of Ramesses II. This period heralded the first wave of destruction that was visited up the Abusir monuments, whilst Sahure's escaped the dismantlement, possibly as a result of the cult's presence. The monuments stirred interest again in the Twenty-Fifth to Twenty-Sixth Dynasties, as shown by the copying of reliefs from the mortuary temples of Sahure, Nyuserre and Pepi II by the pharaoh Taharqa for the temple of Kawa in Nubia. A second wave of destruction of the Abusir monuments took place in the Twenty-Seventh Dynasty, but Sahure's temple was spared again, the cult still being present. With the onset of the Roman period, the Abusir monuments, including Sahure's, were subjected to a third wave of destruction. At the beginning of the Christian era, Sahure's temple became the site of a Coptic shrine, as evidenced by the recovery of pottery and graffiti dating to between the fourth and seventh century AD. Thereafter, until the late nineteenth century, the monuments were periodically farmed for limestone.