The transverse corridor staircase leads into the five niche statue chapel, a room with significant religious importance. Accessed through a double-door, it had a floor paved with white alabaster, red granite sheathing in the niches and dado, fine white limestone sheathed walls elsewhere which was lavishly decorated in relief, and a limestone ceiling decorated with stars evoking the night-sky of the "Duat". A small staircase stood before each niche, which was once occupied by a statue, none of which have been preserved. It was originally assumed that each statue represented one of the king's five names, but the Abusir Papyri, discovered in the nearby pyramid of Neferirkare, indicate otherwise. The papyri identify that the central statue represented the king as Osiris, while the two outermost ones represented him as the king of Upper Egypt, and the king of Lower Egypt. The remaining two are not identified. Exiting the chapel to the south is a path leading through two rooms – including a rectangular vestibule that appears to be a predecessor of the "antichambre carée", first found in Nyuserre's mortuary temple – passing around a great stone massif and into the westernmost room of the temple, the offering hall.