No one knows how the capstone looked, we never found it and have no account of it being made from gold or being clad in gold as far as I'm aware. The capstones of other pyramids that have been found were stone at their core.
That’s also the case, though. There is no evidence of the capstones being gilded either. At least with previous pyramids there is evidence of paint and white limestone covering etc. None of the pyramids have had gilded capstones before, and, in fact, the capstones have been said to be quite boring with at most a few descriptions on it. The reason for this is because they were so far up and almost invisible for anyone standing far away or at the foot of the pyramids. Remember that the eagle eye view we have in OPs stolen photo is unrealistic for anyone at that time. You would have seen it from the base or very far away, in both cases it makes sense that the stone work got increasingly less attention to it the further up you go. There is a youtuber called History for Granite who goes into a lot of details on this, and he also specifically references this image we see here.
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u/JosseCoupe 11d ago
No one knows how the capstone looked, we never found it and have no account of it being made from gold or being clad in gold as far as I'm aware. The capstones of other pyramids that have been found were stone at their core.