45 Facts About Khufu

Khufu or Cheops was an ancient Egyptian monarch who was the second pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty, in the first half of the Old Kingdom period.

Khufu is generally accepted as having commissioned the Great Pyramid of Giza, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, but many other aspects of his reign are poorly documented.

Everything known about Khufu comes from inscriptions in his necropolis at Giza and later documents.

For example, Khufu is the main character noted in the Westcar Papyrus from the 13th dynasty.

Khufu's obituary is presented there in a conflicting way: while the king enjoyed a long-lasting cultural heritage preservation during the period of the Old Kingdom and the New Kingdom, the ancient historians Manetho, Diodorus and Herodotus hand down a very negative depiction of Khufu's character.

Khufu's name was dedicated to the god Khnum, which might point to an increase of Khnum's popularity and religious importance.

Sources contemporary to Khufu's time give three key pieces of information: One of them was found at the Dakhla Oasis in the Libyan Desert.

Therefore, Khufu's highest known and certain preserved date is the "Year after the 13th cattle count".

Newer evaluation of contemporary documents and the Palermo stone inscription strengthen the theory that the cattle count under Khufu was still performed biennially, not annually, as thought earlier.

In sum, all these documents would prove that Khufu ruled for at least 26 or 27 years, and possibly for over 34 years, if the inscription in the relieving chambers points to a biennial cattle count.

Indeed, if the compiler of the Turin Canon did not take into account a biennial cattle count, it could even mean that Khufu ruled for 46 years.

Khufu's name appears in inscriptions at Elkab and Elephantine and in local quarries at Hatnub and Wadi Hammamat.

Khufu sent several expeditions in an attempt to find turquoise and copper mines.

Khufu sent several expeditions to Byblos in an attempt to trade copper tools and weapons for precious Lebanon cedar wood.

New evidence regarding political activities under Khufu's reign has recently been found at the site of the ancient port of Wadi al-Jarf on the Red Sea coast in the east of Egypt.

The only three-dimensional depiction of Khufu that has survived time nearly completely is a small and well restored ivory figurine known as the Khufu Statuette.

Khufu holds a flail in his left hand and his right hand rests together with his lower arm on his right upper leg.

Khufu argues that no building that clearly dates to the Fourth Dynasty was ever excavated at Kom el-Sultan or Abydos.

Furthermore, he points out that the face of Khufu is unusually squat and chubby and shows no emotional expression.

Khufu believes Khufu himself would never have allowed the display of such a comparatively sloppy work.

Deitrich Wildung has examined the representation of Nubian features in Egyptian iconography since the predynastic era and has argued that Khufu had these specific, Nubian features and this was represented in his statues.

Khufu is depicted in several relief fragments found scattered in his necropolis and elsewhere.

In one scene king Khufu wears the double-crown; nearby, the depiction of the god Thoth is visible.

None of the numerous relief fragments shows king Khufu offering to a god.

The pyramid complex of Khufu was erected in the northeastern section of the plateau of Giza.

Khufu chose the high end of a natural plateau so that his future pyramid would be widely visible.

Close behind the queens' pyramids G1-b and G1-c, the cult pyramid of Khufu was found in 2005.

Khufu possessed an extensive mortuary cult during the Old Kingdom.

The contradictory depiction of Khufu is the object of great dispute between Egyptologists and historians to this day.

Verena Lepper and Miriam Lichtheim suspect that a difficult-to-assess depiction of Khufu was exactly what the author had planned.

However, modern Egyptologists question whether Khufu was still personally adored as a royal ancestor at this time; they think it more likely that Khufu was already seen as a mere symbolic foundation figure for the history of the Isis temple.

Manetho says that Khufu received a contempt against the gods and that he had written a sacred book about that and that he received that book during his travel through Egypt.

Khufu is depicted as the direct follower of Khufu and as likewise evil and that he ruled for 56 years.

The ancient historian Diodorus claims that Khufu was so much abhorred by his own people in later times that the mortuary priests secretly brought the royal sarcophagus, together with the corpse of Khufu, to another, hidden grave.

Diodorus states that the Khufu pyramid was beautifully covered in white, but the top was said to be capped.

Khufu thinks that the pyramid was built with ramps, which were removed during the finishing of the limestone shell.

Over time, Egyptologists examined possible motives and reasons as to how Khufu's reputation changed over time.

Closer examinations of and comparisons between contemporary documents, later documents and Greek and Coptic readings reveal that Khufu's reputation changed slowly, and that the positive views about the king still prevailed during the Greek and Ptolemaic era.

Alan B Lloyd, for example, points to documents and inscriptions from the 6th dynasty listing an important town called Menat-Khufu, meaning "nurse of Khufu".

Furthermore, he points to the overwhelming number of places where mortuary cults for Khufu were practiced, even outside Giza.

Possibly the bad meaning of the Coptic reading of "Khufu" was unconsciously copied by the Greek and Roman authors.

In 2004, spiritualist Page Bryant published the novel The Second Coming of the Star Gods, which deals with Khufu's alleged celestial origin.

The novel The Legend of The Vampire Khufu, published by Raymond Mayotte in 2010, deals with king Khufu awakening in his pyramid as a vampire.

Films which deal with Khufu, or have the Great Pyramid as a subject, include Howard Hawks' Land of the Pharaohs from 1955, a fictional account of the building of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, and Roland Emmerich's Stargate from 1994, in which an extraterrestrial device is found near the pyramids.

Khufu was mentioned in Assassin's Creed Origins, as to where the player should find his tomb.