Cheops - Life

King of Memphis in Egypt, second ruler of the fourth dynasty. He is famous as the builder of the Great Pyramid. The Ship of Cheops is a funeral ship found dismantled at Giza in 1954 in one of five boat pits around the pyramid.

Khufu (in Greek known as Cheops) was a Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt's Old Kingdom.

Life

Khufu was the son of King Sneferu and Queen Hetepheres.

It is generally thought that Khufu came to the throne in his twenties, and reigned for about 23 years, which is the number ascribed to him by the Turin Papyrus. Other sources from much later periods suggest a significantly longer reign: Manetho gives him a reign of 65 years, and Herodotus states that he reigned fifty years. An inscription containing his Highest regnal year, the "Year of the 17th Count of Khufu", first mentioned by Flinders Petrie in an 1883 book and then lost to historians, was rediscovered by Zahi Hawass in 2001 in one of the relieving chambers within this king's pyramid. Secondly, in 2003, the "Year after the 13th cattle count" of Khufu was found on a rock inscription at the Dakhla Oasis in the Sahara. This story cycle depicts Khufu as mean and cruel, and is ultimately frustrated in his attempts to ensure that his dynasty survives past his two sons. Whether or not this story cycle is true is unknown, But Khufu's negative reputation lasted at least until the time of Herodotus, who was told further stories of that king's cruelty to his people and to his own family in order to ensure the construction of his pyramid. In more recent years two other likenesses have been tentatively identified as being that of Khufu, based largely on stylistic similarities to the piece discovered by Petrie.

While pyramid construction had been solely for the reigning pharaoh prior to Khufu, his reign saw the construction of several minor pyramid structures that are believed to have been intended for other members of his royal household, amounting to a royal cemetery. Three small pyramids to the east of Khufu's pyramid are tentatively thought to belong to two of his wives, and the third has been ascribed to Khufu's mother Hetepheres I, whose funerary equipment was found relatively intact in a shaft tomb nearby. The closest tombs to Khufu's were those belonging to Prince Kawab and Khufuhaf and their respective wives. Forster, "Khufu's 'mefat' expeditions into the Libyan Desert", Egyptian Archaeology 23, Autumn 2003, pp 25-28 ^ Figures: King Khufu (BBC). ^ Guardian's Egypt: The Pharaoh Khufu ^ Kevin Jackson and Jonathan Stamp, Building the Great Pyramid (Firefly Books, 2003) ISBN 1-55297-719-6 ^ Egyptian Art in the Age of the Pyramids (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999), pp.