Khufu

Archaeological evidence shows that the workers had decent living conditions, access to good food, and evidence of medical care.

Worker graffiti found in the pyramid includes team names such as Friends of Khufu, suggesting pride in their work and perhaps even some kind of wage system.

These were not enslaved and desperate people being forced at weapon point to roll rocks around.

They were construction workers, skilled craftsmen, and coordinated teams building something of monumental importance to their civilization.

The transition from step pyramids to smooth-sided pyramids can be seen in the Bent Pyramid at Dahshur, which appears to have undergone a change in angle during construction.

possibly because the original angle was too steep and the structure began showing signs of stress.

Then we have the Red Pyramid at Dahshur, also built by Sneferu, Khufu's predecessor, which is actually the best preserved of all the pyramids, and shows what these structures looked like when they were new.

Understanding the evolution of pyramid construction demonstrates that the Egyptians were experimenting, learning and innovating as they went.

If you ask a typical Egyptologist who carved the Sphinx, they won't hesitate.

They'll say, Khafre, 4th dynasty, builder of the second pyramid at Giza, son of Khufu.

Not because there's a big inscription saying so, but because when they look at the plateau, the Sphinx doesn't stand alone.

It sits inside a web of relationships, and in that web, Khafre's name keeps showing up.

Literally, a lion body with the head of the reigning king.

Fusing royal power with solar and protective symbolism, watching the eastern horizon where the sun god rises, there's also the later historical memory.

New Kingdom inscriptions, carved more than a thousand years after Harfre, mention kings like Harfre and Khufu in connection with Giza, and one famous stela, set up by Thutmose IV between the paws of the Sphinx, tells a story of a prince who fell asleep in the shadow of a buried colossus and was promised kingship if he freed it from the sand.

That Stela doesn't name the original builder, but the fact that later Egyptians associated the Sphinx so strongly with royal power at Giza reinforces the idea that, at least by their time, it was understood as part of the Pyramid King's sacred landscape, not some orphan from a forgotten age.

Okay, this is not something I made.

This is the traditional timeline, right? You got the Great Pyramid of Khufu being a tomb for Khufu himself in 2560 BC.

Yet that whole story has massive holes now.

Now look at the big one where I have the question mark.

All we know of them is made up of two or three series of facts, always the same, which the contemporaneous monuments teach us concerning these rulers.

Khnumu Khufi, abbreviated into Khufu, the Cheops of the Greeks, was probably the son of Snofru.

He reigned twenty-three years, and successfully defended the minds of the Syanitic peninsula against the Bedouin.

He may still be seen on the face of the rocks in the Wadi Maghara sacrificing his Asiatic prisoners, now before the jackal Anubis, now before the ibis-headed Thoth.

Not one has yielded by a hair's breadth since the day when the workmen fixed it in its place.

Four barriers in all were thus interposed between the external world and the vault.

The great pyramid was called Khuit, the horizon, in which Khufu had to be swallowed up, as his father the sun was engulfed every evening in the horizon of the west.

It contained only the chambers of the deceased, without a word of inscription, and we should not know to whom it belonged if the masons, during its construction, had not daubed here and there in red paint, among their private marks, the name of the king and the dates of his reign.

Perhaps he was not the first to attempt to point out to the traveler the things which he should not fail to see, but to him may be traced the list of the objects which won the admiration of the world.

and which was copied by other writers until it became authoritative discriminating indeed was antipater in confining his list of wonders to the sacred number of seven when it might well have been extended to seventy times seven nor was she prejudiced in favor of any one land or age europe glorying in the culture of athens and rome could claim but one of the wonders three were in asia two in africa and one on an island in the sea in point of time they represent a period of about three thousand years the list is as follows The Pyramid of Khufu from about 2900 BC or earlier The Walls of Babylon from between 905 and 562 BC The Statue of the Olympian Zeus from about 470 to 462 BC The Temple of Diana from after 356 BC.

The tomb of King Mausolus from about 353 BC.

The Colossus of Rhodes from 280 BC.

So the rocky cliffs bordering the valley, and the valley too, abounded with myriads of wonderful tombs.

Three dynasties of kings had ruled Egypt and passed away.

The fourth came with Khufu, or Cheops, as some call him.

The Egyptians spelled his name HWFW.

I'm sure it's been dated because we haven't heard any results.

Because for damn sure, if they dated that paint and it came back as 2500 BC, right around the time of Khufu, they, this would've been, this would've, there would've been a huge banner raised up, and it would've been world news.

It would, they would not stop talking about this result if that had been the case.

But we just don't know.

Yeah.

For, for archaeologists and academics, I mean, that's the, the guys that are writing the textbooks that are saying, "Well, no, the, the dynastic Egyptians built this stuff.

You know, Khufu definitely is responsible for that pyramid.

And, you know, there's no mystery to be found in the Serapeum in these 100-ton granite boxes.