Khufu, known to the Greeks as Cheops, was the second king of Egypt’s 4th Dynasty and the builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza. He ruled for over two decades around 2589 to 2566 BC, at the height of the Old Kingdom, when the power of the state was at its peak.
His family
Khufu was the son of King Sneferu, the greatest pyramid builder of all, who raised the Bent Pyramid and the Red Pyramid at Dahshur, and of Queen Hetepheres I, whose tomb furniture was found near the Great Pyramid in 1925. His sons Djedefre and Khafre both became king after him, and his grandson Menkaure built the third pyramid at Giza.
What we know about him
Strangely, the builder of the largest pyramid is known from only one complete statue: an ivory figurine about 7.5 cm high, found at Abydos and now in Cairo. The Greek historian Herodotus, writing 2,000 years later, called him a cruel tyrant who forced his people to work, but that story is not supported by Egyptian sources. In 2013, archaeologists found the oldest inscribed papyri in the world at Wadi al-Jarf on the Red Sea. They include the logbook of an official named Merer, who shipped limestone blocks to Giza for Khufu’s pyramid, a rare first-hand record of the project.
His monuments
Beside the Great Pyramid stand three small pyramids for his queens, cemeteries of mastaba tombs for his family and officials, and the pits for his boats. One of them held the Khufu solar boat, now in the Grand Egyptian Museum. See them all on our Cairo day tours.
