torical markers for anyone to describe that era. There is no clear and solid evidence of any kind that there was a pyramid building 4th Dynasty King called Khufu…The entire pattern of evidence suggests, on the contrary, that if there ever was a King Khufu he lived long after the Pyramid was built and was named after the pyramid – not the other way around.”
So, it appears that the Fourth Dynasty is historically ambiguous, especially as it pertains to the elusive pharaoh, Khufu. Might his real identity not be as iron-clad as previously thought? While speculation to this effect is in order, there is ample evidence to suggest that Khufu was the king we thought he was. For a start, the Giza plateau is speckled with his name, as catalogued by the American Egyptologist George Andrew Reisner (1867 – 1942) during the early part of the last century, as are lands further afield, such as the Dakhla Oasis in the Sahara, where an inscription bears evidence of the duration of Khufu’s reign.
Cults of Khufu appear shortly after his death and succeeding Dynasties paid homage to him for 2,500 years. As a result of the adoration bestowed upon the king, it is believed that his relics, i.e. statues and reliefs, were looted or relocated and are now lost from history. If true, this would explain the conspicuous lack of artefacts that have survived and help answer the burning question; where is the physical evidence of Khufu’s legacy?
Khufu and the Man Behind the Oath of Protection
The belief that Khufu is who we think he is remains the favoured theory, and justifiably so, for Occams Razor – the adage that the simplest explanation is most likely correct – suggests he was a Fourth Dynasty king. While this is entirely reasonable, I believe there are other possibilities that deserve consideration, especially in light of the evidence or, should I say, lack thereof?
Egyptologists tell us that Khufu’s full name was “Khnum-Khufu”, meaning “the god Khnum protects me.” The phrase is intriguing, for it sounds less like a name and more like a spell or oath of protection. In reality, it is both; a theophoric name, Greek for “bearing a deity”, or the practice of embedding a god in a child’s name in order to secure protection from the deity. Egyptologist, Wallis Budge, discusses the Khnum quandary in Volume II of his 1912 book, ‘The Gods of The Egyptians’: ‘The name of Khnemu is connected with the root Khnem, “to join, to unite,” and with Khnem, “to build”; astronomically the name refers to the “conjunction” of the sun and moon at stated times of the year, and we know from the texts of all periods that Khnemu was the “builder” of the gods of men.” Serendipitously, Budge’s analysis seems eerily appropriate for a king who ‘created’ the greatest monument in history.
So, who exactly was Khnum? As god of the source of the River Nile, Khnum was one of the earliest Egyptian deities and, by definition, a god of the south, where he was associated with Amun and Osiris. The Osiris association is not surprising, for Khnum is depicted with a ram’s head, which sometimes resembles the head of a bull, and each were potent symbols of procreation in ancient times, as was Osiris. Khnum was the creator god, and afforded each new life a fixed number of years, called ‘that which is ordained’, giving rise to the modern notion of ‘Fate’.
Khnum’s many titles included ‘Divine Potter’ and ‘Lord of Created Things from Himself’, due to the fact that he used a potter’s wheel to construct children’s bodies from clay. Khnum’s work was considered complementary with that of the Memphite God Ptah, who similarly sported ram horns and fashioned new bodies for the souls of the dead in the underworld; each was believed to be carrying out the orders of the god, Thoth. His primary cult was centred on the ancient island of Abu, known today as Elephantine – site of the first city, according to Egyptian mythology – and it was here that he formed a triad with his wife, the goddesses Satis, and their daughter Anuket.
Satis was an early deity of war, hunting, and fertility, as well as the goddess of the i