fre and Menkaure, Radjedef / Djedefre had no pyramid of his own at Giza. This is curious, as is the fact that Khufu contains no reference to ‘Ra’, even though his ‘solar boat pit’ appears to be an extension of the solar cult.
An interesting aside with respect to the influence and/or origins of the solar cult of Ra, is the notion proposed by John Ivimy in his 1974 book, ‘The Sphinx and the Megaliths’: ‘In the ancient Egyptian myth, RA the sun god himself was born anew every morning from an egg.” Ivimy argues that the hundreds of egg-shaped stone circles in the United Kingdom, which appear to date from the same period as the cult of Ra, may represent the spread – or origin – of the god known as Ra; a god synonymous with Khnum. What makes the theory intriguing is the fact that Khnum is frequently portrayed with an egg; fitting imagery for a creator god, indeed.
Radjedef’s mother is unknown, but suspected to be one of Khufu’s minor wives, as it is believed he was required to marry his half-sister, Hetepheres II, in order to lay claim to the throne. Radjedef is said to have ruled 8 years, according to the Turin Kings List, and 11, according to a cattle count inscribed on a masonry block that covered Khufu’s southern boat pits. This is an extremely important discovery, and one that those responsible for framing our understanding of Egyptian history were not privy to, for Khufu’s solar boat pit was not discovered until 1954, and, by this time, Khufu had been irrefutably linked with the pyramid, without the insight that this new evidence provides.
Miroslav Verner, a Czech Egyptologist and author of the respected book, ‘The Pyramids’, comments on the significance of the solar boat discovery: “In this context, the attribution of just a single inscription and what is more, the only one with a date on all the blocks from the boat pit to somebody other than Djedefra does not seem very plausible.” So what does this tell us? The 43-metre long cedar wood ship was found dismantled in 650 parts in a huge pit, and nowhere did it reference Khufu; only Radjedef. Again we ask, how would this information have shaped the thinking of the formative researchers of the day – Petrie, Vyse, Resiner, Budge and others – if it had been uncovered before the quarry marks were discovered in the obscure reaches of the Great Pyramid and before Petrie found the headless statue in Abydos?
Radjedef is not attributed with a pyramid at Giza, although he is credited with building one at Abu Roash, five miles to the north. Interestingly, the pyramid is now thought to have risen higher than all others (although its size was comparable to the third pyramid at Giza), due to the elevated location where it was constructed. Today, the pyramid lies in ruins, and until recently was believed to have been abandoned – unfinished, as it were. However, recent work by a Franco-Swiss team of Egyptologists, as cited by Verner, confirms that the pyramid was, in fact, fully finished, albeit severely plundered in antiquity. Its association with Radjedef, however, is every bit as tenuous as Khufu’s link with the Great Pyramid.
Egyptologist, Mark Lehner, studied Radjedef’s pyramid at Abu Roash in his book, ‘The Complete Pyramids’, and concluded that pyramids of the older ‘Djoser’ style (i.e. the Third Dynasty King who built what is now regarded as the prototype to all subsequent Egyptian pyramids; the step pyramid at Sakarra) were orientated north-south, and, from the time of the later Meidum Pyramid onward (which is attributed to Radjedef’s grandfather, Sneferu), were aligned east-west. Lehner and others believe that Radjedef departed from the style of the day and returned to an earlier blueprint when he constructed his pyramid at Abu Roash, for it clearly has a north-south alignment.
Further, Lehner states: “From Sneferu to Khufu we have seen a continual striving to build chambers higher in the pyramid body. Djeddfre returned to the earlier concept and began his substructure as a colossal pit in the ground.” Why would a king, whose adoption of Re was a departure in religious philosop