n all gods; shape for me, this my daughter, whom I have begotten.” Unlike most contractors, Khnum gets right to work, replying: “Her form shall be more exalted than the gods, in her great dignity of King.” On Khnum’s potter’s wheel, little Hatshepsut is depicted unmistakably as a boy.”
So, here we have a king, proven by archaeology to be a woman, yet portrayed in temple reliefs as a boy, and a male king in Khufu, who is depicted as a young girl. Interestingly, Khnum appears to represent a form of male / female dualism, for the source of the River Nile that he represents is feminine by nature. Could Khnum have represented a form of inverse dualism? A more likely explanation is that Hatshepsut was projecting a male effigy to her people out of respect for the dynastic heritage that preceded her, but what about Khufu?
Linguistically, there are some interesting occurrences of the name Khufu, as well as words beginning with the letters ‘Kh’. For instance, ‘Khu’ refers to the name of the Egyptian peacock and is the symbol for a heron. Additionally, in the journey of Osiris in the sixth section of the Duat, the letters refer to ‘spirit souls’. The hieroglyphic ‘Khu’ is also the symbol of a spirit and refers to the four supports of heaven. Furthermore, William Cooper informs us in his 1991 book, ‘Behold a Pale Horse’, that: “The ancient Egyptian word for pyramid was KHUTI”, meaning ‘glorious light’.
We find several occurrences of the letters ‘Kh’ around the time of the Fourth Dynasty. Take, for instance, Khufu-Ankh, chief of the singers and flutists in the royal court, who was buried in his lavishly adorned mastaba at Giza. There was also Khentkawes, a royal lady who dates to the same period as Radjedef. Like Khufu, her name starts with ‘Kh’, which stands for ‘Sieve’, according to Egyptologist, Wallis Budge, who published the hieroglyphic symbols and their meanings in his 1910 book,; ‘Egyptian Language’. The symbol, which resembles a circle enclosed with horizontal lines, is often mistaken for the symbol ‘RA’, a circle solidly shaded, creating confusion and mistranslation in more faded inscriptions. Her peculiar stone-cut tomb is located in a place of honour near the sphinx, and a pyramid was built in her honour at Abu Sir. Khentkawes was an important lady and believed to be the mother of two kings, although their identity remains uncertain.
At the end of the day, our understanding of individuals and their complex relationships nearly 5 millennia ago, must be subject to a large dose of caution, and humility, especially in Egypt, where two-thirds of the country remains covered in sand and completely unexcavated, and where ninety nine percent of what we believe to be true comes from one percent of the population, royalty. And, even then, what we think we know is based on what this privileged few, mostly men, wanted us to believe, as portrayed on the walls of their temples and tombs.
Many disciplines, such as science, mathematics and physics, have developed, revised, and, in some instances, completely reinvented themselves over a span of thousands of years. Egyptology, on the other hand, is in its infancy, having existed for only two centuries. Why, then, can we not continue to evolve our understanding of its most iconic figures or, at the very least, question them; such as Khufu, the would-be author of the world’s most famous signature – the Great Pyramid?