rt of the popular Cult of Khufu that had formed, and might his interest in Seneb have come from his own fascination with dwarfs? Might the ‘majesty’ referred to on Seneb’s inscription have been Khufu?
This possibility is reinforced by a letter that the young Pepi II wrote to one of his court, an explorer called Harkhuf, who had discovered a dwarf in a land called Lyam. The letter clearly reflects Pepi II’s enthusiasm for dwarfs:
“Come north to the Palace at once! Drop everything – hurry and bring that pygmy you have brought, alive, happy and well, for the divine dances, to gladden the heart, to delight the heart of the king who lives for ever! When he goes down with you onto the boat, get trusty men to stand around him on the gangplank – don’t let him fall in the water! When he goes to bed at night, get trusty men to lie all round him in his hammock. Inspect him ten times a night! My Majesty longs to see this pygmy more than all the treasures of Sinai and Punt!”
Might Pepi II’s curiosity with dwarfs stem from the cult of Khufu and the important role that Seneb had in Khufu’s court?
What conclusions can we draw from the fact that the alleged builder of the Great Pyramid is depicted with a vagina and not a penis? Returning to Occam’s Razor, would we not conclude that Khufu may have been a woman? Further evidence of this hypothesis is suggested by Khnum’s most celebrated scene at the temple of Egypt’s famed king, the female pharaoh, Hatshepsut, who ruled Egypt from 1479 to 1458 BCE. A 2009 National Geographic article by historian, Chip Brown, comments:
“In reliefs at Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple, she spun a fable of her accession as the fulfilment of a divine plan and declared that her father, Thutmose I, not only intended her to be king but also was able to attend her coronation. In the panels the great god Amun is shown appearing before Hatshepsut’s mother disguised as Thutmose I. He commands Khnum, the ram-headed god of creation, who models the clay of mankind on his potter’s wheel: “Go, to fashion her better than 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 so