The splendour of the Old Kingdom
THE FOURTH DYNASTY: KING SNEFERU
The last king of the Third Dynasty was Huni; it is not clear what, if any, relation to him was the next king, Sneferu, who was acknowledged as the founder of the Fourth Dynasty. His mother seems to have been a minor wife of Huni, but we do not know if Sneferu was his son; presumably the annalists did not think so, for otherwise there would not have been a new dynasty commencing with his name. He did, however, marry the Princess Het-epheres, ‘the Daughter of the God’, who presumably brought him the thrones of Egypt as her marriage portion. He was revered throughout the length of Egyptian history; his reign was always regarded as one of the high points of the Egyptian Golden Age. Virtually uniquely amongst the Kings of Egypt he was remembered by a sobriquet: he was ‘the Beneficent King’ and his cult was sustained down to Ptolemaic times, more than two thousand years after his death.
His cult was also celebrated as far away as the turquoise mines in Sinai, and as late as the Middle Kingdom a little shrine to his memory was maintained at Dahshur. A simple dish with the charcoal for an offering of incense, was found still on the modest altar which was consecrated there to him.1
There are three important monuments which may have been of Sneferu’s foundation: the Bent Pyramid at Maidum and two some distance away at Dahshur. It is possible that the one at Maidum, though finished by Sneferu, was begun by Huni; it was certainly attributed to Sneferu in later periods. In the New Kingdom a scribe visited Maidum and recorded that he ‘came to see the beautiful temple of Sneferu. He found it as though heaven were within it and the sun rising in it’.2 The pyramid was restored during the Middle Kingdom, one of the earliest recorded examples of the conservation of an ancient monument. It has been suggested that Sneferu also built the small step pyramid at Seila,3 one of the series which are believed to be visible expressions of the royal power, set up in a number of places in the Valley.
The founder of the Fourth Dynasty was also a considerable warrior. He
Led campaigns both to the south and west to put down troublesome uprisings of Nubians and Libyans on the frontiers. He, or one of his officers, left behind a powerful example of Pharaonic propaganda in the form of a rock carving showing the king striking down some luckless chieftain in the Sinai peninsula. Such carvings, the earliest of which date from the First Dynasty, were displayed on prominent rock faces, no doubt to impress the natives in perpetuity with the extent and implacable power of the king. The presence of Egyptian forces in Sinai was occasioned by the need to garrison the mines of turquoise and the routes to the sources of copper which the king sought to control.
Sneferu also maintained more peaceful contacts with distant peoples. He built a series of exceptionally large ships, constructed from cedar wood, and brought loads of cedar by sea from the great Levantine port of Byblos, with which Egypt was long to sustain trading relations. Cedar, presumably from Lebanon, was found in one of the pyramids of his foundation.4
World History
