Khufu and two of his successors, Khafre and Menkaure, are each the possessor of a name which, of all those people who lived during the third millennium, are known to the greatest number of those who lived after them. As the repetition of a man’s name was thought by the Egyptians to be one of the means of ensuring his prosperity in the Afterlife, this must, presumably, be a matter of continuing satisfaction to them. The colossal effort of raising the pyramids at Giza, if they did not in fact ensure the protection of the king’s mummified remains (for it must be presumed that they were long ago desecrated and destroyed), at least have kept alive their names, as no one else, living in their time, could possibly imagine.
It must be assumed that the pyramids are gigantic machines designed to subdue eternity: any other explanation seems still more fanciful. Their purpose is to annihilate death. That they failed to achieve at least part of their objective must be presumed by their ruined state, empty interiors, shattered sarcophagi. The immense ingenuity which went into their creation was matched by the cunning of those who penetrated their most secure sanctuaries.
But there always remains that most tantalizing of archaeological possibilities, the offchance that somewhere, deep inside the pyramid or far below its lowest masonry course, its principal inhabitant still lies in secret, surrounded by the treasure of a king of Egypt in his last great ceremony, his gold masked face smiling with the rictus of death and the satisfaction of having outsmarted posterity. It is an intriguing vision.
Over the years during which scientific excavation has been conducted in Egypt there have occasionally been hints that ‘hidden chambers’ may survive in some of the pyramids. Curious noises, sudden rushes of air or the disappearance of rain-water after a storm have all contributed to the idea that somewhere a chamber may be hidden in which an intact burial might still survive. It is, to say the least, unlikely; but it would be unwise to deny the possibility entirely.
Herodotus relates a curious story about the burial of Khufu at Giza. In Book II he remarks ‘the underground chambers which Cheops intended as vaults for his own use: these last were built on a sort of island surrounded by water introduced from the Nile by a canal’.21 This proposition has been universally discounted by scholars; there is no evidence whatsoever of a subterranean lake and it is generally reckoned that the chambers beneath the pyramid have, like those within its actual fabric, been fully plotted. This is not to say that there can be no other chambers, as yet undiscovered, but there is certainly less evidence to suggest that such might be the case with Khufu than there is in some other pyramids.
There is one later precedent at least for a type of subterranean lake burial that Herodotus seems to be describing; its existence prevents perhaps the absolute dismissal of what might otherwise seem a fairly typical Herodotean canard. In the cenotaph at Abydos of King Seti I, the distinguished father of Rameses II, the sarcophagus was placed on an island with a double stair, which was the hieroglyph for the primeval hill or island on which all creation began.22 The island was surmounted by a channel filled perpetually with subterranean waters. These were ‘the waters of Nun’ from which the supreme creator god had first risen. They are the waters of the nether world over which both the sun during the hours of darkness and the dead on their journey to the west had to pass.
It is unlikely that Herodotus had heard of Seti’s cenotaph. It is however possible that these subterranean islands, recalling the island of origins, the land of the beginning, did feature in some burial rituals and the priests, who seem to have been Herodotus’ principal and often wildly inaccurate source of information, had conflated the practice with the most august sepulchre which they knew. It is notable how often in early antiquity hidden waters beneath the earth are invested with special sanctity and mystery
THE SUCCESSORS OF KING KHUFU
On the death of Khufu he was first succeeded by his son, Djedefre. He was not originally the designated heir; this was Prince Kawab but he died before his father, a common enough occurrence in early Egypt. Some authorities list a shadowy figure, named variously as Bakare, Baufre, Bicheris. He may have been a son of Djedefre or possibly of Khufu himself. He was honoured as the ancestor of the kings of the succeeding Fifth Dynasty and was celebrated in a cult established to his memory.
Whilst it is known that it was Djedefre who completed Khufu’s burial and laid down the great ship (or ships, since another awaits excavation) beside his pyramid, there is considerable confusion at this point about the succession of the kings. It appears that factions formed within the royal family, probably the consequence of rival queens backing the competing claims of their respective sons. Whether any of this was apparent to the people of Egypt is unknown; certainly the annalists of the royal house must have been aware of what was going on, for it was their task to record the names of the kings in proper order and to set down the principal events of their reigns.
Djedefre reigned for eight years. He began work on a colossal excavation at Abu Rowash, for what was intended to be his tomb; it would have been immense, had it been completed.23 A marvellous survival, which indicated perhaps what might have been the quality of any work initiated by the king, is one of the finest portrait heads from the Old Kingdom, in a wonderful violet stone, of the king as a young man.24 It suggests the splendours which Djedefre’s tomb might have contained, had it been realized. He was the first king to adopt the formula Sa Ra, ‘Son of Ra’, which became a permanent part of the royal titulary.
World History
