Khufu (Cheops)خوفو

Khufu was the son of King Sneferu — the founder of the Fourth Dynasty and himself a great pyramid-builder, responsible for the Bent and Red Pyramids at Dahshur — and Queen Hetepheres I. His full Egyptian name was Khnum-Khufwy, meaning "Khnum protects me," after the ram-headed creator god Khnum. He inherited a kingdom that was peaceful, prosperous, and highly organised, and as pharaoh he stood at the head of its government, religion, and army, believed by his people to rule with divine authority. He reigned for roughly 23 to 27 years and was succeeded by his son Djedefre; another son, Khafre, would later build the second great pyramid at Giza.

Khufu's monument on the Giza plateau is the largest of all Egyptian pyramids and the crowning achievement of the pyramid age. Built from roughly 2.3 million stone blocks weighing between 2.5 and 15 tons each, it originally rose about 146 metres and covered a base of some 13 acres. It remained the tallest man-made structure on Earth for around 3,800 years. Its precision still astonishes engineers: surveys have found the difference between its longest and shortest sides to be only a few inches. It is the last surviving member of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Near it, archaeologists also recovered the Khufu ship — a full-size cedar boat, dismantled and buried beside the pyramid more than 4,500 years ago.

The Greek historian Herodotus, writing more than two thousand years later, painted Khufu as a cruel tyrant who closed the temples and enslaved his people to build his tomb — even repeating a lurid, clearly apocryphal tale about his daughter. Modern archaeology tells a very different story. The pyramid was raised not by slaves but by an organised workforce of skilled, paid labourers, housed and fed near the site, who left behind graffiti calling themselves gangs like the "friends of Khufu." In Egypt's own later memory, Khufu was recalled as a wise ruler, not a monster — a reminder of how much the legend owes to much later, foreign retellings.

For all the scale of his monument, almost nothing of Khufu himself survives. His mummy has never been found — the granite sarcophagus deep inside the Great Pyramid was discovered empty, having been robbed in antiquity. And in one of history's great ironies, the only confirmed likeness of the man who built the largest structure on Earth is a tiny ivory statuette just three inches (about 7.5 cm) tall, found in a temple ruin at Abydos and now kept in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Much of what later Egyptians told about him survives only as legend, including the tales of the Westcar Papyrus. The pyramid, in the end, is his true and lasting portrait.

• Who he was: second pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty, Old Kingdom.
• Names: خوفو (Khufu); Greek "Cheops"; full name Khnum-Khufwy, "Khnum protects me."
• Reign: c. 2589–2566 BC (roughly 23–27 years).
• Family: son of King Sneferu and Queen Hetepheres I; succeeded by his son Djedefre.
• Greatest work: the Great Pyramid of Giza — ~2.3 million blocks, ~146 m tall.
• Records: tallest structure on Earth for ~3,800 years; the last surviving Ancient Wonder.
• Also found: the Khufu ship, a buried full-size cedar boat beside the pyramid.
• Only portrait: a 3-inch ivory statuette in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
• Mummy: never found; his sarcophagus was discovered empty.

Sources include Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Encyclopedia.com and History Hit accounts of Khufu, and archaeological coverage of the Great Pyramid of Giza.