40 Fun Facts About Khufu

The only largely intact statue of Khufu, builder of Egypt's largest pyramid, stands roughly how tall?

About 3 inches is all that survives in one piece of the man behind Egypt's largest pyramid. The tiny seated figure was dug up at Abydos in 1903, far from Giza.

Under which Greek form of his name is Khufu, builder of the Great Pyramid, also widely known?

Cheops is how Greek writers rendered the name, pronounced KEE-ops in English. A rarer Greek version, Suphis, comes from a different ancient historian.

How did medieval explorers find Khufu's granite sarcophagus, the only object left in the King's Chamber?

Broken open and empty is how it turned up: whatever it once held had been carried off long before. The coffer was cut from a single block, and its lid is missing too.

Greek writers blamed slaves, but who do modern finds at Giza suggest really built Khufu's pyramid?

Conscripted labourers, thousands of them, are what the camps point to, not chained captives. The slave story came from Greek visitors writing some 2,000 years after the stones were laid.

Which son of Khufu built a Giza pyramid that looks taller than his father's because it stands on higher ground?

Khafre set his pyramid on bedrock about 10 metres higher, so it seems to top his father's. Measured from base to tip, Khufu's is still the bigger of the two.

In what state was Khufu's 4,500-year-old ship found when its sealed pit beside the pyramid was opened in 1954?

In 1,224 separate pieces is how it lay, stacked in logical order like a kit. Rebuilding it took years, and the finished vessel is 43 metres long.

Which Greek historian, writing 2,000 years after Khufu, portrayed him as a cruel tyrant who closed Egypt's temples?

Herodotus told the tale in his Histories, adding that Egyptians hated to speak the king's name. Egyptologists now read it as slander: Khufu's cult was honoured in Egypt for many centuries.

Khufu's Great Pyramid, the last surviving ancient Wonder, was built from roughly how many stone blocks?

About 2.3 million blocks went into it. The finished pyramid stood as the tallest human-made structure on Earth for more than 3,700 years.

Which famous Giza monument do some Egyptologists credit to Khufu rather than to one of his sons?

The Great Sphinx is usually given to a son of Khufu, but its face matches no royal portrait perfectly. Some scholars argue the style of its headdress points to Khufu himself.

Khufu's name was given in the 1980s to what kind of object, catalogued with the number 3362?

An asteroid called 3362 Khufu circles the Sun on a path that brings it close to Earth's. It was spotted in 1984 and named for the pyramid builder.

Khufu's buried ship, the world's oldest intact vessel, was built mainly from which imported wood?

Cedar from Lebanon makes up most of the hull. The timber was so valued that Khufu sent expeditions abroad to trade copper tools and weapons for it.

The four sides of Khufu's Great Pyramid, laid out 4,500 years ago, are almost perfectly aligned with what?

The cardinal directions were matched with startling accuracy: the sides stray from true north, south, east and west by less than a tenth of a degree.

The three small pyramids standing close beside Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza were built for whom?

Queens were given the three small pyramids, now labelled G1-a, G1-b and G1-c. Nearby lie the flat-topped tombs of Khufu's sons and daughters.

The only intact portrait of Khufu, found headless at Abydos in 1903, is carved from which material?

Ivory was the carver's choice for the seated king, who wears a crown and holds a flail. The missing head turned up three weeks later, after the rubble was sieved.

The logbooks of Merer, an official who shipped stone for Khufu's pyramid, were found in 2013 on which coast?

The Red Sea coast hid them, at a harbour called Wadi al-Jarf that served Khufu's ships. They are the oldest inscribed papyri ever found, written over 4,500 years ago.

Medieval Arab writers claimed Khufu built the Giza pyramids after prophets warned him of which coming disaster?

A great flood was coming, the story went, so Khufu raised the pyramids to keep his treasures and books of wisdom safe. The best-known telling was written down in the 1400s.

Graffiti hidden in the sealed chambers above Khufu's burial room record the names of what?

The work gangs left their names on blocks that then stayed sealed away until 1837. One crew called itself 'Khufu excites love'.

What holds together the planks of Khufu's huge funerary ship, which was built with no keel?

Grass rope, twisted from halfa, lashes the planks and frames to one another. The ship has been called a masterpiece of woodcraft that could still sail if put on a river.

Khufu was the second king of which Egyptian royal line, the one that raised all three main Giza pyramids?

Fourth Dynasty kings ruled at the height of the pyramid age. Khufu's predecessor, one of his sons and a grandson all built giant pyramids of their own.

Which pharaoh, builder of the Bent Pyramid, ruled just before Khufu and is thought to be his father?

Sneferu is credited with three pyramids of his own. Some scholars suspect he was Khufu's stepfather instead, because of the titles Khufu's mother carried.

Which nephew of Khufu, his vizier and overseer of royal works, is believed to have designed the Great Pyramid?

Hemiunu held power second only to the king himself. A statue found in his own Giza tomb now sits in a museum in Hildesheim, Germany.

Which royal woman, thought to be Khufu's mother, had her hidden tomb found beside his pyramid in 1925?

Hetepheres I was buried with a gold-framed canopy and fine furniture but not, it turned out, her body. Her alabaster sarcophagus held nothing when the lid came off in 1927.

Which son followed Khufu as king but built his own pyramid at Abu Rawash, north of Giza?

Djedefre was the first king to call himself 'Son of Ra', tying the throne to the sun god. His hilltop pyramid is now a ruin.

Khufu called his Great Pyramid Akhet-Khufu, an Egyptian name meaning that it was Khufu's what?

Horizon of Khufu was the name the boatmen knew it by. The logbook of one stone-hauling crew names it again and again as the place they delivered their loads.

Khufu is the short form of a longer name asking which Egyptian creator god to protect him?

Khnum, the ram-headed god said to shape people on a potter's wheel, supplies the missing half. The full name means 'Khnum protects me'.

Khufu sent expeditions to Wadi Maghareh in the Sinai in search of copper and which prized gemstone?

Turquoise drew Egyptian kings to the Sinai again and again; the site was known as the Terraces of Turquoise. A rock carving there shows Khufu striking down an enemy.

Khufu sent expeditions to which ancient Mediterranean port to trade copper tools for timber?

Byblos took Egyptian copper tools and weapons in exchange for its wood. That timber was essential for building large funerary boats like those buried beside Khufu's pyramid.

In an ancient Egyptian tale, a magician refuses to behead a prisoner for Khufu and uses which bird instead?

A goose loses its head, then waddles off cackling once the magician's spell rejoins it to the body. The story was written down many centuries after Khufu's death.

Which English archaeologist halted his dig and offered a reward to find the missing head of a Khufu figurine?

Flinders Petrie had the room's rubble sieved until the head appeared three weeks later. Without it, the one complete likeness of the Great Pyramid's builder would be faceless.

Only the floor survives of Khufu's mortuary temple at Giza: a pavement of which dark volcanic stone?

Basalt slabs still lie on the east side of the pyramid. The temple's red granite pillars and white limestone ceiling have vanished, leaving only this black foundation.

The granite blocks of Khufu's burial chamber, some weighing 80 tonnes, were shipped from which southern Egyptian city?

Aswan lies more than 900 km up the Nile from Giza. Most of the pyramid's other blocks had a far shorter trip: they were quarried just south of the building site.

Tourists enter Khufu's pyramid by a tunnel said to have been forced open around 820 AD for which caliph?

Al-Ma'mun's workmen are said to have opened it with a battering ram. Some scholars think the passage is older and that his men only cleared a plug left inside it.

In 2017 scientists found a hidden 'Big Void' inside Khufu's pyramid by tracking which particles from cosmic rays?

Muons pass through solid stone, and detectors counting them revealed a large cavity above the Grand Gallery. Three separate experiments saw the same gap.

Khufu's 43-metre ship left its own small display hall beside the pyramid in 2021 for which new home?

Grand Egyptian Museum galleries near Giza became its home in August 2021. The old boat museum, built over the very pit where the ship was found, was then dismantled.

Egyptian scribes dated events in Khufu's reign by counting censuses of which animals?

Cattle counts gave each year its name, as in 'the year after the 13th count'. Because the counts were not always regular, nobody knows exactly how long Khufu reigned.

Which magician, said to be 110 years old, performs wonders before Khufu in the tales of the Westcar Papyrus?

Djedi is said to eat 500 loaves and drink 100 jars of beer every day. He ends his visit by telling Khufu that a new line of kings will one day take the throne.

Which Egyptian novelist, later a Nobel Prize winner, made Khufu the subject of his very first novel?

Naguib Mahfouz published Khufu's Wisdom in 1939, basing it on an ancient tale told about the king. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988.

Some 2,000 years after Khufu died, his name was stamped on which amulets sold to Egyptians as lucky charms?

Scarabs bearing Khufu's name were sold in huge numbers during Egypt's Late Period, and more than 30 survive. Priests of Khufu were still serving at Giza in the same era.

A Greek visitor claimed an inscription on Khufu's pyramid recorded the cost of which food for the workmen?

Radishes, onions and leeks cost 1,600 silver talents, or so the visitor's interpreter told him. He admitted he was relying on his memory of what was read out.

An 1827 novel that brings Khufu into the year 2126 was the first English-language story to feature what?

A reanimated mummy made its English debut in Jane Loudon's The Mummy!, and the revived Khufu is no monster. He hands out canny advice on politics and life.