Khafre - part 1
Jan 13th, 2007 by admin
As with many of the earlier Pharaoh’s, despite leaving some of the grandest of all monuments in Egypt, they left little in the way of inscriptions, and so for that reason, we know very little about Khafre (a.k.a. Chephren), the builder of the second pyramid on the Giza Plateau.
His birth name was Khafre, which means “Appearing like Re”. He is also sometimes referred to by the names Khafra, Rakhaef, Khephren or Chephren by the Greeks.
It is highly likely that Khafre was a younger son of Khufu (Cheops) by his consort, Henutsen, so he was required to wait out the reign of Djedefre, his older brother, before ascending to the throne of Egypt as the fourth ruler of the fourth Dynasty.
However, there is some disagreement on this issue. There may have been a problem with the succession of Khafre. Some authorities maintain that Djedefre may have even stolen the throne, perhaps as a younger brother of Khafre, and that Khafre may have then, at a later time, murdered him.
Much of this speculation originates from the fact that Djedefre chose not to have his pyramid next to Khufu’s but instead to locate it at Abu Rawash. However, there is little real evidence to support such a conclusion, and in fact, Khafre continued Djedefre’s promotion of the cult of the sun god Re by using the title the Son of the Sun for himself and by incorporating the name of the god into his own.