Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph published in the
Ordnance Survey, Photographs, vol. iii. pl. 5. On the left
stands the Pharaoh, and knocks down a Monîti before the
Ibis-headed Thot; upon the right the picture is destroyed,
and we see the royal titles only, without figures. The
statue bears no cartouche, and considerations purely
artistic cause me to attribute it to Kheops: it may equally
well represent Dadûfrî, the successor of Kheops, or
Shopsiskaf, who followed Mykerinos.
The Egyptians of the Theban period were compelled to form their opinions of the Pharaohs of the Memphite dynasties in the same way as we do, less by the positive evidence of their acts than by the size and number of their monuments: they measured the magnificence of Kheops by the dimensions of his pyramid, and all nations having followed this example, Kheops has continued to be one of the three or four names of former times which sound familiar to our ears. The hills of Gîzeh in his time terminated in a bare wind-swept table-land. A few solitary mastabas were scattered here and there on its surface, similar to those whose ruins still crown the hill of Dahshur.* The Sphinx, buried even in ancient times to its shoulders, raised its head half-way down the eastern slope, at its southern angle;** beside him*** the temple of Osiris, lord of the Necropolis, was fast disappearing under the sand; and still further back old abandoned tombs honey-combed the rock.****
* No one has noticed, I believe, that several of the
mastabas constructed under Kheops, around the pyramid,
contain in the masonry fragments of stone belonging to some
more ancient structures. Those which I saw bore carvings of
the same style as those on the beautiful mastabas of
Dahshur.
** The stele of the Sphinx bears, on line 13, the cartouche
of Khephren in the middle of a blank. We have here, I
believe, an indication of the clearing of the Sphinx
effected under this prince, consequently an almost certain
proof that the Sphinx was already buried in sand in the time
of Kheops and his predecessors.
*** Mariette identifies the temple which he discovered to
the south of the Sphinx with that of Osiris, lord of the
Necropolis, which is mentioned in the inscription of the
daughter of Kheops. This temple is so placed that it must
have been sanded up at the same time as the Sphinx; I
believe, therefore, that the restoration effected by Kheops,
according to the inscription, was merely a clearing away of
the sand from the Sphinx analogous to that accomplished by
Khephren.
**** These sepulchral chambers are not decorated in the
majority of instances. The careful scrutiny to which I
subjected them in 1885-86 causes me to believe that many of
them must be almost contemporaneous with the Sphinx; that is
to say, that they had been hollowed out and occupied a
considerable time before the period of the IVth dynasty.
Kheops chose a site for his Pyramid on the northern edge of the plateau, whence a view of the city of the White Wall, and at the same time of the holy city of Heliopolis, could be obtained.