may have been a son of Meresankh.  The name of a daughter, Nebty-tp-itf-s, which Reisner translated ‘The crown which is on the brow of her father’, is the only scrap of evidence which might suggest that the northern chapel was decorated after Meresankh became queen, but the prominence of the titles of a prince in this chapel and the fact that Meresankh is called ‘princess’ in the boating scene  . . .  make it seem more likely that Hor-baf was her husband.  If this is so, we should probably have to fit Hor-baf in as another vizier of the end of the reign of Cheops.

Thus not only three or four new viziers must be accounted for near the end of Khufu’s reign but another Queen Meresankh.  That they all fit into the last four years of Khufu’s reign appears implausible.  Some could have served under Khufu’s successor, Djedefre, and others under X-1, and/or X-2.

This excerpt³ also references another important source of information about Khufu’s sons, the Westcar Papyrus.  Few manuscripts about Ancient Egypt’s Old Kingdom (Dynasties III - VI) have survived destruction.  One of the most fascinating that has, the Westcar Papyrus, is preserved on a wall of the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, Germany.  It was written after the end of the Middle Kingdom but appears to be based on authentic earlier sources.  Originally, the papyrus contained a series of at least five stories told by the sons of Khufu about rulers from Dynasties III and IV.   Unfortunately, only a few lines of the first tale are extant.  The contents of the Westcar papyrus are summarized in Table 2.  I believe that Djedefre is the missing narrator of Tale #1 for reasons that soon will become evident.  In Giza Necropolis⁴, however, William Stevenson Smith proposes Kawab as the missing story teller.

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So who are kings X-1 and X-2?  As Reisner points out in his analysis¹, the third-century B.C. Egyptian high priest Manetho provides the following names in Greek for the missing monarchs: Bikheris, Thamphthis, and (possibly) Seberkheres.  The equivalent names in Egyptian would be Baukare, Djedefptah, and S____kaure.  Manetho’s list was compiled over 2,000 years after Dynasty IV and is known to contain transcription errors.  However, there appears to be a very strong resemblance between Prince Baufre and Manetho’s Baukare and between Prince Djedefhor and Manetho’s Djedefptah.

If Baufre and Djedefhor are, indeed, two of the missing kings, this would mean that Khufu had no less than four sons who succeeded him: Djedefre, Khafre, Baufre, and Djedefhor.  Amazing!  This also would explain the selection of the princes appearing in Papyrus Westcar, assuming that Djedefre is the missing prince, followed by Khafre, Baufre, and Djedefhor.  All four princes in the Westcar Papyrus became kings of Egypt.  Fortunately, we do not have to rely upon Manetho’s list to answer our question about X-1 and X-2 definitively.  In 1950, eight years after Reisner’s death but more than 45 years ago, a startling discovery was made in the Wadi el Hammamat⁵ east of Luxor.  A rock inscription containing Dynasty IV kings was found that listed Khufu, Djedefre, Khafre, and then the names Djedefhor followed by Baufre inside cartouches indicating their kingship.  Apparently, the narrator of Papyrus Westcar reversed the order of the last two princes allowing Djedefhor to relate the two most important tales (#4 and #5 in Table 3), possibly because Djedefhor gained more fame as an author of wise sayings than as a king.

The finding that both Khafre and Djedefhor ruled simultaneously is electrifying.  It indicates that a civil war took place in the middle of Dynasty IV, when the kingdom was at its height.  Adding the names Djedefhor and Baufre to the other six rulers’ names is absolutely essential if one is to understand the history of Dynasty IV. They represent the dagger in the heart of the Dynasty that drained its viability.

But was it Djedefhor or was it Khafre who precipitated the bloodshed?  Who were the principal protagonists?  How were they related to one another?  In my book⁶, Ancient Egypt’s Dynasty IV: A New View, I demonstrate that Djedefre and Djedefhor were full brothers, sons of Khufu and his main queen who carried the royal blood, Hetepheres IA,  Khufu’s full sister who earlier was married to Prince Ankh-haf before Khufu became king and annulled their marriage.  Baufre was the son of Khufu and his Queen Merytyetes, while Khafre was the son of Khufu and a third queen known today (although incorrectly so) as Henutsen.   When Djedefre died after a brief eight-year reign, none of his three eldest sons was old enough to succeed him, and the next in line for the throne was Djedefhor, a

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scholarly prince who was best known for his writings providing guidance to his son, Auibre.

Given that Djedefhor was Djedefre’s full brother and that none of Djedefre’s sons was old enough to rule, Khafre appears to have usurped the throne from Djedefhor.  In this endeavor, he undoubtedly had considerable assistance from Ankh-haf and Djedefre’s wife Hetepheres II, who carried the royal blood.  In any case, it is virtually certain that the succession dispute occurred at the beginning of Khafre’s long reign and not at the end of it, where three of the sources referenced above in Table 1 add an additional four years between the reigns of Khafre and Menkaure^7-9.  This four-year interregnum simply did not occur, and the history of Dynasty IV should be revised accordingly.

There is other important archeological evidence that supports the kingship of Djedefhor and Baufre.  For example, consider the Unfinished Pyramid at Zawiyet el-Aryan described by Lehner¹⁰:

Yet another puzzle associated with the passing of the 4^th dynasty is the large unfinished pyramid at Zawiyet el-Aryan.  It has been suggested that it belongs to a pharaoh who ruled between Khafre and Menkaure for such a short time he may have been overlooked in the king lists.  Hieratic (shorthand hieroglyphic) inscriptions have been translated as Nebka, or Wehemka.  Others see Baka, which was perhaps later remembered as Nebkara or Baufre, the Bikheris of Manetho’s king list.

The measurements, in any case, compel us to date this unfinished scheme to the 4^th dynasty.  If finished, the pyramid would have been close in size to Khafre’s.  It has a large secondary precinct with walls of fieldstone and clay, like those around the Giza pyramids and of similar dimensions.  Inside the pyramid a long, sloping leads down to a deep, square pit, like that of Djedefre--- and similar in size: 11.7 x 24 m (38 x 78 ft) and 21 m (69ft) deep.  At the bottom it was paved with gigantic blocks of limestone and granite.  Clearly, this was a massive project, begun in the full confidence of a long reign.  The granite sarcophagus took the form of a great oval tub, sunk into the pavement.  The cover survived but the sarcophagus was empty.

Although Lehner fails to mention it, I. E. S. Edwards in his book The Pyramids of Egypt¹¹ points out that in the vicinity of the Unfinished Pyramid archeologists found a schist plaque inscribed with the name Djedefre.  Edwards, ignoring the Turin Papyrus, Saqqara List, Manetho, and other important evidence, then goes on to state that because the sequence of the immediate successors of Djedefre for a period of about fifty years seems to be firmly established, it is difficult to attach any significance to the occurrence of his name on an object at Zawiyet el Aryan but it cannot be denied that the substructure of the Unfinished Pyramid, which is the only part now visible, is essentially similar to the structure of the Pyramid of Djedefre¹².And, indeed, it should be because Baufre copied his half-

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brother Djedefre’s design.

There is another site that contains a pyramid that might also be of Dynasty IV origin at (of all places) Abu Roash, near Djedefre’s Pyramid.  According to Lehner¹³:

In 1985 Nabil Swelim surveyed a large rock knoll at Abu Roash that Lepsius had seen covered with mudbricks and numbered I.  A passage in the north side slopes down to a chamber of the king found in pyramids of the early 4^th dynasty.  Though it is unique for this period in being built of mudbrick, Swelim dates it to the end of the 3^rd dynasty or the start of the fourth, and assigns it to Huni.

It seems just as likely that the second pyramid at Abu Roash could have belonged to Djedefre’s brother, Djedefhor.

In any case, there is an abundance of evidence that about half way through Dynasty IV a major civil war erupted, which pitted various branches of Khufu’s family against each other.   Somewhat surprisingly, the obscure Prince Khafre emerged as the eventual winner with the assistance of Queen Hetepheres (IA)’s first husband, Prince Ankh-haf, who was an oldest son of Seneferu, and his daughter who carried the royal blood. Additionally, Queen Hetepheres (IA)’s oldest daughter, Hetepheres II and her daughter Meresankh III became Queens of Khafre.

The principal loser was the wise man, Prince Djedefhor.   Originally, Khufu built the magnificent tomb G 7210/G 7220 in his royal cemetery for Djedefhor and his wife.  Later, during his brother’s reign, Djedefhor may have been the owner of the largest tomb of all at Giza, G 2000.  Still, the lure of burial in a pyramid was too strong for Djedefhor to resist.  Or was he simply a victim of his own preaching?  Among the few lines of his teachings that still exist, are the following words¹⁴:

When you make a place for yourself,
Make good your dwelling in the graveyard;
Make worthy your station in the West.
Given that death humbles us,
Given that life exalts us,
The house of death is for life.
Seek for yourself well-watered fields, ---
Choose for (the funeral priest) a plot among your fields,
Well-watered every year.
(The funerary priest) profits you more than your own son,

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                        Prefer him even to your (heir).

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WHAT THE PYRAMID HID

The Lamentations of Ipuwer¹, which some Egyptologists believe was written about the chaos that followed the fall of the Old Kingdom, complain:

See now, fire has leaped high,
            Its flame will attack the land’s foes!
             See now, things are done that never were before,
             The king has been robbed by beggars.
             See, one buried as hawk is . . .
             What the pyramid hid is empty.
             See now, the land is deprived of kingship
            By a few people who ignore custom.
            See now, men rebel against the Serpent,
            [Stolen] is the crown of Re, who pacifies the Two Lands.

What the pyramid hid is empty.  Many authors like to use this quotation to make the point that the Old Kingdom pyramids were plundered during the intermediate period (Dynasties VII through X) prior to the Middle Kingdom.  Wrong.  Wrong.  Wrong.  The lesson learned time and time again about tombs in the Valley of the Kings during the New Kingdom is  that most burial sites were first looted within living memory of the individuals who helped build them.  This observation held equally true during the Old Kingdom as throughout later times.  The stashes of goods² found under Zoser’s Dynasty III Step Pyramid at Saqqara, built by the highly revered architect Imhotep, for example, include some 40,000 stone vases and vessels with the names of Zoser’s predecessors carved on many of them.  Perhaps Zoser was an avid collector of such objects from royal descendants!  Even so, the number of royal relics from Dynasties I and II stored under Zoser’s pyramid is so large that many must represent items that had been removed from earlier burials.

The plundering of royal tombs continued throughout Dynasty III into Dynasty IV.  In fact, one of the most blatant examples of the tomb builders being involved with the robberies occurred at Meidum near the beginning of Dynasty IV.  Next to the Meidum Pyramid stands a huge royal tomb known colorlessly as Mastaba 17.  According to George Hart ³, this tomb:

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