Quote

These problems indicate that the cartouches and quarry marks on these early monuments are simply not understood. This is not to question the entire grammar of hieroglyphics but to recognize that language changes over thousands of years and that lacking a context of solid evidence all that Egyptologists or anyone else can do is speculate upon their meaning. Students naturally tend to accept the assumptions of their teachers and to parrot their speculations, and over the last century these speculations have tended more and more in the same direction until today they have assumed the appearance of acquired facts - for example that the Great Pyramid is the tomb of a king called Khufu.

But the truth of the matter is that Egyptological descriptions of the Fourth Dynasty are little better than fantasies built up by decades of conjecture and groundless assumptions. No one knows what the history was. There are just not enough historical materials for anyone to describe that era. There is no clear and solid evidence of any kind that there ever was a pyramid building Fourth Dynasty king called Khufu - nor, for that matter, that there ever were Pyramid Age kings called Sneferu, Dedefra, Khafra or Menkaura! The entire pattern of evidence suggests, on the contrary, that if there ever was a King Khufu he lived long after the Pyramid was built and was named after the Pyramid [emphasis in original] - not the other way around.

Then, we are left to wonder, who or what was the “original” Khufu? Scholars have put forward three different explanations for Khufu and Khnum-Khuf: these are two different names for the same king; these are names of two different kings; one is the name of a king and one is the name of a god. To these may be added two additional possibilities: these are names of two different gods; these are two different names for the same god.

The last two are strong possibilities because cartouches reading Khufu are found not only on remains attributed to the Fourth Dynasty, but on dozens of tombs and monuments, some of which have been dated at only a few centuries before Christ. Egyptologists explain that Khufu's name had become “a powerful charm”, and was put on monuments as a sign of sanctity and protection. In other words, it was used in later times as the sign of the cross has been used in Christian countries for nearly two thousand years. Of course, we do not assume that every representation of a person bearing the symbol of a cross is Jesus Christ, nor that every building with a cross was personally ordered to be built by Jesus. Neither do we assume that every person named Jesus is the original Jesus Christ. Yet in assuming that these ancient cartouches represent men instead of gods, they have been treated as personal names instead of symbols.

If there is evidence that the cartouches of Khufu were “powerful charms” over thousands of years after the Pyramid was built, how do we know that they were not powerful charms, or sacred symbols, at the time it was built - and that they do not represent a king, but something more than a king? The answer is that we do not know. It has simply been assumed that Khufu was an actual king, as believed by Herodotus' informants, although they lived thousands of years after the building of the Pyramid and there is no guarantee they knew any more about it than do many contemporary Arab guides.

If the cartouches of Khufu as well as of Sneferu, Dedefra, Khafra and Menkaura were sacred symbols identifying different sects, schools, branches or cults, a multitude of problems would be solved. It would explain why the cartouches of of one king are found on more than one pyramid, why some cartouches are found in unlikely places, and why there are no historical records of these Fourth Dynasty kings. It could even explain the Inventory Stela as something other than a forgery, since it was standard practice for later kings to bear the names of the deities they represented. And in hypothesizing that these cartouches represent something other than what has been thought, we might surmise that present interpretations of the accompanying quarry marks are also questionable and discount the suggestion that a pyramid 719 feet (219 meters) square at the base may have been erected in a couple of years.

Finally, this interpretation of the cartouches of Khufu also puts into a new perspective the vast necropolis surrounding the Gizeh Pyramids. [. . .]

Quote

Still, just what do genuine quarry marks and inscriptions on stones deep within the Great Pyramid actually tell us? The hieroglyphic cartouche for the name Khufu was a powerful charm that has been found on any number of tombs and monuments throughout Egypt, many of them accurately dated to well after the Fourth Dynasty. The cartouche was used as a holy symbol in the same way that the cross was inscribed here, there, and everyhwere by Christians in later centuries. The inscriptions don’t necessarily prove that Khufu built the Great Pyramid. They might mean only that Khufu was himself named for the Great Pyramid, which perhaps existed before he did.