by Jean-Jacques COURTEY, Doctor in Economic Geography, Ph. D
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The man we are going to present today was primarily called "Souphis-Chembes". But his name was appearing to him as far too ordinary to face posterity : he wanted an immortal name to be able to mark History. You may think initially you have never heard about him at school...but you are wrong. Anyhow, it's not your fault because no teacher is never calling him under his name of origin usually.
When you will discover who is hiding behind this unknown name, you will be extremely amazed to realize you know him in fact, but under a totally different name, an "immortal" one dignous of his great pride ! So get ready to be formidably surprised to rediscover a so illustrious man of world History, from an unexpected angle and with puzzling questions !
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"Souphis-Chembes" is staying still nowadays a mysterious man : he possessed the strange faculty to challenge the Past, the Present, and the Future, just like the "Neteru" (the blue-skinned Wardens of the Sky) of ancient Egypt. He also challenged the Gods, like Anubis that him and his sons didn't respect much. In Giza, Anubis' ears would have been shortened, and its face reshaped as a human one ! No one dared to change History as much as him, by rewriting it according to his incredible ambition. And till now, most archeologists wrote mainly what he wanted about himself ! Hence nobody really dared to study more accurately the biography of "Souphis-Chembes", as it should be from now on. Specialists are remaining essentially on the totally opposite views of two famous historians of Antiquity : the controversial Egyptian Manetho who wrote in Greek an History of Egypt ("Aegyptiaca"), and the Greek Plutarch (who was on the same line as his predecessor Herodotus) !
Manetho was a famous scribe who wrote an History of Egypt, by order of Pharaoh Ptolemeus I Soter (367 - 283 BC - cousin and successor of Alexander the Great, but most likely his half-brother). So then, if following Plutarch (circa 46 - circa 125 AD), this priest of God Serapis would have written his exceptional list of Pharaohs between the IVth and the IIIrd century BC. Manetho's name could have meant "Truth of Toth", among other translations. Until recently, his work was only admitted for human Pharaohs, but not for the metamorphic ones of the beginnings like Kings Scorpio, Djed or Aha ! In his famous "Aegyptiaca", "Souphis-Chembes" (IVth dynasty of Ancient Empire) as he called him was a human Pharaoh who ascended to heaven during his lifetime, to reach and meet Râ (symbolized by the Sun) : so not at all after his death uncommonly ! It's him who replaced the previously dominant cult of Ptah (polytheistic), by the more monotheistic cult of Râ (furtherly called Amon-Râ), an alien and supreme God ! And "Souphis-Chembes" identified himself during his reign to the Sun-God, by introducing a new paradigm in Egyptian History...as well as Theocracy with his writing of the holy books. It has to be quoted that astonishingly during his reign, the statues of the alien God Râ as well as other divine statues were said to be able to march and talk, which looks totally impossible nowadays ! They were attributed also the more usual power to cure and make miracles !
For Plutarch, the Greeks, and the Macedonians (Ptolemeus' line was Macedonian), our mysterious character of the day was a rather tyrannic Pharaoh. He was very imposing, clever, sometimes broad-minded, but full of himself, just like human beings in power can be. For most modern egyptologists, he would have reigned between 2620 and 2580 BC approximatively. But this poses a clear problem of inconsistency for the pyramid assigned to him, and officially built around 2560 BC : 20 years after his death then ! He was neither green like Osiris, nor blue like Djed (the Snake-Pharaoh). So up to now, you got to know that our character of the day is a famous Pharaoh. And yet, you have certainly never heard his original name. In fact, you only know him under his Greek name of Pharaoh Kheops, and associate him with the Great Pyramid by following Manetho - and may be too with the Sphinx of Giza. Kheops is in fact the way Herodotus (c. 484 - c. 425 BC), the famous Greek geographer and historian, was calling him. That's how he read and deciphered the hieroglyphs of "Khufu" !
Nowadays, Pharaoh Kheops is more and more called "Khufu" ("the one who protects") or "Khnum Khufu" ("the one Khnum protects"), as he is designed on the Great Pyramid, but never "Souphis-Chembes" like Manetho was calling him. Manetho didn't want to underline his totally human origin, unlike the first pharaohs...or Alexander ! Hence in his list of Pharaohs, Alexander the Great (356 - 323 BC), the first European Pharaoh of History, was at least as divine as him, as a descendant of Zeus-Ammon (Serapis) !
Re-calling Kheops "Souphis-Chembes", would raise the difficult and almost insoluble question of the construction of the Great Pyramid of Egypt...and the Sphinx of Giza as well. As a matter of fact, more and more archeologists and researchers are doubting he ever built the Great Pyramid ! At best, he would have made erased previous Egyptian cartridges on this monument which seem to be far older than supposed, and substituted his own ones - during its restoration ! The topic of the reshaping of the Sphinx with a human face (his face, or the one of his son Kephren) instead of Anubis' one (a Jackal with sharp ears), is not clear-cut. But whatever the solution, this might have been the mark of a rather heretic Pharaoh !
Following that, Kheops would have been far more a "restorer" or even a "modulator", than a builder ! He would have reappropriated the past prestigious history of Egypt in connection with the legendary Atlantis, to transform his reign in a magnificent one ! With such an attitude, he would in a way have become himself a "Big House" (meaning of the still misunderstood word of "Pharaoh") ! Kheops can appear then as the archetype of Pharaoh , as we still conceive it nowadays. And he would have deeply marked the line of his father Snefru, and his sons Djedefre and Kephren !
