KHEOPS
Genius and disproportion (2538 - 2516 B) It is very difficult to talk about the beginnings of Egypt so much that it takes root in the mists of time. Since the predynastic time, thinite, since the mythical king Narmer, first sovereign of the double crown, since the great Pharaons like Djéser and genius architect, Imhotep. Khéops appeared, in the IV dynasty, and was the most megalomaniac of all the sovereigns of old Egypt. In twenty-two years of reign, he managede to make his people hate him. Almost all of his representations were destroyed. All that can be found of him is a small ivory statuette 7 centimetres high in Abydos. And it is an easy stereotype, but undoubtedly justified, that to feel pity for the Egyptian people, "that crushed the granite piled up by Khéops", as wrote Sully-Prudhomme. He was the son of Snéfrou and the queen Hétepherès. Snéfrou had been exerted to construct the perfect pyramid, but it was Khéops who succeeed in doing this by building his Great pyramid. Because the IV dynasty was above all a dynasty of the spectacular pyramids builders, symbol of a society which organized itself around thePharaon as supreme value. "Not only did he drain the profits and the resources of the country, but high placed civil servants and religious leaders only confided in the members of his family", writes Jean Yoyotte. The vestiges of the art of the time testify to the remainder of the massive and crushing perfection reached by the pharaonic institution, already amply developed under the III dynasty. We know very little of Khéops the man, apart from the fact that undoubtedly had a particular affection for his mother, Hétepherès queen. As the tomb of the latter, probably located close to one of the pyramids of her husband, in Meïdoum or Dahshour, had been plundered, her son had the remainder of the treasure buried in a hiding-place close to his own pyramid. Obviously We cannot speak about Khéops without evoking the only monument which remains from his reign, the Great pyramid, seventh and only Wonder of the world still standing. But it should not be forgotten that he was an engineer and a distinguished town planner, while embanking the vast platform of Gizeh and diverting the Nile to pass in canal to the base of the plateau, which allowed "his successors in their turn ,to install their eternital residencies. 146.50 meters high, with 230 meters base, volume of 2 600 000 cubic meters, 5 million tons of stone and the exact orientation as of the its four faces turned towards the cardinal points, the Great pyramid constitutes an element of rebirth symbolic system "the artificial mountain, written Isabelle Franco, is at the same time a staircase leading the king towards the sky and an allusion to the paramount stone, the" benben ", which materializes the hillock emerging from chaos and touched by the first ray of light from the creative sun "Nothing is too beautiful for the god Pharaoh ; two vast boats were built for him to undertake the voyage towards the after life. One, found dismounted, was reconstituted; it is on show in a museum close to the pyramid. On the other hand, neither its low temple nor its high temple, places essential to the ambulatory rites of the funeral, were preserved. Only the immense necropolis of the workmen who gave their life to build this work of exception remains. So exceptional it has always made us dream. Since the XIXe century, the Egyptologists have regularly to protect their work from the wild imaginings of "egyptomaniacs". Some wanted that to rising the Sirius star to be correlated with an element of the pyramid. They found it; it is the air duct from the royal room! Others are obsessed by the discovery of the royal mummy. It is the case recently of Gilles Dormion and Jean-Yves Verd' hurt who in their widely talked about book on the room of Keops, are convinced that the sarcophagus of the king is under the Queen’s room. Their request for authorization to bore through the floor of the room was obviously met with a refusal by the Egyptian authorities.