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Khafre's name in hieroglyphs: his cartouche, sign by sign

14 October 2026

Khafre's cartouche holds three signs: a sun disc, a sun rising over a hill and a horned viper. Read ḫꜥ.f-rꜥ, said "KHAF-ra" or "kha-ef-ra", they mean "He appears like Ra". The sun disc sits at the top of the oval, yet the god's name is read last.

Khafre, called Chephren by the Greeks, was a son of Khufu and built the second pyramid of Giza. He reigned around 2558 to 2532 BC by one common dating. The Great Sphinx beside his causeway is usually credited to him.

The half sun over a hill is the key sign

The key sign is the half sun peeping over a hill (N28). It writes ḫꜥ, "kha", a verb for the sun coming up at dawn and for a king appearing in glory, crowned, before his people. The same word gives the Egyptian name for a crown, ḫꜥw, "the appearances".

The horned viper (I9) is the sound f. After a verb it means "he", so ḫꜥ.f is "he appears". The sun disc (N5) is rꜥ, Ra. Scribes put the god first out of respect and readers move him to the end. The whole name compares the king's crowning to sunrise.

Sun rising over a hill Horned viper Sun

His Horus name was Userib

Khafre had several names, as kings of his time did. His Horus name, written in a rectangular palace frame under a falcon (G5), is wsr-ib, "Userib", "strong of heart". The head and neck of a canine (F12) writes wsr, "strong", and the heart (F34) writes ib.

His Two Ladies name, under the vulture and the cobra, repeats the idea: User-em-nebty, "strong for the Two Ladies". His Golden Horus name is usually given as "powerful golden falcon". In daily use, and on later king lists, he was known by the cartouche name.

Falcon Head and neck of a canine Heart

Djedefre brought Ra into the family's names

Khafre's father Khufu wrote his cartouche with four alphabet signs and no sun in it. Khafre's brother Djedefre reigned between them and was the first king to put Ra into his cartouche name and to call himself "son of Ra". Khafre followed his pattern: a verb, the little viper for "he", then Ra.

Menkaure, probably Khafre's son, kept the sun in his own name. Khafre's queens included Meresankh III, a granddaughter of Khufu and so his niece. Who his own mother was is still argued. Meritites I and Henutsen are the usual candidates.

Djed pillar

Two dozen statues once filled his valley temple

Khafre's valley temple, at the foot of his causeway, is a hall of plain red granite pillars. Sockets in its floor once held some two dozen seated statues of the king. In 1860 Auguste Mariette found nine of them, including one lying in a deep pit in the entrance hall.

The statue from the pit is Khafre Enthroned, 1.68 metres tall, carved from a hard dark stone long called diorite and now usually identified as anorthosite gneiss. A falcon perches behind his head and wraps its wings around it, out of sight from the front. Between the legs of the throne, lotus and papyrus are tied together, the old emblem of the Two Lands joined. His names are cut into the base beside his feet, the cartouche among them.

His name survives at Giza and in Cairo

At Giza his pyramid still keeps its smooth casing on the top third. It stands on bedrock about ten metres higher than Khufu's and so looks taller, though it is slightly smaller. Its ancient name was wr ḫꜥ.f-rꜥ, "Khafre is great". The burial chamber has no ancient inscriptions. The Sphinx carries none of its own either: the text between its paws is the Dream Stela of Thutmose IV, over a thousand years later.

For painted signs, visit the chapel of Queen Meresankh III in the Eastern Cemetery, where her names and titles cover the walls in yellow, red and blue. In Cairo, Khafre Enthroned has long been one of the stars of the Egyptian Museum on Tahrir Square. With objects moving to the Grand Egyptian Museum, check where it is before you go. Look for the rising sun at the start of the cartouche on the base.

Khafre's cartouche takes three signs

Draw the oval and set the round sun at the top. Under it comes the hill with the half disc showing above it, then the viper lying flat with its two horns, facing the same way as the other signs.

Three signs make it one of the shortest royal names to learn. Once you know the half sun over the hill, you will spot it again in Khakaure, the name of Senusret III, and in the word for a crown.

Write Khafre in a cartouche

Questions

Is Chephren the same as Khafre?

Yes. Chephren is the Greek form used by Herodotus. Manetho's list calls him Suphis II. Khafre is the Egyptian name as Egyptologists read it, and some books write Khafra or Khephren.

Did Khafre build the Sphinx?

Most Egyptologists think so, because it sits beside his causeway and valley temple and its face resembles his statues. No inscription of his time gives the Sphinx a builder, so the link remains an inference.

How long did Khafre reign?

Most scholars give him about 24 to 26 years. The figure in the Turin King List is lost, and the Greek writers' 56 or 66 years are thought far too high.

Glossary

alphabet sign: A hieroglyph that stands for one consonant, such as the horned viper for f. Egyptian has about 25 of them, used beside signs for two or three sounds.
cartouche: An oval ring drawn around a royal name, a loop of rope tied at one end. Kings wrote their two main names in cartouches.
Horus name: The oldest of a king's names, written in a serekh under the Horus falcon. It names the king as the god Horus on earth.
papyrus: A writing sheet made from strips of the papyrus reed laid in two crossing layers and pressed. Sheets were glued into long rolls.
pyramid: A royal tomb with four sloping sides meeting at a point, built in the Old and Middle Kingdoms. Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza is the largest.
scribe: A person trained to read and write, who kept accounts, wrote letters and copied texts. Few Egyptians could write, and scribes were well respected.
sphinx: A statue with the body of a lion and the head of a king, a guardian of temples and tombs. The Great Sphinx at Giza is the largest.
stela: An upright stone slab carved with words and pictures, set up in tombs and temples or to mark a border.
temple: The house of a god, where priests served the god's statue. Temples for dead kings kept up their offerings after death.