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Sneferu in hieroglyphs: King Sneferu's name, cartouche and pyramids

13 October 2026

King Sneferu's cartouche holds four signs: a folded cloth, a heart with its windpipe, a mouth and a quail chick. Read s-nfr-r-w, they spell Sneferu, said "SNEF-roo", built on the word nfr, "beautiful, perfect".

Sneferu founded the Fourth Dynasty, around 2613 to 2589 BC by one common dating, and built more pyramids than any other king: Meidum, then the Bent and Red Pyramids at Dahshur. He was the father of Khufu, and his reign is where the cartouche came into regular use for a king's name.

The folded cloth turns nfr into making

The folded cloth (S29) stands for s. In Egyptian an s in front of a word often makes it causative: nfr is "to be good, beautiful", snfr is "to make beautiful, to perfect". The heart and windpipe (F35) writes the three sounds nfr, "nefer", in one sign. It is one of the most common signs in royal names.

The mouth (D21) adds an r. It repeats the last sound of nfr as a reading aid, a phonetic complement, and is not said twice. The quail chick (G43) ends the name with w. Most books translate the result "He has perfected me", a reading that ties it to a fuller form of his Horus name. Some give "He who makes beautiful".

Folded cloth Heart and windpipe Mouth Quail chick

His Horus name was Nebmaat

Like every king of his time, Sneferu also had a Horus name, written in a rectangular frame under a falcon (G5). His was nb-mꜣꜥt, "neb-maat", "Lord of Maat": the basket (V30) for nb, "lord", then the word for truth and right order.

Before Sneferu the Horus name was the king's main name. Under him the oval ring around the birth name became normal. Cartouches appear at the end of the Third Dynasty, but they come into common use only at the start of the Fourth, so Sneferu's is among the first anyone can read in quantity.

Falcon Basket Cartouche

Later Egyptians remembered him kindly

A Middle Kingdom text, the Papyrus Prisse, calls him a beneficent king. In the Westcar Papyrus a bored Sneferu is rowed around his palace lake by twenty young women. One loses a turquoise fish pendant in the water, and the lector priest Djadjaemankh folds the lake in half to find it.

The Palermo Stone, a royal annal carved a few generations later, lists events of his years: cedar boats built, a campaign into Nubia, "mansions of Sneferu" founded. His main queen was Hetepheres I, Khufu's mother. The painted statues of Rahotep and Nofret, a prince and his wife from his time, come from Meidum. The Turin King List gives him 24 years, but other records point to 30 or more, so his dates are approximate.

Red paint marks his reign at Dahshur

The Dahshur pyramids carry almost no carved text, so look for builders' marks in red paint on some blocks of the Red Pyramid, some with dates in his reign. The Red Pyramid, at a slope of about 43 degrees, is the third largest pyramid in Egypt and widely believed to be the first smooth-sided pyramid finished as planned.

The Bent Pyramid beside it starts at about 54 degrees and changes to about 43 halfway up. Its casing survives better than on any other pyramid. The valley temple below had reliefs of offering bearers standing for the king's estates, many named after Sneferu, so his cartouche repeats down the line. The reliefs survive as fragments, dug out by Ahmed Fakhry in the 1950s. In Cairo, the Egyptian Museum has Rahotep and Nofret, their names painted in columns beside their heads.

Four signs stack down the oval

Draw the oval and stack the signs down it. The folded cloth comes first, then the heart with its windpipe rising like a stem. The mouth is a flat lens shape. The chick ends it, facing the same way as the other signs.

Of the four, nfr comes back in hundreds of names and words: Nefertiti, Nefertari and the offering lists of every tomb.

Write Sneferu in a cartouche

Questions

What does the name Sneferu mean?

It comes from snfr, "to make beautiful, to perfect". Translations differ in the detail: "He who makes beautiful" and "He has perfected me" are the two you will meet most.

How many pyramids did King Sneferu build?

Three large ones are credited to him: Meidum, which he may have finished or converted from a step pyramid, and the Bent and Red Pyramids at Dahshur. Small satellite pyramids and a step pyramid at Seila are sometimes added. Which one held his burial is not known for certain. The Red Pyramid is the usual guess.

Was Sneferu Khufu's father?

Khufu followed him on the throne, and Sneferu's queen Hetepheres I was Khufu's mother. Most books call Sneferu his father, though a few researchers have suggested he was a stepfather.

Glossary

birth name: The name a king was given at birth, written in the second cartouche after the title "son of Ra". Egyptologists also call it the nomen.
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.
dynasty: A line of kings counted together, usually one family. Egyptologists number Egypt's kings in about 30 dynasties, following the priest Manetho.
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.
Maat: Truth, justice and the right order of the world, shown as a goddess with an ostrich feather on her head. Kings claimed to uphold it.
Middle Kingdom: The age when Egypt was united again, about 2055 to 1650 BC. Its texts became the classic form of the language that later scribes copied.
papyrus: A writing sheet made from strips of the papyrus reed laid in two crossing layers and pressed. Sheets were glued into long rolls.
phonetic complement: An alphabet sign written beside a sign for two or three sounds, spelling part of its sound again as a help to the reader.
priest: A servant of a god in a temple, who washed, dressed and fed the god's statue each day. A high priest led the staff of a great temple.
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.
relief: A carving on a flat surface. In raised relief the background is cut away. In sunk relief the figures are cut into the stone.
temple: The house of a god, where priests served the god's statue. Temples for dead kings kept up their offerings after death.