Egyptologists believe Sneferu was Khufu's father, but only because it was handed down by later historians that the eldest son or a selected descendant would inherit the throne.

Four instances of graffiti from the western of two rock-cut pits along the south side of the Great Pyramid attest to a date from the 28th or 29th reignal year of Khufu: the 14th census, month 1 of the season Shemu (spring-early summer).

[26] New evidence regarding political activities under Khufu's reign has recently been found at the site of the ancient port of Wadi al-Jarf on the Red Sea coast in the east of Egypt.

The Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass called this ancient papyrus “the greatest discovery in Egypt in the 21st century.”[27][28][29][30][31] Ten of these papyri are very well preserved.

The majority of these documents date to the 27th year of Khufu's reign and describe how the central administration sent food and supplies to the sailors and wharf workers.

The dating of these important documents is secured by phrases typical for the Old Kingdom period, as well as the fact that the letters are addressed to the king himself, using his Horus name.

The harbor was of strategic and economic importance to Khufu because ships brought precious materials, such as turquoise, copper and ore from the southern tip of the Sinai peninsula.

The papyri also mention a certain harbour at the opposite coast of Wadi al-Jarf, on the western shore of the Sinai Peninsula, where the ancient fortress Tell Ras Budran was excavated in 1960 by Gregory Mumford.

According to Tallet, the harbor could also have been one of the legendary high sea harbours of Ancient Egypt, from where expeditions to the infamous gold land Punt had started.

[10][32] Furthermore, several alabaster and travertine fragments of seated statues, which were found by George Reisner during his excavations at Giza, were once inscribed with Khufu's full royal titulary.

[43][44] At the Wadi Maghareh in Sinai a rock inscription contains Khufu's names and titles and reports: "Hor-Medjedu, Khnum-Khuf, Bikuj-Nebu, the great god and smiter of the troglodytes, all protection and life are with him".

It is possible that the lack of this special depiction influenced later ancient Greek historians in their assumptions that Khufu could have actually closed all temples and prohibited any sacrifice.

Because all royal names are written inside cartouches, it was often believed that Baufra and Djedefhor once had ruled for short time, but contemporary sources entitle them as mere princes.

This theory is promoted by findings such as alabaster vessels with Khufu's name found at Koptos, the pilgrimage destination of Wadi Hammamat travellers.

Especially earlier Egyptologists and historians such as Adolf Erman, Kurt Heinrich Sethe and Wolfgang Helck evaluated Khufu's character as heartless and sacrilegious.

[51][52][53][54][55]But other Egyptologists, such as Dietrich Wildung, see Khufu's order as an act of mercy: the prisoner would have received his life back if Dedi had actually performed his magical trick.

During the Eighteenth Dynasty king Amenhotep II erected a memorial temple and a royal fame stele close to the Great Sphinx.

His son and throne follower Thutmose IV freed the Sphinx from sand and placed a memorial stele—known as the "Dream Stele"—between its front paws.

In his literary work Historiae, Book II, chapter 124–126, he writes: "As long as Rhámpsinîtos was king, as they told me, there was nothing but orderly rule in Egypt, and the land prospered greatly.

But she not only obtained the sum that was appointed by her father, but she also formed a design for herself privately to leave behind her a memorial: She requested each man who came in to her to give her one stone for her building project.

Then he writes that Khufu built the pyramids after repeated nightmares in which the earth turned upside-down, the stars fell down and people were screaming in terror.

[61] Alan B. Lloyd, for example, points to documents and inscriptions from the 6th dynasty listing an important town called Menat-Khufu, meaning "nurse of Khufu".

[61] The famous Lamentation Texts from the First Intermediate Period reveal some interesting views about the monumental tombs from the past; they were at that time seen as proof of vanity.

Oversized tombs such as the Giza pyramids must have appalled the Greeks and even the later priests of the New Kingdom, because they remembered the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten and his megalomaniac building projects.

The view was possibly promoted by the fact that during Khufu's lifetime, permission for the creation of oversized statues made of precious stone and their displaying in public was limited to the king.

[58][59] Furthermore, several Egyptologists point out that Roman historians such as Pliny the Elder and Frontinus (both around AD 70) equally do not hesitate to ridicule the pyramids of Giza: Frontinus calls them "idle pyramids, containing the indispensable structures likewise to some of our abandoned aqueducts at Rome" and Pliny describes them as "the idle and foolish ostentation of royal wealth".

Egyptologists clearly see politically and socially motivated intentions in these criticisms and it seems paradoxical that the use of these monuments was forgotten, but the names of their builders remained immortalized.

The Egyptian hieroglyphs forming the name "Khufu" are read in Coptic as "Shêfet", which actually would mean "bad luck" or "sinful" in their language.

[61] On the other hand, some Egyptologists think that the ancient historians received their material for their stories not only from priests, but from the citizens living close to the time of the building of the necropolis.

[75] In the classic action role playing game Titan Quest, the Giza Plateau is a large desert region in Egypt, where the tomb of Khufu and the Great Sphinx can be found.