He reigned twenty-three years, and successfully defended the mines of the Sinaitic peninsula against the Bedouin; he may still be seen on the face of the rocks in the Wady Maghara sacrificing his Asiatic prisoners, now before the jackal Anubis, now before the ibis-headed Thot.  The gods reaped advantage from his activity and riches; he restored the temple of Ha-thor at Den-dera, embellished that of Bubastis, built a stone sanctuary to the Isis of the Sphinx, and consecrated there gold, silver, bronze, and wooden statues of Horus, Nephthys, Selkit, Phtah, Sokhit, Osiris, Thot, and Hapis.  Scores of other Pharaohs had done as much or more, on whom no one bestowed a thought a century after their death, and Kheops would have succumbed to the same indifference had he not forcibly attracted the continuous attention of posterity by the immensity of his tomb.*

* All the details relating to the Isis of the Sphinx are furnished by a stele of the daughter of Kheops, discovered in the little temple of the XXIst dynasty, situated to the west of the Great Pyramid, and preserved in the Gizeh Museum.  It was not a work entirely of the XXIst dynasty, as Mr. Petrie asserts, but the inscription, barely readable, engraved on the face of the plinth, indicates that it was remade by a king of the Saite period, perhaps by Sabaco, in order to replace an ancient stele of the same import which had fallen into decay.

[Illustration:  176.jpg THE TRIUMPHAL BAS-RELIEFS OF KHEOPS ON THE ROCKS OF WADY MAGHARA]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph published in the Ordnance Survey, Photographs, vol. iii. pl. 5.  On the left stands the Pharaoh, and knocks down a Moniti before the Ibis-headed Thot; upon the right the picture is destroyed, and we see the royal titles only, without figures.  The statue bears no cartouche, and considerations purely artistic cause me to attribute it to Kheops:  it may equally well represent Dadufri, the successor of Kheops, or Shopsiskaf, who followed Mykerinos.

[Illustration:  176b.jpg PROFILE OF HEAD OF A MUMMY, (A MAN) THEBES]

[Illustration:  177.jpg PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH]

The Egyptians of the Theban period were compelled to form their opinions of the Pharaohs of the Memphite dynasties in the same way as we do, less by the positive evidence of their acts than by the size and number of their monuments:  they measured the magnificence of Kheops by the dimensions of his pyramid, and all nations having followed this example, Kheops has continued to be one of the three or four names of former times which sound familiar to our ears.  The hills of Gizeh in his time terminated in a bare wind-swept table-land.  A few solitary mastabas were scattered here and there on its surface, similar to those whose ruins still crown the hill of Dahshur.* The Sphinx, buried even in ancient times to its shoulders, raised its head half-way down the eastern slope, at its southern angle;** beside him*** the temple of Osiris, lord of the Necropolis, was fast disappearing under the sand; and still further back old abandoned tombs honey-combed the rock.****