The society and economy of his time
During the reign of King Khufu, members of the working classes were keen to build their tombs around his pyramid about a thousand years after his death, which suggests that his good memory remained among them and their desire to be blessed next to him, which distances him from the suspicion of tyrannical oppressors.
However, a few researchers have argued that King Khufu relied on tyranny and tyrannical authority to harness the people to build the Great Pyramid, which is rejected by the majority of historians, as coercion and forced labor cannot accomplish this great construction.
Some historians believe that the construction of pyramids, temples and monuments requires the allocation of an enormous amount of economic resources: Human and material resources, and it is also recognized that these resources are characterized by scarcity, so is it a waste to allocate them to the construction of these monuments and would it have been better to direct them to other purposes?
Many historians have seen that it is wrong to define productive work as work that produces a material product only, but the proper definition of productive work is that which results in the creation of a new benefit or an increase in an existing benefit, so it can now be said that building these huge edifices has satisfied strong desires represented in satisfying the religious motives of the people, as it is certain that faith was the largest and most powerful motivation following the lives of the ancient Egyptians throughout all their history.
The construction of the pyramids provided permanent and temporary employment opportunities for thousands of workers during the era of King Khufu and the ancient state in general, as it is known that the engineers and skilled workers who built these edifices worked throughout the year, while the unskilled workers, mostly farmers, had their main job It is clear from here that the Great Pyramid alone provided huge employment opportunities, as it used to return to those in charge of it with huge material gains, which were mainly represented in food, drink, clothing and shelter over a period of about twenty years.
It is also worth noting that if we link the continuity of generations and the continuation of the personality of the ancient Egyptian state through time, no one today can deny the extreme importance of these monuments, especially the pyramid of King Khufu and the pyramids in general as a vital element in Egypt's national wealth, as it limits one of the heads of tourism components that contribute to providing hard currency that greatly affects the Egyptian national income.
Changes during the King's reign
We do not know the reason for this, but in the fifth year of King Khufu's reign, the design of his pyramid group was modified, as the burial chamber was left underground and only some of the stone rubble was moved, and then began to make an iron corridor ascending through the body of the pyramid, and this corridor led to the upper chamber of the pyramid, currently wrongly known as the queen's chamber, and it was planned to make an ascending corridor - Either at the same time or as a further modification of the interior design, an architectural marvel, known as the Great Foyer, was planned to reach the third burial chamber, known as the King's Chamber, which contains the king's granite sarcophagus.
The funerary temple was enlarged, the stonework of these buildings having been left intact by the mother rock, and the upper entrance to the ascending road was also altered, and in order to connect it to the Valley Temple, its route was modified in some parts.
These changes were most likely related to a change in the royal doctrine, and a continuation of Sneferu's conflict with the priests of Ra in Heliopolis, and perhaps the priests were exerting pressure on the king to fulfill their demands and try to make him follow the system they set for him, or more likely that Khufu wanted to emphasize that the wealth of the country would go towards Giza and not Heliopolis, and in any case it is likely that in the fifth year of his reign, Khufu declared himself a god of the sun.
The death of King Khufu and the end of his reign
King Khufu is thought to have reigned for 23 years, as recorded in the New Kingdom's Turin Papyrus, although an inscription found in the Dakhla Oasis records an expedition sent by King Khufu in the 27th year of his reign to fetch mafet. Ancient kings are known to have dated their years of rule according to the cattle census every two years, which could cause a conflict between the 23rd year and the 23rd census. If the New Kingdom papyrus set the census at 23, it is possible that Khufu reigned for 46 years, and another possibility is that the papyrus gave each king of that dynasty the reign of a generation, but the common expectation based on the available evidence is that King Khufu reigned for 30-32 years and was about 58-60 years old when he died.
As for the burial ceremony, it was supervised by his son and successor, Prince Gedef-Ra, and may have been assisted by Minister Ankh Haf, while Minister Ham Euno had died before it, the king's body was first taken to the Valley Temple and placed on a bed inside the cleansing tent, which was called in hieroglyphic prepared for the purification ceremony. After a series of rituals, the body was taken to the embalming chamber, where it remained for 40 days, immersed in natron to remove body moisture, and then another 30 days to complete the mummification process.
On the day of the burial, the sacred royal mummy was placed inside a golden coffin and carried to the north side of the pyramid by a procession of priests. Once the coffin reached the entrance to the pyramid, Ankh Haf stopped the procession and dismissed all but two of the priests, and led the coffin beyond the entrance chamber and behind him were the mourners of the King of Egypt, then they entered the middle chamber of the three chambers, where the priests placed the coffin inside that secret chamber and sealed it completely. When Ankh Haf came out with the priests, he ordered the entrance to the pyramid to protect the secret that King Khufu was not buried in the chamber with the granite sarcophagus, but was buried in a place that makes him safe and eternal peace, and even the next king, Jedph Ra, did not know this secret.