CIIEOPS, according to Ilerodotus, an Egyptian king, called Chombes by Diodorus, Souphis by Manetho, Saophis by Eratosthenes, and in Egyptian "Khufu." He was the second king of the fourth dynasty of Manetho, and the builder of the great pyramid at Ghizeh. His name was supposed to mean "wealthy," or "having much hair." Ile spent enormous sums on the pyramid (see PYRAMID, ante), and one improbable story is that he was compelled through want of money to sacrifice the honor of his daughter to insure its completion. Ile is also depicted as impious towards the gods, closing the temples, and stopping the worship; but subsequently repenting, and writing a sacred book much esteemed by the Egyptians. The monumental information about C. does not confirm the Greek historians; on the contrary, it records the construction of temples in honor of the gods, the repair of the shrine, and the gift of various figures to the temple of Isis and Athor, close to his own pyramid, and his construction or repair of the temple of the same goddess Athor, the Egyptian Venus, at Denderah, or Tentyris. C. carried
on war at the valley Magarali, in the peninsula of Sinai in Arabia; and a rock tablet represents him as having conquered the hostile tribes in the presence of the god Thoth, who had revealed to him the mines of the locality. His oppression had so afflicted Egypt, that charges of impiety had attached to his name; but the tombs of his children reveal no change in the established religion, and his pyramid differs from Hulse of his predecessors and immediate successor only by its larger size and greater beauty. The date of C., according to Lepsius, is 3,095 to 3,032 ii.c.; but great difference of opinion, amounting to nearly 2.000 years, exists as to the time of Menes, from whom the lists separate him by an interval of 89S years.