Fourth Dynasty king of Egypt, builder of the second pyramid at Giza, and the name attached to the Great Sphinx by an attribution that no ancient inscription supports.
How the attribution was built
The diorite statue that anchors it came out of a pit in the floor of the granite temple beside the Sphinx in 1860, after Auguste Mariette uncovered the building in 1853. George Reisner renamed that building the Valley Temple of Khafre in 1908 by analogy with Menkaure’s, and reasoned that whatever stood next door to a Khafre temple must be Khafre’s. But the argument from position is older than Reisner: Samuel Birch made it in 1842 in the same paragraph that warned the Dream Stela’s cartouche could not be read, and Flinders Petrie’s History of Egypt was already calling the building “often misnamed the temple of the Sphinx” in 1894. At every link the argument is the same one, from proximity.
The face
Rainer Stadelmann argues the face is Khufu’s rather than Khafre’s. Origins of the Sphinx is content either way, since both sides agree the head is a dynastic recarving of an older lion.
Connections
Great Sphinx · Dream Stela · George Reisner · Rainer Stadelmann · Valley Temple and Sphinx Temple · Origins of the Sphinx · Flinders Petrie · Great Pyramid of Giza · Auguste Mariette · Frank Domingo