Khephren
Khephren (AKA Khephnes, Khafre, Chephren, Khafra, et.al.), real-life Egyptian Pharaoh of the 4th Dynasty.
In the Mythos
Khephnes, an Egyptian of the 14th Dynasty who told me the hideous secret of Nyarlathotep....
— H.P. Lovecraft, "Shadow Out of Time (fiction)"
[In dream] I saw my guide Abdul Reis in the robes of a king, with the sneer of the Sphinx on his features. And I knew that those features were the features of Khephren the Great, who raised the Second Pyramid, carved over the Sphinx’s face in the likeness of his own, and built that titanic gateway temple whose myriad corridors the archaeologists think they have dug out of the cryptical sand and the uninformative rock. And I looked at the long, lean, rigid hand of Khephren; the long, lean, rigid hand as I had seen it on the diorite statue in the Cairo Museum—the statue they had found in the terrible gateway temple—and wondered that I had not shrieked when I saw it on Abdul Reis.... That hand! It was hideously cold, and it was crushing me; it was the cold and cramping of the sarcophagus.... the chill and constriction of unrememberable Egypt.... It was nighted, necropolitan Egypt itself... that yellow paw... and they whisper such things of Khephren....
The whispers of Arabs are very wild, and cannot be relied upon. They even hint that old Khephren—he of the Sphinx, the Second Pyramid, and the yawning gateway temple — lives far underground wedded to the ghoul-queen Nitokris and ruling over the mummies that are neither of man nor of beast. It was of these—of Khephren and his consort and his strange armies of the hybrid dead—that I dreamed, and that is why I am glad the exact dream-shapes have faded from my memory. My most horrible vision was connected with an idle question I had asked myself the day before when looking at the great carven riddle of the desert and wondering with what unknown depths the temple so close to it might be secretly connected. That question, so innocent and whimsical then, assumed in my dream a meaning of frenetic and hysterical madness... what huge and loathsome abnormality was the Sphinx originally carven to represent?
And then... God keep the memory of those Arab legends out of my head! The mummies without souls... the meeting-place of the wandering kas... the hordes of the devil-cursed pharaonic dead of forty centuries... the composite mummies led through the uttermost onyx voids by King Khephren and his ghoul-queen Nitokris....
— H.P. Lovecraft and Harry Houdini, "Under the Pyramids (fiction)"
Khephren was in real life an Egyptian Pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty, who is attributed with the construction of the second pyramid, and supposedly constructing the Sphinx (though findings of fringe science suggest that the Sphinx may be far older than the Fourth Dynasty).
In Lovecraft's fiction, Khephren additionally takes on a sinister aspect, discovering the "Secret of Nyarlathotep", experiencing a Yithian mind transfer, recarving the unspeakable original face of the Sphinx into his own likeness, participating in creating an army of soulless hybrid mummies in secret catacombs beneath the Sphinx where he revived the cult of Nephren-Ka, and eventually (400 years after his death) marrying the "Ghoul-Queen" Nitokris and fathering the reincarnation of Nephren-Ka as the Avatar of Nyarlathotep.
Khephren would be reincarnated through history through mind transfer, taking the bodies of his descendants and preserving a cult of the Sphinx in that form, luring unsuspecting travelers to the Pyramids to be kidnapped and sacrificed under the pyramids.
Heresies and Controversies
- Lovecraft only hints at the history of the terrible Sphinx; the beast originally had an inhuman head, perhaps carved in the likeness of Nyarlathotep, in which form it served as the center of the cult of the Black Pharaoh Nephren-Ka in the Third Dynasty; the cult was eliminated by the successor to Nephren-Ka, Sneferu, in an uprising against the Black Pharaoh's abominations. Sneferu had the original face striken from the Sphinx as part of the suppression of the cult, with Nephren-Ka and his queen Nitokris in the Fourth Dynasty reviving the cult and recarving the disfigured Sphinx into Nephren-Ka's own likeness, elevating their son, Nophru-Ka, to the center of the revived cult as the reincarnation of Nephren-Ka and the avatar of Nyarlathtotep. The cult would again be suppressed after the death of Nephren-Ka, before an attempt to revive it under the 18th Dynasty reign of Akhenaten, who resisted the temptation of the Black Pharaoh, sealing him within the Hollow Earth and banishing him from the earth, and then eliminating the last vestiges of the cult along with suppressing the traditional gods of Egypt in an attempt to replace them with a monotheistic sun-worship with Akhenaten at its center. (YSDC)
Associated Mythos Elements
- setting: Ancient Khem
- setting: Hollow Earth (Catacombs of Nephren-Ka)
- location: Sphinx
- deity: Nyarlathotep
- cult: Cult of Nephren-Ka
- character: Ghoul-Queen Nitokris
- character: Nophru-Ka
- race: Children of the Sphinx
- race: Mummies
- race: Ghouls
References
- fiction: "Under the Pyramids (fiction)" (extensive references to Khephren's work in the catacombs beneath Egypt)
- fiction: "Shadow Out of Time (fiction)" (brief mention)
