The characters following the ‘Khufu’ cartouche, in transcription smrw, roughly “semeru”, mean (something like) ‘companions (of)’; crew names of this form are known for other pharaohs, including Menkaure; the title is one otherwise given to courtiers.

This is how it would look if transcribed into more formal hieroglyphs:



I’d like to see this ‘(regnal) year 17’ graffito at Giza: as far as I know, it’s at Dashur, and was misattributed to Giza through a misreading of Lepsius, Denkmaeler.

M.



Post Edited (07-Apr-11 17:13)