Hemiunu

Hemiunu, the principal vizier of Pharaoh Khufu of the Fourth Dynasty of Egypt, was born about 2570 BCE at the principal Memphite court of the early Fourth Dynasty, the principal son of Prince Nefermaat — the eldest son of Pharaoh Sneferu and the principal vizier of his father's reign — and his consort Itet.

He was raised across the principal opening decades of the Fourth Dynasty at the principal Memphite royal court — and was instructed in the principal hieroglyphic scribal canon of the principal Memphite chancery, the principal mathematical and engineering canon of the principal royal architectural office, and the principal court protocol of the principal Fourth Dynasty royal house. He inherited about 2545 BCE the principal vizierate of his father Nefermaat on the accession of his cousin Pharaoh Khufu.

He assumed the principal titles of Hereditary Prince, Vizier, Overseer of the King's Works, Overseer of the Royal Scribes, Overseer of the Royal Documents, and Master of the Works — the principal accumulated portfolio of the chief architect and chief administrator of the Khufu reign. He commissioned and superintended across the principal years 2540 to 2510 BCE the principal Great Pyramid of Giza — the principal largest and most precisely engineered structure of the Egyptian Old Kingdom royal-tomb tradition: a hundred-and-forty-seven-metre limestone pyramid of about two and a half million stone blocks, oriented to the principal cardinal directions to an arc-minute accuracy.

He designed the principal three-chambered internal architecture of the Great Pyramid — the principal subterranean chamber, the principal Queen's Chamber and the principal King's Chamber with its principal granite sarcophagus and principal corbel-vaulted Grand Gallery — to the principal pharaonic-cult specifications of the Khufu funerary programme. He raised the principal Khufu mortuary temple, the principal causeway, the principal valley temple, the principal three subsidiary pyramids of the principal Khufu queens, and the principal Khufu funerary boat pits — the principal completed funerary complex of the Khufu pharaonic record.

He died at Memphis about 2520 BCE of natural causes, at about fifty, and was buried in the principal mastaba G 4000 of the Western Cemetery of Giza adjacent to the Great Pyramid. The principal limestone seated statue recovered from his serdab chamber by the principal Hermann Junker expedition of 1912, now in the Roemer-und-Pelizaeus-Museum at Hildesheim, constitutes the principal surviving portrait of Hemiunu in the Egyptian Old Kingdom record. He is honored here as the principal architect of the Great Pyramid of Giza.