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:’) Like you were there. ;’) ;’) ;’)

An awful lot of that went on in ancient Egypt, despite the kinda nutty new-agey ideas about how it was a unified, peaceful kingdom into the prehistoric past. As with all regimes in which the only way for someone to leave the top job is to die, a lot of that went on. Khufu built the Great Pyramid, but his successor was NOT Khafre (a.k.a. Chephren) — it was the elder son, Djedjefre, who began his own pyramid a few miles north, at Abu Roash. Djedjefre didn’t live long enough to finish his pyramid, and was succeeded by his own son, who didn’t reign long for some reason, left few traces of ever having lived, and his no-doubt blameless uncle Khafre seized the throne.

The grandson of Khafre is generally counted as the first pharaoh of the 5th dynasty (rather than being part of the 4th where he really belongs, mainly because of the garbled mess that is the dynastic organization handed down from Manetho, who probably based everything he wrote on his understanding of the succession list carved on the wall of Seti’s temple), but he didn’t build a 4th dynasty style pyramid, and didn’t build at Giza. He built a mastaba at Saqqara, ten or so miles south of Giza.

My guess is, Egypt was (not for the first or last time) riven by political and dynastic schism, with one or more rival pharaohs.