So, then, because of our mapping and because of our approach where we looked at what is the shape of the ground here, where is the quarry, where is the Pyramid, where would the ramp have run, we could come up with a figure of how many men it would take to schlep the stones up to the Pyramid. The designations of the pyramids—Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure—correspond to the kings for whom they were built. Ultimately, they hope to learn more about the workforce, their daily lives, and perhaps where they came from. You put pivots under it, and as few as two or three guys can pivot it around if you put a hard cobble under it. That's the gang name. Perhaps they were the stone-cutters and -setters, and the experienced quarry men at the quarry wall. The pyramids of Giza are mostly solid masses of stone with very little to be found inside. And the New Agers sometimes want to say these were very technologically sophisticated people who built these things; they were not primitive. Only a racist person would look at the pyramids and turn it into a black and white thing when neither race has anything to do with these. And the King's men come, and it may not have been entirely coercion, but it seems that everybody owed a labor tax. And you can actually work out the coefficient of friction or glide on a slick surface, how much an average stone weighed, how many men it would take to pull that. You have seen the central principle of the first nation-state in our planet's history—the Pyramids, the centralization, this organization. You find that to some extent in the Pyramid temple of Menkaure. I will take them personally to the rooms. According to the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, the Great Pyramid took 20 years to construct and demanded the labour of 100,000 men. To some extent I think we feel the need to look for a lost civilization on time's other horizon because we feel lost in our civilization, and somehow we don't want to face the little man behind the curtain as you had in "The Wizard of Oz." In the late 1980s and ’90s, excavations in the environs of the pyramids revealed labourers’ districts that included bakeries, storage areas, workshops, and the small tombs of workers and artisans. Also nearby were subsidiary pyramids used for the burials of other members of the royal family. And that's quarried locally at Giza—most of the stone is local stone. Above the King’s Chamber are five compartments separated by massive horizontal granite slabs; the likely purpose of these slabs was to shield the ceiling of the burial chamber by diverting the immense thrust exerted by the overlying masses of masonry. Certainly we didn't replicate ancient technology 100 percent, because there's no way we could replicate the entire ancient society that surrounded this technology. Thirty-four stones can get delivered by x number of gangs of 20 men, and it comes out to something like 2,000, somewhere in that area. You need 340 stones delivered every day, and that's 34 stones every hour in a ten-hour day, right? We know that these objects date from the time of Khafre and Khufu. Mud sealings seem to date the workshop areas to the late 4th dynasty. The northernmost and oldest pyramid of the group was built for Khufu (Greek: Cheops), the second king of the 4th dynasty. Or in Mesopotamia we know that they built great mud-brick city walls by the clans turning out and giving their contribution, a kind of organic, natural community involvement in the building project. INTERVIEW WITH ZAHI HAWASS, Director General of Giza. If you go to any village you will understand the system of ancient Egyptians. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. All the theorists, in other books, say that the stones were taken from Tura about five miles to the east of the Pyramid. Pyramids became magnets for grave robbers leading later kings to hide their tombs inside cliffs. Thus, the grave goods originally deposited in the burial chambers are missing, and the pyramids no longer reach their original heights because they have been almost entirely stripped of their outer casings of smooth white limestone; the Great Pyramid, for example, is now only 451.4 feet (138 metres) high. This figure is believable given the assumption that these men, who were agricultural labourers, worked on the pyramids only (or primarily) while there was little work to be done in the fields—i.e., when the Nile River was in flood. The northernmost and oldest pyramid of the group was built for Khufu (Greek: Cheops), the second king of the 4th dynasty. Cross section of the interior of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, facing west, near Giza, Egypt. The Egyptian sun god Ra, considered the father of all pharaohs, was said to have sat upon a pyramid-shaped mound of earth which had emerged from the primordial sea. Mark Lehner: No. They will work free for you. And so here are these stupendous, gigantic things thrust up to the sky, their polished white limestone blazing in the sunshine. The pyramids that the Cushite people built to entomb their pharaohs and other important figures looked very similar to the ancient Egyptian structures. Also look at some of the pharaohs on the hieroglyphics; if they stood up they were double the height of normal humans. You see, to me it's even more fascinating that they did this. He said, 100,000 men working in three shifts, which raises some doubt, I guess, if you read it in the original Greek, as to whether it's three shifts of 100,000 men each or whether you subdivide the 100,000 men. In the meantime, Lehner has been excavating the bakeries that presumably fed this army of workers, while Hawass has been unearthing the cemetery for this grand labor force. Besides the core mastabas of the 4th dynasty, numerous mastabas from the 5th and 6th dynasties (c. 2465–c. The Great Pyramid of Khufu is one of 104 Pyramids in Egypt with superstructure, and there are 54 Pyramids with substructure. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. After Sneferu, his son Khufu became the Pharaoh of Egypt. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. But the magic of the Pyramid makes people think about it. Most of them were built as tombs - … And you have the names of the gangs of Khufu as "Friends of Khufu." Because they were the friends of Khufu proves that building the Pyramid was not really something that the Egyptians would push. It was suggested that as few as 20,000 workers, with accompanying support personnel (bakers, physicians, priests, etc. Now it's often said that the stones were delivered at a rate of one every two minutes or so. But during the late summer and early autumn months, when the Nile flooded surrounding fields, a large labor force would appear at Giza to put in time on the Pyramids. Standing at the base of the Pyramids at Giza it is hard to believe that any of these enormous monuments could have been built in one pharaoh's lifetime. You didn't see great images. Now, I was bothered by the iron tools, especially the iron winch that pulled the stone away from the quarry walls, so I said, let's put in an additional team of 20 men, so that 12 men become 32, and now let's run the equation. The angle of slope was to be exactly the same for each face, with the pyramid’s peak lying precisely above the exact mid-point of … So there's a difference there. What tools did they have? They are not from outer space. Pyramids were impressive to look at. The middle pyramid was built for Khafre (Greek: Chephren), the fourth of the eight kings of the 4th dynasty; the structure measures 707.75 feet (216 metres) on each side and was originally 471 feet (143 metres) high. It was the Egyptians who built the Pyramids. It's as though these gangs are competing. And in the Old Kingdom in the time of the Pyramids of Giza, the gangs were named after kings. So I went over, starting from that point of view, but everything I saw told me, day by day, year by year, that they were very human and the marks of humanity are everywhere on them. Rather than just copping out and saying, "There's no way they could have done this." You have your own village, maybe you even have your own land that you're responsible for. Okay, so how do we know this? And the rope on the great day of bridge-building is wound into a great cable, and all the villages' cables are wound into this virtual bridge. So now we've got 1,200 men in the quarry, which is a very generous estimate, 2,000 men delivering. So basically what we were doing is, as we say in the film and in the accompanying book, that we're setting up the ability to test particular tools, techniques, and operations, without testing the entire building project. I'm sure they'd be happy to go on record with their study, which looked at what they call "critical path analysis." https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/giza-pyramids Well, it turns out that even if you give great leeway for the iron tools, all 340 stones could have been quarried in a day by something like 1,200 men. Ring in the new year with a Britannica Membership, This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pyramids-of-Giza, Ancient History Encyclopedia - The Great Pyramid of Giza: Last Remaining Wonder of the Ancient World, LiveScience - Amazing Facts about the Great Pyramids of Giza, National Geographic - History - Pyramids at Giza, Khan Academy - The Great Pyramids of Giza, Facts for Kids - Pyramids of Giza Facts for Kids - Tallest Man-Made Structures in Ancient Times, Pyramids of Giza - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up), Great Pyramid of Khufu: cross section of interior. The existing U.S.- Egypt Higher Education Initiative … Its sides rise at an angle of 51°52′ and are accurately oriented to the four cardinal points of the compass. ZAHI HAWASS: We are lucky because we found this whole evidence of the workmen who built the Pyramids. So that's 3,200. Ramses II This pharaoh built more temples and monuments than any other pharaoh in history. In fact, it gets more intriguing, because in certain monuments you find the name of one gang on one side of the monument and another gang, we assume competing, on the other side of the monument. So, for example, we have a name, compounded with the name of Menkaure, and it seems to translate "the Drunks (or the Drunkards) of Menkaure." Uncover the myths and mysteries behind the Great Sphinx's damaged face. We know we can excavate the cemetery for hundreds of years—generations after generations can work in the cemetery—and the second is the settlement area. Now, the stone-setting gets a bit complicated because of the casing, and you have one team working from each corner and another team working in the middle of each face for the casing and then the core. But the stones didn't go in one after another, you see. A pyramid had to be built to extremely accurate specifications. The workmen who were involved in building the Great Pyramid were divided into gangs or groups, and each group had a name and an overseer. They are not people from a lost civilization. Called the Great Pyramid, it is the largest of the three. In the following interviews, Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass address the long-standing question of who actually built the Pyramids at Giza: INTERVIEW WITH MARK LEHNER, Archeologist, Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago and Harvard Semitic Museum. The pyramids of Giza were royal tombs built for three different pharaohs. I come to that number based on the size of the Pyramid project, a government project, the size of the tombs, the cemetery. The tombs range from simple mud-brick domes to more-elaborate stone monuments. There are more than 100 surviving pyramids but the most famous is the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt - standing at more than 450ft (137m). …built the Great Pyramid at Giza (Al-Jīzah), to which were added the slightly smaller second pyramid of one of Khufu’s sons, Khafre (more correctly Rekhaef, the Chephren of Greek sources), and that of Menkaure (Mycerinus). Really it was love—they were not really pushed to do it. We want that sound and fury. But it's quite an amazing picture. Why is there such a need to look for yet another culture, to say, "No, it wasn't these people, it was some civilization that's lost, even older.". Well, first of all, Herodotus just claims he was told that. That doesn't sound like slavery, does it?". The entrance to the Great Pyramid is on the north side, about 59 feet (18 metres) above ground level. The middle pyramid was built for Khafre (Greek: Chephren), the fourth of the eight kings of the 4th dynasty. Montuhotep II (2,007-1,956 B.C.E. ), would have been adequate for the task. Now, just recently I was contacted by the construction firm DMJM. You're rotated into this experience, and you serve in your respective crew, gang, phyles, and divisions, and then you're rotated out, and you go back because you have your own large household to whom you are assigned on a kind of an estate-organized society. Despite being roundly mocked on social media after a recently unearthed 17-year-old video showed him suggesting the theory that the great pyramids of Egypt were built by the biblical Joseph to store grain, not tombs for pharaohs as most archeologists contend, Carson has stood by the theory and research shows why. The internal walls as well as those few outer-casing stones that still remain in place show finer joints than any other masonry constructed in ancient Egypt. Mark found the bakery, and we found this settlement of the camp, and hieroglyphic inscriptions of the Overseer of the Site of the Pyramid, the Overseer of the West Side of the Pyramid. Here's what we know about their tools, the inclined plane, the lever, and so on. From the descending corridor branches an ascending passageway that leads to a room known as the Queen’s Chamber and to a great slanting gallery that is 151 feet (46 metres) long. The mummified pharaoh’s body is being carried to the tomb along with all the things that will be placed in the tomb for the ka – statues, furniture, pottery and the pharaoh’s favourite possessions. The pyramids of Egypt were built as funerary monuments over a period of 2700 years, starting from the beginning of the era of the ancient state, until the end of the Ptolemaic era, where the building of the pyramids reached its peak in the era of the pyramid, which begins under the rule of the third royal dynasty, and ends under the rule of the sixth almost, in the period what Between 2686–2325 BC. Herodotus, when he came here, met guides who told stories and things like that. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Mortuary temple of the pyramid of Khafre, near Giza, Egypt. And it comes out to between 400 and 500 men. This figure is believable given the assumption that these men, who were agricultural labourers, worked on the pyramids only (or primarily) while there was little work to be done in the fields—i.e., when the Nile River was in flood. Corrections? Receive emails about upcoming NOVA programs and related content, as well as featured reporting about current events through a science lens. Number two, we found evidence that those people had emergency treatment. What do you need to get the job done? Outside Cairo on the western shore of the Nile, there are the three great pyramids built for the Pharaohs Cheops, Mykerinos and Chefrens. They have very specific calculations on every single aspect, from the gravel for the ramps to baking the bread. The Egyptians believed that the pharaohs were going to become gods in the afterlife and so they had pyramids built to prepare them for it. You cannot reach those spots. Then who built the Pyramids? According to the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, the Great Pyramid took 20 years to construct and demanded the labour of 100,000 men. Now, they did it with an iron cable and a winch that pulled the stone away from the quarry wall, and all their tools were iron. It's like today. So from this evidence we deduce that there was a labor force that was assigned to respective crew, gang, phyles, and divisions. Carved out of limestone, the Sphinx has the facial features of a man but the body of a recumbent lion; it is approximately 240 feet (73 metres) long and 66 feet (20 metres) high. Offenders face up to three years in prison as penalty. "In a NOVA experiment we found that 12 men could pull a one-and-a-half-ton block over a slick surface with great ease.". Egyptians claim the great Pyramid was built in 22 years, that equates to a block in place like every so many seconds apart, if that time frame is correct they absolutely had help. And one of the things that is motivating me now is the question of what vision of society is suggested by a pyramid like Khufu's? This doesn't sound like slavery, does it? Khufu’s pyramid is perhaps the most colossal single building ever erected on the planet. 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