How the Egyptians built the pyramids is one of the most asked questions about the ancient world. We do not have a written manual, but excavations over the last 40 years have answered most of it: the pyramids were built by skilled, organized and well-fed Egyptian workers, using simple tools, ramps, sledges and an enormous amount of planning.
The workers
The old idea of slaves building the pyramids is wrong. South of the Giza plateau, archaeologists led by Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass found the workers’ town, with bakeries, breweries, fish-processing areas and barracks, and the cemetery where workers were buried with bread and beer for the afterlife. A core of perhaps a few thousand skilled builders worked all year, joined by farmers who came in rotating teams. Their teams had names such as “Friends of Khufu”, painted inside the Great Pyramid.
Giza PyramidsThe stone
Most of the blocks were cut from limestone quarries right on the plateau, using copper chisels, stone hammers and wooden wedges. The fine white casing stone came from Tura across the Nile, and granite for the burial chambers came by boat from Aswan, 800 km to the south. The papyri of Wadi al-Jarf, found in 2013, include the logbook of an official named Merer, who shipped casing blocks to Giza along canals from the Nile.
Moving the blocks
Blocks were dragged on wooden sledges, and a painting in a Middle Kingdom tomb shows a worker pouring water on the sand in front of a sledge, which makes it much easier to pull. To raise them, builders used ramps of mud brick and rubble. Whether these ran straight, zigzagged up a face or wrapped around the pyramid is still debated. In 2018, a steep ramp with post holes for ropes was found at an ancient alabaster quarry, showing one method in use at the time of Khufu.
Precision
The Great Pyramid’s sides line up with the cardinal points almost perfectly, probably by watching stars or the sun. The base is level to within a couple of centimeters. This was not magic but excellent surveying. See it for yourself on our Cairo day tours.
