Pyramids of Giza

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The Pyramids of Giza are the only one of Seven Wonders of the World that survive today. They are huge mausoleums built for three pharaohs in the Old Kingdom — Khufu (Cheops, father), Khafre (Chephren, son) and Menkaure (Mycerinus, grandson) — and they once contained the pharaohs mummies. Of the three pyramids The Great Pyramid of Giza (Khufu) is the largest, Khafre is the second largest, and Menkaure is considerably smaller than the other two. There are also some small pyramids and some tombs around the main pyramids.

The pyramids are believed to be monuments to the pharaohs’ life force as well as memorials to their lives. Their construction coincided with the development of sun worship in Egypt and its no surprise then that the sun strikes the tops of the pyramids long before it illuminates the dwellings below it. The pyramids may have represented the rays of the sun that the pharaohs used to climb into the heavens.

The Pyramids of Giza are man-made mountains of hewn stone. They are steeper than the pyramids built before them in Saqqara and Danshur because, wrote the scholar Daniel Boorstin, "the pyramid builders had now learned to increase stability by laying the stones of the inner limestone base at a slope...The exact quality of hewn stones inside remains one of the many mysteries. [The] outer structure of huge limestone blocks rests on an inner core of rocks."

Each pyramid was the focal point of a complex of subsidiary tombs and temples. A high boundary wall surrounded each complex. Only ritually clean priests and officials were allowed to enter. Access from the Nile was provided by a valley temple constructed at the edge of the river plain. During the funeral of a pharaoh buried in Giza, the funeral boat arrived via the river and was carried up a walled causeway to the mortuary temple at the base of the Pyramids, where the body was entombed.

The Pyramids are awe-inspiring for the size and shape and in imagining the labor involved in building them. Some of the best views of the Pyramids and the Sphinx are from barren hills around the plateau. It easy to reach these hills by foot or on the back of a camel or horse. All kinds of organisms live in the Pyramids. They include some foxes living near the top.

Giza

20120216-Climbing_the_Great_Pyramid TIMEA.jpg Giza (6 miles to the west of central Cairo) was the religious center of the IV dynasty rulers of the Old Kingdom which ruled over Egypt between 2650 and 2450 B.C. The Great Pyramids and the Sphinx are located here as well as Egypt’s oldest hypostyle hall, some of the world’s oldest paved streets, the oldest faience works, causeways, walls, corridors, Old Kingdom tombs of priests, aristocrats and commoners, and an entire city for 20,000 or so pyramid-builders that includes the remains of bread bakeries, breweries, shops, and copper works.

The Giza Plateau is limestone escarpment that abuts the west bank of the Nile and sits at an elevation of about 107 meters (350 feet) higher than its surroundings. The view in some directions has not changed since ancient times. As you gaze westward all there is is sand and stone all the way to Libya. Turn around and see Cairo’s sprawl.

According to PBS: Giza "is more than just three pyramids and the Sphinx. Each pyramid has a mortuary temple and a valley temple linked by long causeways that were roofed and walled. Alongside Khufu and Khafre's pyramids were large boat-shaped pits and buried boats that were presumably meant to aid the pharaoh's journey to the afterlife. As yet, no vessels have been found beside Menkaure's tomb. In addition, cemeteries of royal attendants and relatives surround the three pyramids. The entire plateau is dotted with these tombs, called mastabas, which were built in rectangular bench-like shapes above deep burial shafts." [Source: PBS]

The pyramids are usually dated to 2550 and 2470 B.C. based on the Kings Lists. But these dates are of some dispute. Carbon 14 dating of organic materials found in the mortar of pyramids reveals dates that on average are 374 years older than the dated derived from the Kings List. Dating of the Great Pyramid based on fact it was once aligned with the northern alignment of two stars — Kochab in the Little Dipper and Mizar in the Big Dipper — but is slightly off this alignment today because of wobbles in earth’s rotation make it 75 years older than Kings List date.

Whether or not the Pyramids were aligned using the aforementioned stars is still matter of debate. In any case, in the time of the Egyptians, they were not aligned with Polaris, our current North Star. The wobble described above was created by the gravitational pulls of the sun and the moon and trace a small circle in the sky every 28,500 years or so. Over time the North Pole points to different stars, In about 8,000 years Deneb will be the North Star.

Layout of the Giza Pyramid Area

The three main pyramids of Giza are surrounded by several small pyramids, and hundreds of mastaba-tombs of the royal family members, nobles and high ranking people. Richard Bussmman of University College London wrote: :The Khufu cemetery at Giza has sparked wide interest in the research literature due to its planned layout. The pyramid of the king lies at the heart of the cemetery and is accompanied by the ancillary pyramids of the queens. The princes are buried in large mastabas in the Eastern Cemetery, other court officials in medium sized mastabas in the Western Cemetery. Both Eastern and Western Cemetery were originally laid out on a checkerboard, later populated with other tombs in a less rigid fashion. [Source: Richard Bussmman, University College London, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2015, escholarship.org ]

“The distinctive arrangement at Giza has clear forerunners at Maidum and Dahshur but differs from the early dynastic royal cemeteries. At Abydos, the royal tombs are surrounded by subsidiary burials, each of almost identical size. The same template is used by other high-ranking contemporaries and their courts, buried at Naqada, Tarkhan, Saqqara, Giza, and Abu Rawash. In contrast, there is only one court cemetery in the 4th Dynasty. Tomb types and sizes reflect a nuanced hierarchy of an interdependent court community, cascading down from kings to queens, and from princes to mid- ranking courtiers. The change of the spatiallayout and the different geographical distribution patterns of court cemeteries mirror two interrelated processes during the 1st to 4th Dynasty: centralization and stratification of the core elite.

Giza pyramid complex

“An interesting corollary is the stronger emphasis on the royal family as opposed to the king alone. This indicates perhaps the birth of a dynastic principle based on father-son succession. It is probably no coincidence that the royal title “son of Ra” is first attested for Radjedef and the title “son of the king” is typical of the highest court officials in the early to mid-4th Dynasty. Both titles suggest that the father-son model was explored more widely for the display of status and legitimacy in the 4th Dynasty than it was before.

“Practice may well have been at variance with ideology. Kings may not have been the sons of deceased predecessors, the Eastern Cemetery at Giza was probably not used by “true” princes only, and the hierarchy of tombs must not be conflated with real power relationships at court. In other words, cemetery organization reflects an imagined model of court society, which takes a new distinct shape in the early 4th Dynasty.”

Building the Giza Pyramids

The pyramids of Giza are made from granite blocks, weighing as much as 70 tons, and limestone blocks, weighing up to 15 tons. The stones were mined on the other side of the Nile from the pyramids and transported to the pyramids by boat and sledge. In terms of how such large stones were put in place there is pretty good evidence ramps made of rubble were constructed around the pyramids and used to transport the blocks to where they were positioned.

Originally the pyramids were covered by a layer of carefully dressed white limestone casings that were brought from quarries on the east side of the Nile, cut in blocks and laid with exquisitely fine joints and polished. When these stones were in place the surfaces of the pyramid glistened like mirrors in the sun. Over the centuries the casings have been removed (most likely by scavengers getting material for other buildings or to make lime). Some were stripped off by Muslims for the buildings in Cairo. What we see today are the cores of the original pyramids. The cores of the larger pyramids were made of crudely cut limestone blocks, with the seams between filled with pieces of limestone and blobs of gypsum mortar. Smaller pyramids had cores with small stones, mud or mud brick retaining walls.

Giza complex from a plane

According to to PBS: “Some Egyptologists believe it took 10 years just to build the ramp that leads from the Nile valley floor to the pyramid, and 20 years to construct the pyramid itself. On average, the over two million blocks of stone used to build Khufu's pyramid weigh 2.5 tons, and the heaviest blocks, used as the ceiling of Khufu's burial chamber, weigh in at an estimated nine tons. Khufu's son, Khafre, who was next in the royal line, commissioned the building of his own pyramid complex which includes the Sphinx. Menkaure, who is believed to be Khafre's son, built the third and smallest of the three pyramids at Giza.

Thousands of laborers were used to build the pyramids. Some historians claim they were slaves forced into working by cruel supervisors. Other historians say the workers were reasonably paid and happy to have a job.

The Nile was once originally about a quarter mile from the pyramids and a temple stood on the shore of the river. A causeway from the temple passed some boats pits, a mortuary temple, an enclosure wall, subsidiary pyramids for the pharaoh's queens and finally led to the great pyramid itself. Today the riverside temple is about a half mile inland. At the base of Cheops are three small temples dedicated to wives or family members of the pharaoh.

Some scientists believe that the limestone blocks are not limestone blocks at all but rather concrete blocks that were formed in place. French scientist who first proposed this theory said Egyptian authorities prevented them from taking the samples to prove their theory. The theory is partly based on the narrowness of the joints between the rocks, which the scientists say is easy to create if the rock is formed but nearly impossible with quarried stones unless milling tools are available. If the theory is true it would end the need to explain how the massive stones were moved. Many think the theory is nonsense.

Great Pyramid of Giza

The Great Pyramid of Giza (Pyramid of Cheops, Khufu) was built in honor of the pharaoh Khufu (reign ca. 2551 B.C.-2528 B.C.) and is the largest of the three pyramids constructed on the Giza plateau in Egypt. Considered a "wonder of the world" by ancient writers, the Great Pyramid was 146.7 meters (481.4 feet) tall when it was first constructed. Today it stands 136.5 meters (455 feet) high and is composed of an astonishing 2.6 million cubic meters (91 million cubic) of stone — roughly enough to fill a football stadium to the highest seats. [Source: Owen Jarus, Live Science July 19, 2016]

Comparison of the Great Pyramid of Giza with Pyramids in Mexico The Great Pyramid is still one of the largest buildings ever created. The first and the largest of the pyramids at Giza, it is 70 square meters (756 square feet), covers 5,2 hectares (13 acres) at its base and is made of 2.3 million blocks of stones. The stones weigh an average of two and half tons each and collectively weigh 6.25 million tons. The stones fit so well together that even a playing card can not be inserted between them. The structure took 25,000 workers 16 years to build.

The Great Pyramid of Giza was the world’s tallest building three times (2550 B.C. to A. D. 1311; 1548-1569; 1573-1625), as rivals rose and collapsed during the medieval period and the Renaissance. During its unmatched first reign at the top — totaling almost four millennia — the only competitor that came close in height was the Lighthouse of Alexandria, which stood about 107 meters (350 feet) tall before it collapsed. [Source: Sonja Anderson, Smithsonian magazine, November 2023]

The first true pyramid was built by Sneferu, the first king of the Fourth Dynasty. Khufu was his son and successor. The Great Pyramid at Giza was built with well over 2 million blocks of limestone, some weighing fifteen tons apiece. Many of the casing stones of the Great Pyramid were stripped off to build medieval Cairo (Al Qahirah). [Source: Helen Chapin Metz, ed. Egypt: A Country Study, Library of Congress, 1990]

The climb to the top of the Great Pyramid of Giza takes about a half hour, but visitors are no longer allowed to make the ascent. Most of the stones are fitted so they are waist high. Originally the pyramid was 10 meters taller than it is now but wind and weather have whittled it down in size.

Construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza

The Great Pyramid of Giza was completed around 2550 B.C. The base covers twelve and half football fields. It is said that you can fit all the cathedrals of Milan and Florence in the base and still have enough room left for St Paul's and Westminster Abbey of London and St. Peter's in Rome. Walking around the perimeter is equivalent to a walk of 11 city blocks.

The Great Pyramid has an angle of incline of 51 degrees. The squareness of the north and south sides are off by only .09 percent, and the east and west sides by only .03 percent. The paved foundation on which the pyramid sits deviates from a true plane by an amazing .004 percent. Somehow this amazing precision was achieved without only the aid of a capstan, a pulley or even a wheeled vehicles.

José Miguel Parra wrote in National Geographic: Materials used to build the Great Pyramid came from all over Egypt: limestone from the Tura quarries near Cairo, basalt from Fayyum, granite from Aswan, and copper from the Sinai Peninsula. In order to transport these materials swiftly and smoothly, artificial waterways were built at Giza so that goods could travel by boat as much as possible. The waterways flooded in the summer, and included “The Mouth of the Lake of Khufu,” which was an access to two inner lakes close to the pyramid construction site; the “Lake of Khufu” opposite the main site; and “The Lake of the Horizon of Khufu,” a smaller body of water that probably served smaller vessels. For further convenience, a quarry for the stone blocks used in the inner structure was built near the pyramid site. [Source: José Miguel Parra, National Geographic, February 23, 2024]

Great Pyramid Measured and Oriented with Great Accuracy

Daniel Weiss wrote in Archaeology magazine: A new survey of the dimensions and orientation of ancient Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza has found that its builders attained a remarkable degree of accuracy despite limited technology. The 4,500-year-old pyramid is laid out with its sides running just one-fifteenth of a degree askew of the cardinal directions. In addition, each side of the pyramid’s original base measured around 756 feet long, but with the west side measuring about 2.9 inches longer than the east side, and the south side about 2.2 inches longer than the north side. [Source: Daniel Weiss, Archaeology magazine, September-October 2016]

“Estimating the pyramid’s initial dimensions is challenging given that it was originally clad in casing stones, almost all of which were repurposed as building materials several hundred years ago. Along the structure’s 3,000-plus-foot perimeter, only 177 feet of casing stones remain. To provide additional data, archaeologist Mark Lehner, director of Ancient Egypt Research Associates, looked for etched or cut lines at the pyramid’s base to indicate the location of its original edges. He found 84 such points, most of which are near the centers of the sides, with no evidence of the original corners remaining.

“Glen Dash, an engineer and head of the Glen Dash Research Foundation, and his team used a statistical method known as linear regression analysis to estimate the full extent of the pyramid’s edges based on Lehner’s data points, resulting in the finding that the base is not quite square. “It is slightly a parallelogram,” says Dash, and this suggests its builders were better at measuring precise distances than they were at measuring precise right angles. “We think they were simply using wood, rope, copper, and stone, and were still able to achieve this level of precision,” says Dash. These margins of error, he says, are similar to what one would find in most modern-day construction projects, although structures such as bridges and high rises are held to more exacting standards.

Burial Chamber in the Great Pyramid of Giza

The 30-foot-high burial chamber in the Great Pyramid of Giza is about halfway between the base and the summit. The 150-foot tunnel leading to the chamber is only 1.2 meters (four feet) high, which means that people that enter it have to bend over to reach the chamber. Inside the King's chamber is a huge granite sarcophagus that is an inch wider than the entrance to prevent its removal. The lid which is slightly smaller than the entrance has been removed. To keep the dead Pharaoh cool the pyramid is even outfit with air vents.

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Inside Cheops Pyramid
The burial chamber in the Great Pyramid of Giza is topped by five granite slabs and a pitched roof to prevent it from being crushed by the weight of the pyramid. Nearby is a chamber of unknown purpose originally thought to have been the queen's chamber. Exiting from both chambers are several narrow shafts that may have been built for the pharaoh's spirit to come and go.

The chamber was sealed from within by workers who exited through a tunnel that led to a subterranean shaft. Underneath the base is a chamber carved out of bedrock that may have been the original royal burial site. In spite of hidden entrances, granite plugs and walled-off passages, built in part to foil thieves, the pharaohs treasures were looted, most likely by fellow ancient Egyptians.

Visitors are allowed to climb inside the Great Pyramid of Giza to the funerary chamber in the middle. The main entrance to the tomb, a tunnel excavated by ancient grave robbers, leads to an ascending corridor and a grand gallery, off of which is the king's burial chamber. Only 300 people are allowed inside the tunnel and chamber each day: One hundred-fifty tickets go on sale at 8:00am and another 150 go on sale at 1:30pm. Even with this system there are lines outside the entrance of the pyramid waiting to get inside.

Pyramid of Khafre

The Pyramid of Khafre (Chephren) (southeast of the Great Pyramid of Giza ) is the second largest pyramid by only a few meters. Built in 2520 B.C. with roughly the same structure and layout as Great Pyramid of Giza , it is 143 meters (471 feet) high, 64 square meters (690 square feet) and has an angle of incline of 53̊. The top of this pyramid is covered by limestone blocks, which originally covered the entire structure. There are two entrances on the north side. Chepren (also spelled Khepren and known as Khafre) was the son of Khufu (Cheops). His burial chamber, like that of the Great Pyramid of Giza , is at the center of the pyramid.

Khufu's son, Khafre, built the second pyramid at Giza, around 2520 B.C. His necropolis stands out on the Giza plateau and includes the Sphinx. may stand sentinel for the pharaoh’s tomb complex, although there’s no definitive proof that he built it. [Source: Brian Handwerk, National Geographic, December 21, 2023]

Dr Aidan Dodson wrote for the BBC: “After Khufu's death, he was succeeded by his son, Djedefre, who built his own pyramid about four miles to the north, at Abu Rowash. He made no attempt to match his father's monument for size-its area is less than a quarter that of the Great Pyramid-but instead built it atop a towering cliff. |Djedefre's obscure probable successor, on the other hand, began another giant pyramid, 200m (650ft) square, south of Giza at Zawiyet el-Aryan. This never got as far as the foundations, but another son of Khufu, Khaefre, built the last of the truly gigantic pyramids, back at Giza. His 215m (705ft) square 'Second' pyramid was then followed by Menkaura's 'Third' pyramid, only half the size. Later generations settled for even smaller examples-although with much larger and more lavishly decorated temples: the era of the giants had passed. [Source: Dr Aidan Dodson, BBC, February 17, 2011]

The Pyramid of Khafre has casing stones leftover around its peak that give the impression that a second peak is wedged on top of the first. In ancient Egypt, this pyramid also had red granite casing around its lower levels. The tunnel and burial chamber at Khafre underwent a $294,000, 10-month restoration in the late 1990s after a chunk of limestone fell from the ceiling of the burial chamber. A ventilation system was installed and the chamber was reopened to tourists. Nearby visitors can also see the remains of a valley temple and mortuary temple where the body of the pharaoh was embalmed. Its causeway passes near the sphinx.

Pyramid of Menkaure

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Menkaure pyramid
The Pyramid of Menkaure (Mycerinus) is the smallest of the three main Giza pyramids. It is only about 58 meters (190 feet) high — less than half of the height of the other two — and considerably smaller in size. Built in 2470 B.C, it is distinguished by the fact that the lower part of its sides still retain their granite slab covering. The causeway to this pyramid passes by the great wall which separated the workers village and overseer tombs from the pyramid complex. The largest single block in a pyramid is a 320-ton stone in the Pyramid of Menkaure.

The Menkaure Pyramids is considerably smaller than the first two — less than half their height at about 218 feet. Built by Khafre’s son Menkaure circa 2490 B.C. the pyramid’s elaborate complex includes two separate temples connected by a long causeway, and three individual queens’ pyramids. Menkaures chambers include niche decorations unique to Giza and a vaulted ceiling in his burial chamber itself. The pharaoh’s elaborate sarcophagus was lost at sea near Gibraltar in 1838. [Source: Brian Handwerk, National Geographic, December 21, 2023]

Part of the Pyramid of Menkaure is significantly damaged. "When you see the Menkaures pyramid from the north, you can see a great gash, like a big depression," Yukinori Kawae, an archaeologist at Nagoya University's Institute for Advanced Research in Japan, told Live Science. The Pyramid of Menkaures gash may be a visual blight that wouldn't have existed in ancient times, but the benefit of such damage is that today, it provides a window into the pyramids. "This is also the important area for archaeologists because we can see the internal structures of the pyramids," Kawae said.

When the Pyramid of Menkaure was originally built, it was encased in granite, but over time lost part of its covering. In February 2024, Egypt’s tourism ministry announced that it was scuttling a controversial plan to reinstall ancient granite cladding on the pyramid of Menkaure. A few weeks earlier Mostafa Waziri, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, announced the plan, saying it would be "the project of the century". But news that the ancient monument might be significantly quickly drew an international outcry, prompting Egypt's antiquities authority to review the project. [Source: Patrick Werr, Reuters, February 17, 2024]

Reuters reported: Alone among the pyramids, Menkaure was designed to be clad in granite rather than limestone. Only 16 to 18 layers of granite were installed before construction was halted, apparently because of Menkaures death in about 2503 B.C. Over the centuries, pilfering, weathering and collapse caused many layers to disappear, leaving only seven layers in modern times, although numerous fallen granite blocks remain strewn around the pyramid's base.

Zahi Hawass, a former minister of antiquities, said it would be impossible to determine where each block had originally been. Replacing them would also require cement, which would ruin the pyramid. A seven-member committee headed by Hawass gave initial consent to excavate Menkaure pyramid's boat pits, akin to the Pharaonic bark pits found alongside Khufu's pyramid adjacent to Menkaures, but only after a "clear and detailed scientific study".

Pyramids for Royal Women and Royal Tombs at Giza

The Pyramids for Royal Women(at the Pyramids of Giza Site) were opened to the public for the first time in 1998 after a seven year restoration. Considerably smaller than the great Pyramids at Giza and located near the Great Pyramid of Giza , they were built by Khufu (Cheops) to entomb his mother, Metepheres, and two wives, Henutsen and Meryetes. The tallest of the three, for Metepheres, is only 10 meters (34 feet) high. The smallest, for Henutsen, is less than six meters (19 feet) high. The mummies that are believed to have been in them have never been found.

The Pyramids for Royal Women are not very impressive. They are short and squat and have oversized bases. Each is made from the about two tons of limestone bricks (the rest of structure is fill) and includes a burial chamber that is reached by a corridor that leads downward from the entrance. The burial chamber can be visited. There isn't much to see. Some of the objects found in Metoheres tomb — scarabs, chairs, beds, jars, vessels — are here.

Royal Tombs Giza (at the Pyramids of Giza Site) can be found on the front and back sides of the Pyramids of Giza site. Most of the tombs are square, room-size structures made from blocks of stone. They are notable in that they feature well-preserved engravings that date back before 2500 B.C.

Osiris Tomb (100 meters down the causeway that connected Khafre’s Pyramid and the Sphinx) honors the God of the Dead. Carved out of stone in the 7th century B.C., it extends to 30 meters (100 feet) below the Giza plateau and contains six rock-cut brurial chambers 15 meters (50 feet) below the surface. Inside the burial chamber at the bottom are four ereoded pillars, a granite sarcophagus and lots of water. The tomb is currently only open to archeologist that have special permission to visit it.

A Fourth Major Pyramid of Giza?

New pyramids are still being discovered. The discovery of the 118th pyramid, dated to around 2300, B.C. , at Saqqara near Cairo, was announced in November 2008. It belonged to Queen Sesheshet, the mother of King Teti, the founder of the 6th dynasty of Egypt’s Old Kingdom.

In 2008, the History Channel aired a documentary called the “The Lost Pyramid” that claimed a new pyramid — built by the Forth Dynasty Pharaoh Djedefre — had been discovered at Giza. Not only that the documentary claimed the new pyramid was nine meters higher that the Great Pyramid of Giza. Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s premier Egyptologist, said, “I’m a pyramid man, and what I’ve seen now has made me change my view on many things. Every history book in every language is going to be rewritten.”

The only problem with this and other grand statements was that they greatly overstate the reality. The “new pyramid” had been known for more than a century and the main reason it hadn’t been more throughly excavated was because it lay next to a military exclusion zone, where missiles were sometimes tested. The claim that it was higher than the Great Pyramid of Giza could only be made because it sat on a hill that was half as high as the great pyramid. And on top of that the “new pyramid” isn’t even on the Giza plateau which is eight kilometers to the south and may not even be a pyramid (its slopes are 60 degrees compared to 53 degrees for the pyramids, which some archaeologists say makes it a sun temple). In any case the so called “new pyramid” is hardly impressive. It looks like a collection of ruble and stones.

The producers of the documentary — which also made three King Tut documentaries as well as documentaries for the National Geographic channel — is well-known for rehashing old material on ancient Egypt and calling it new. Other shortcomings of the “new pyramid " include the fact it only has one burial chamber for a a royal bark (the real pyramids have two), no inscriptions for Djedefre have been found, and the true pyramid of Djedefre may be at a different places altogether (a ruined pyramid at Zawyet el-Aryan, south of Giza has a bigger base and Djedefre’s name on it).

Buildings and Infrastructure Around the Giza Pyramids

Archaeologists are still discovering new tunnels and shafts built within the pyramids, and buildings and infrastructure around them. Owen Jarus wrote in Live Science: Archaeologists working at the Giza Pyramids have made several discoveries that shed light on life at the time the pyramids were being built, and the period afterward. Among the discoveries is a basin, full of groundwater, which may have been part of a thriving harbor that kept Giza supplied with goods, including wood from the eastern Mediterranean and granite from Aswan on Egypt's southern border. The newly discovered basin is located about one kilometer (0.6 miles) from the nearest channel of the Nile River and may be an extension of a harbor or waterfront, said Mark Lehner, the director of Ancient Egypt Research Associates. A corridor runs to the north of the basin connecting the harbor with a town to the west and the silo building-complex to the east. [Source: Owen Jarus, Live Science January 21, 2014

Additionally, there is an excavated "silo building complex," dating to just after the pyramids were built and including grain silos and bakeries. There, researchers have found numerous bones from the forelimbs of cattle, popular offerings in ancient Egypt, suggesting royal cult priests perhaps venerating the pharaoh Khafre occupied the complex. A seal containing the pharaoh's name has been found there and his pyramid looms in the background.

The archaeologists have also been excavating a series of long, 23-feet high (7 meters), structures now called the "galleries. " Researchers now believe these galleries were likely used to hold troops who could have participated in voyages to the eastern Mediterranean and perhaps also performed guard duties for VIPs while at Giza. Scientists originally thought these galleries were used for the pyramid workers themselves. However the artifacts found within, including the charcoal remains of cedar (a wood from abroad), suggests troops who voyaged abroad used the galleries. An additional discovery that supports the idea of troops living in the galleries is this broken hippo hipbone, discovered in 2012. In ancient Egypt, troops were responsible for hunting these animals and there was actually a ritual where a captured and bound hippo would be harpooned. This hipbone may be the remains of such an event that could have been performed, publicly, at Giza's harbor. Another recent discovery in the galleries is this pit that originally was believed to be part of an olive. However recent research suggests that it might actually be an Egyptian plum.

The discoveries made in the galleries leave a mystery in their wake. If troops were stationed there, where did the pyramid builders, the workers themselves, live? Two possibilities: They lived on pyramid ramps, while the monuments were under construction, or in the quarries in simple dwellings. In 2004 AERA researchers helped excavate a dump on the northern side of the Great Pyramid of Khufu. They didn't find any dwellings, but they found rope, string, cloth, cattle bone, wood and part of a hammer, artifacts that appear to be from the pyramid workers.

Another series of Giza discoveries was made in this large house that has at least 21 rooms. The archaeologists found leopard teeth, the hind limbs of cattle, and, in the nearby mound, seals containing the titles of some of the highest-ranking officials of the land. Archaeologist Richard Redding found that most of the cattle were less than a year old, indicating the people who lived in the house consumed a diet heavy in veal. This image was taken before excavation of the house was complete.

Two leopard teeth were discovered in the house and another two in the nearby mound. No other leopard remains were found. Surviving drawings from the pyramid age show that high-ranking clergy known as "sem" priests, who could be members of the royal house, were allowed to wear leopard skins with the head still attached. What presumably happened is that people wearing these skins passed through the house, the teeth falling out of the leopard's mouth.

Another mystery the researchers uncovered is that there are far more cattle hind limbs found in the house, and nearby mound, than there are forelimbs. Archaeologist Richard Redding looked at surviving drawings from the pyramid age and found that forelimbs were commonly used as offerings while the hind limbs were not. When archaeologists finished excavating the house they found a structure they tentatively identified as a bakery indicating that the people who lived there got a good supply of freshly baked goods.

digital reconstruction of the pyramids (Digital Giza Project)

What Did the Pyramids of Giza Look like When They Were Built?

Patrick Pester wrote in Live Science: Over the millennia, the pyramids have changed, largely due to construction workers' repurposing of in-demand materials and looting. When the ancient Egyptian pyramids were originally erected, both in Giza and elsewhere, they didn't look sandy brown as they often do today; rather, they were covered in a layer of shiny sedimentary rock. "All the pyramids were cased with fine, white limestone," Mohamed Megahed, an assistant professor at the Czech Institute of Egyptology at Charles University in Prague, told Live Science. The limestone casing would have given the pyramids a smooth, polished layer that shined bright white under the Egyptian sun. [Source: Patrick Pester, Live Science, February 5, 2023]

Builders used around 6. 1 million tons (5.5 million metric tons) of limestone during the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza alone, according to National Museums Scotland, which displays one of the original limestone blocks. However, its casing stones were later repurposed for other building work under Egyptian rulers, as was the case for most pyramid shells. There's evidence that the casing stones began being stripped under Tutankhamun's reign (circa 1336 B.C. to 1327 B.C.), and this continued until the 12th Century A.D., Egyptologist Mark Lehner told PBS NOVA. An earthquake in A.D. 1303 would also have loosened some of the stones, according to BBC News. Today, the Giza pyramids still retain some of their original limestone casing, though it looks slightly more weathered than in ancient times. "You can see it on the top of the Pyramid of Khafre in Giza," Megahed said.

There's nothing at the top of the Giza pyramids today, but originally they hosted capstones — also called pyramidions — covered in electrum, a mix of gold and silver, according to Megahed. The pyramidions would have looked like pointy jewels at the tips of the pyramids. Most pyramidions have been lost over time, but there are a few surviving examples in museums. These specimens reveal that pyramidions were carved with religious imagery. For example, the British Museum has a limestone pyramidion covered in hieroglyphics from Abydos, an archaeological site in Egypt, that depict deceased people worshipping the ancient Egyptian god Osiris and undergoing mummification from the jackal-headed Anubis.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, The Louvre, The British Museum, The Egyptian Museum in Cairo

Text Sources: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Tour Egypt, Minnesota State University, Mankato, ethanholman.com; Mark Millmore, discoveringegypt.com discoveringegypt.com; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Discover magazine, Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, BBC, Encyclopædia Britannica, Time, Newsweek, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated August 2024