Building the Pyramids: Layout, Engineering, Tools, Techniques | Middle East And North Africa

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BUILDING THE PYRAMIDS

Kephren Pyramid, the second largest one, at Giza

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. [Sources: Virginia Morrell, National Geographic, November 2001; David Roberts, National Geographic, January 1995]

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. Some Egyptologists believe the outer faces of the pyramids were left unfinished as the pyramid rose. After the capstone was set the workers then began moving downwards, removing the ramp as they went, and polishing the stone to give it the shiny finish. 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 for the buildings in Cairo. What we see today are the cores of the original pyramids.

Dr Ian Shaw of the University of Liverpool wrote for the BBC: “Since at least the time of the ancient Greeks, there has been considerable debate about exactly how the Egyptians constructed King Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza. Few texts concerning Egyptian engineering methods have survived the centuries, and in recent years experimental archaeology has been the main means for discovering the methods used for building the structure. Despite this, there are still many questions concerning the quarrying, dressing and transportation of the stone building blocks, let alone the methods by which they were placed meticulously in position. And there are further questions still about how the gigantic edifice was erected on a totally horizontal base, and aligned precisely with the stars.[Source: Dr Ian Shaw, BBC, February 17, 2011, Shaw is Lecturer in Egyptian Archaeology at the University of Liverpool]

Websites on Ancient Egypt: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Discovering Egypt discoveringegypt.com; BBC History: Egyptians bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians ; Ancient History Encyclopedia on Egypt ancient.eu/egypt; Digital Egypt for Universities. Scholarly treatment with broad coverage and cross references (internal and external). Artifacts used extensively to illustrate topics. ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt ; British Museum: Ancient Egypt ancientegypt.co.uk; Egypt’s Golden Empire pbs.org/empires/egypt; Metropolitan Museum of Art www.metmuseum.org ; Oriental Institute Ancient Egypt (Egypt and Sudan) Projects ; Egyptian Antiquities at the Louvre in Paris louvre.fr/en/departments/egyptian-antiquities; KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt kmtjournal.com; Egypt Exploration Society ees.ac.uk ; Amarna Project amarnaproject.com; Abzu: Guide to Resources for the Study of the Ancient Near East etana.org; Egyptology Resources fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk

Construction Techniques Used to Build the Pyramids

Egyptologist Mark Lehner told PBS A pyramid is basically, most basically, two separate constructions: it's an outer shell of very fine polished limestone with great accuracy in its joints, but most of that's missing; and the other construction is the inner core, which filled in this shell. Since most of the outer casing is missing what you see now is the step-like structure of the core. The core was made with a substantial slop factor, as my friend who is a mechanic likes to say about certain automobiles. That is, they didn't join the stones very accurately. You have great spaces between the stones. And you can actually see where the men were up there and they didn't, you know, they may have like four or five, even six inches between two stones. And so they'd jam down pebbles and cobbles and some broken stones, and slop big quantities of gypsum mortar in there. I noticed that in the interstices between the stones and in this mortar was embedded organic material, like charcoal, probably from the fire that they used to heat the gypsum in order to make the mortar. You have to heat raw gypsum in order to dehydrate it, and then you rehydrate it in order to make the mortar, like with modern cement. [Source: PBS, NOVA, February 4, 1997]

To make a pyramid packing blocks were stacked until the core was right, and then finishing blocks were placed on the outside presumably for an eye-pleasing appearance. 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.

Jimmy Dunn wrote in touregypt.net:“The internal construction of most true pyramids consists of a series of buttress walls surrounding a central core. The walls decrease in height from the center outwards. In other words, the core of the true pyramid is essentially a step pyramid. The internal arrangement added stability to the structure. Packing blocks filled the "steps" formed by the faces of the outermost buttress walls and casting blocks (often Limestone) completed the structure of the true pyramid. Architects and builders used a different form of construction in the pyramids of the 12th and 13th Dynasties. Mainly because of economy, for it was suitable for relatively modest structures in inferior materials. Solid walls of stone ran from the center, and shorter cross walls formed a series of chambers filled with stone blocks, ruble or mud bricks. An outer casing was usually added, and although quite effective in the short term, it did not even come close to the earlier construction methods. Pyramids which were built with this structural design are quite dilapidated and worn.” [Source: Jimmy Dunn, touregypt.net/construction =]

Herodotus on Building the Pyramids

Herodotus wrote in Book 2 of “Histories”: Kheops, compelled all the Egyptians to work for him. To some, he assigned the task of dragging stones from the quarries in the Arabian mountains to the Nile; and after the stones were ferried across the river in boats, he organized others to receive and drag them to the mountains called Libyan. They worked in gangs of a hundred thousand men, each gang for three months. For ten years the people wore themselves out building the road over which the stones were dragged, work which was in my opinion not much lighter at all than the building of the pyramid [the Great Pyramid of Cheops] (for the road is nearly a mile long and twenty yards wide, and elevated at its highest to a height of sixteen yards, and it is all of stone polished and carved with figures). The aforesaid ten years went to the building of this road and of the underground chambers in the hill where the pyramids stand; these, the king meant to be burial-places for himself, and surrounded them with water, bringing in a channel from the Nile. The pyramid itself was twenty years in the making. Its base is square, each side eight hundred feet long, and its height is the same; the whole is of stone polished and most exactly fitted; there is no block of less than thirty feet in length. 125. [Source: Herodotus, “The Histories”, Egypt after the Persian Invasion, Book 2, English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920, Tufts]

“This pyramid was made like stairs, which some call steps and others, tiers. When this, its first form, was completed, the workmen used short wooden logs as levers to raise the rest of the stones52 ; they heaved up the blocks from the ground onto the first tier of steps; when the stone had been raised, it was set on another lever that stood on the first tier, and the lever again used to lift it from this tier to the next. It may be that there was a new lever on each tier of steps, or perhaps there was only one lever, quite portable, which they carried up to each tier in turn; I leave this uncertain, as both possibilities were mentioned.

“But this is certain, that the upper part of the pyramid was finished off first, then the next below it, and last of all the base and the lowest part. There are writings on53 the pyramid in Egyptian characters indicating how much was spent on radishes and onions and garlic for the workmen; and I am sure that, when he read me the writing, the interpreter said that sixteen hundred talents of silver had been paid. Now if that is so, how much must have been spent on the iron with which they worked, and the workmen's food and clothing, considering that the time aforesaid was spent in building, while hewing and carrying the stone and digging out the underground parts was, as I suppose, a business of long duration. 126.

“

Herodotus's idea of how the pyramid stones were raised

Leveling and Aligning the Pyramids

The foundations of the pyramids were laid with limestone block. Contrary to popular belief, the Giza pyramids were built up from the bedrock of the plateau, not over a flat sandy base. Khufu, in fact, was built around a small rock knoll.

The pyramids may have been leveled using survey lines that ran atop stakes mortared into regularly spaced holes around the perimeter of the pyramid. The holes were connected by depressions cut into the rock that could be filled with water to make sure they were equal with one another. Egyptologists believe that the stones were lined up with lines attached to stakes of equal length. "What is still a mystery," says University of Chicago archaeologist Mark Lehner, "is how the reference stakes and lines could have been transformed upward as the pyramid rose, since those around the base would have been buried under the massive construction ramps and dumps of debris."

Dr Ian Shaw of the University of Liverpool wrote for the BBC: “Between 1880 and 1882, Flinders Petrie, the first truly scientific archaeologist to work in Egypt, undertook some careful survey work on the Giza plateau. ...The results of Petrie's work suggested to him that the Egyptians had levelled the area intended for the Great Pyramid by cutting a grid of shallow trenches into the bedrock, flooding them with water, and reducing the intervening 'islands' of stone to the necessary height.[Source: Dr Ian Shaw, BBC, February 17, 2011 |::|]

“In the 1980s the American Egyptologist Mark Lehner began to produce a meticulous new map of the plateau, incorporating the various holes and trenches cut into the rock around the pyramids. On the basis of this project, Lehner argued that the Egyptians had in fact not levelled the whole area intended for the pyramids, but had simply ensured that the narrow perimeter strips around the edges of the pyramid were as perfectly horizontal as possible. |::|

“Egyptian architects, surveyors and builders are known to have used two specialised surveying tools, the merkhet (the 'instrument of knowing', similar to an astrolabe) and the bay (a sighting tool probably made from the central rib of a palm leaf). These allowed construction workers to lay out straight lines and right-angles, and also to orient the sides and corners of structures, in accordance with astronomical alignments. |::|

“It is clear that the Egyptians were using their knowledge of the stars to assist them in their architectural projects from the beginning of the pharaonic period (c.3100-332 B.C.), since the ceremony of pedj shes ('stretching the cord'), reliant on astronomical knowledge, is first attested on a granite block of the reign of the Second-Dynasty king Khasekhemwy (c.2650 B.C.). |::|

“This pedj shes ceremony relied on sightings of the Great Bear and Orion constellations, aligning the foundations of the pyramids and sun temples very precisely with the north, south, east and west. They usually achieved this with an error of less than half a degree. In later periods, the process of stretching the cord continued to be depicted in texts and in the reliefs of temples such as that of Horus, at Edfu, but it appears to have gradually become just a ritual, since these temples were aligned less precisely than the earlier ones, often simply with reference to the direction of the river.” |::|

Orientation and Layout and the Pyramid Platform

Giza's pyramids are oriented to face the four cardinal directions: true north, south, east, and west. Their entrances are all on the north side, and the temples of the pyramids are on the east side. Jimmy Dunn wrote in touregypt.net: “Before the physical orientation and layout of a new pyramid took place, considerable planning was needed under the direction of a "royal master builder". Ultimately, the responsibility fell on the vizier, who was typically the head of all royal works. The first step in the process was taken by specialists who would draw up plans for the pyramid on papyrus. After the construction began, plans and sketches were drawn on papyri or flat slabs of limestone. Planners even made models of their projects, as evidenced by a limestone model of a substructure found in the Pyramid of Amenemhet III at Dahshur. After the planning stage, each step of pyramid building was initiated with foundation rituals.[Source: Jimmy Dunn, touregypt.net/construction =]

“Pyramids, unlike many other types of religious structures, required strict orientation to the cardinal points. Pyramid alignment may have been carried out through a number of different means, including some methods we have probably never thought of. The primary theory of how the ancient Egyptians oriented most any building that had to conform to true primary coordinates has been by stellar measurements. This involved building a small, circular wall of perhaps mudbrick that had to be perfectly level at the top. Within the circle, a man would stand and through a straight pole with a forked top called a bay, sight a circumpolar star as it rises. A second man at the perimeter of the small circular wall would then "spot" the wall where the star rose. Using a type of plumb line, or merkhet, he would also spot the mark at the bottom of the wall. When the star set, the process would be repeated. Measuring between the two spots would then provide true north from the center sighting pole. = “Recently several other theories have been raised, all of which involve some sort of astronomical measurements. A British scholar named K. Spence believes that the Egyptians used two circumpolar stars (Delta Ursae Majoris and Beta Urae Minoris or Epsilon Usae Majoris and Gamma Urae Minors) Another theory set out by a Slovak Egyptologist, D. Magdolen, believes that the ancient Egyptians oriented their monuments using the sun, by means of wooden stakes and ropes. There is in fact a reference in ancient text referring to "the shadow" and the "stride of Ra". =

“The sun rises and sets in equal but opposite angles to true north. Using a plumb line, a pole would have been set as vertically as possible. Then, about three hours before noon, its shadow would be measured. This length then becomes the radius of a circle. As the sun rises higher, the shadow shrinks back from the line and then becomes longer in the afternoon. When it reaches the circle again it forms an angle with the morning's line. The bisection of the angle is true north. However, this method would be less accurate than the stellar method, but could be fairly accurate during the solstices. =

“How did this astronomically based surveying work in practice? The British Egyptologist IES Edwards argued that true north was probably found by measuring the place where a particular star rose and fell in the west and east, then bisecting the angle between these two points. More recently, however, Kate Spence, an Egyptologist at the University of Cambridge, has put forward a convincing theory that the architects of the Great Pyramid sighted on two stars (b-Ursae Minoris and z-Ursae Majoris), rotating around the position of the north pole, which would have been in perfect alignment in around 2467 B.C., the precise date when Khufu's pyramid is thought to have been constructed. This hypothesis is bolstered by the fact that inaccuracies in the orientations of earlier and later pyramids can be closely correlated with the degree to which the alignment of the two aforementioned stars deviates from true north.” |::|

Creating a Pyramid Ground Plan with Precise Right Angles

Egyptian seked system

Jimmy Dunn wrote in touregypt.net: “After the primary coordinates were determined, the ground plan would be marked out. Some of the methods used to do so varied from pyramid to pyramid. Here, we examine the means by which the ground plan of the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza was determined. Initially, a reference line along true north was constructed from the orientation process. The next step would be to create a true square with precise right angles. Within Khufu's pyramid, there is actually a massif of natural rock jutting up that was used as part of the pyramid's core. Therefore, measuring the diagonals of the square to check for accuracy was impossible. [Source: Jimmy Dunn, touregypt.net/construction =]

“We believe that the ancient builders could have achieved a precise right angle in any of three ways. The first method would have involved the use of an A-shaped set square. The set square would have been placed along the established orientation line and the perpendicular taken from the other leg of the square. The set square would then be flipped and the measurements repeated. The exact 90 degree angle would then be taken by taking into account the small error of the angle between the two measurements. The problem with this method is that no set squares large enough to give a precise angle for the distances have been found in ancient Egypt. The perpendicular measurement it provides would be very short considering that the line would have to be extended some 230 meters (754 ft) in the case of Khufu's pyramid. =

“A second method would have employed the use of a sacred or Pythagorean triangle. The triangles seem to be present in the design of the Old Kingdom pyramids, but there is no real conclusive evidence of their use. Basically, this triangle uses three equal units on one side, four on the next, and five on the hypotenuse to give a true right angle. At Khufu's pyramid a series of holes along the orientation line are dug at seven cubit (3.675 meters or about 12 ft) intervals, so the triangle probably used these positions in the measurement. In other words, the triangle would have been measured as 21 cubits by 28 cubits with a 35 cubit hypotenuse. This would have resulted in a much longer measurement for the perpendicular line then with the use of a set square. If the unites used were any greater, the measurement would have been interrupted by the rock outcrop. =

“A third method possibly available to the early Egyptians would have been through the use of intersecting arcs. In this method, two circles would have been sketched by rotating a cord around two points on the orientation line. The intersection of the two circles would then provide a right angle. Some doubt this method was used because the elasticity of the string or rope used to sketch the circles would lead to inaccuracies. However, at Khufu's pyramid, there are a number of post holes dug that might have been used to draw such circles, so the method cannot be ruled out. Furthermore, the Egyptian may have used a rod or other device rather than rope or string to draw the circle, eliminating elasticity. =

Making the Platform of a Pyramid

Stepped pyramid of Saqqara

Jimmy Dunn wrote in touregypt.net: “An orientation reference line was set up in a larger square by measuring off the established square ground plan. This was done by digging post holes at measured distances from the inner square in the bedrock and inserting small posts through which a rope or string ran. These holes were dug at about 10 cubit intervals. This outer reference line was needed because the original orientation lines would be erased by building work. Various segments of the reference line could be removed so that building material could be moved into place. Then measurements were taken from the guide line as the material for the platform were put in place so that the the platform was in accord with the initial floor plan. [Source: Jimmy Dunn, touregypt.net/construction =]

“The platform of Khufu's pyramid was made of fine white Turah quality limestone slabs with occasion backing stones of local limestone for leveling. Today, we know that the platform was one of the most important elements to a pyramid's survival over great lengths of time. It also appears that the builders of Khufu's pyramid were well aware of this, but such knowledge seems to have been almost forgotten from time to time. Some later pyramids platforms were not built upon solid bedrock, or the platform was poorly built and those pyramids built atop these poorly constructed platforms did not survive for long. =

“Not only was the platform required to be laid in a perfect square, but it was also required to be very level. In Khufu's pyramid, the platform is level to within about 2.1 centimeters (one inch). There were several means that this too could be accomplished. Traditional though, apparently originally conceived by Edwards, suggests the use of water to level the platform. He thought that the ancient Egyptians might have built a mud enclosure around the platform that was then filled with water. A grid of trenches would have been cut at a uniform depth below the water. However, modern Egyptologists believe this method would have been cumbersome at best. The platform would have had to have been chiseled beneath the water. Perhaps a more accepted theory involves channels being cut to form a grid within the platform, which was then filled with water. At the top of the water's surface, the level would be marked along the sides of the channels, and then the platform cut accordingly. =

“However, Lehner, who must be taken very seriously in any discussion of Giza pyramids, does not believe that water was used to level Khufu's pyramid. In fact, he doubts any water related theories of leveling, mostly because evaporation might cause considerable variations in the measurements. Specifically though, Khufu's pyramid is built on a sloping base, and here, it is the platform itself that is leveled and not the bedrock beneath the platform. In fact, the ancient builders were required to cut down the northwest corner of the platform, while actually building up the opposite, southeast corner. =

“Another leveling method might have utilized the posts used to build the reference line of the pyramid. These posts could have been made of equal heights, or marked to provide a reference level. Apparently the leveling techniques used in pyramid construction are not well understood at this time. However, what is understood is that when the Egyptians, such as those who built Khufu's pyramid, were at the top of their skills, the monuments they built could indeed last virtually forever. =

Moving and Lifting the Stones to Build the Pyramids

was this devise used to lift the stones

Rocks for the pyramid were quarried from as far as 960 kilometers (600 miles) away in Aswan and transported to Giza, probably on rafts down the Nile during the rainy season. A level surface was prepared (again, using Nile floodwater for accuracy), and a causeway was built from the Nile toward Giza. The stones were pulled on sleds or over rolling logs near the pyramid, where stonemasons prepared the slabs. Once the four sides of the foundation of the pyramids were set, each successive layer was added smaller in area but higher off the ground. [Source: Benjamin Radford, Live Science, June 01, 2010]

Alexander Stille wrote in Smithsonian Magazine: “Apparently all parts of Egypt were involved in the great building project at Giza. Granite came from Aswan far to the south, food from the delta in the north near the Mediterranean, and limestone from Tura, about 12 miles south of Cairo on the Nile. The burst of maritime activity was also driven by the monumental undertaking. “It is certain that the shipbuilding was made necessary by the gigantism of the royal building projects,” Tallet writes, “and that the great majority of the boats were intended for the navigation of the Nile and the transport of materials along the river, but the development of Wadi al-Jarf exactly in the same period allows us to see without doubt the logical extension, this time toward the Red Sea, of this project of the Egyptian state.” [Source: Alexander Stille, Smithsonian Magazine, October 2015 |=|]

Perhaps the biggest problem facing the builders of the pyramids was getting the large stone blocks to their proper place. Although many methods have been theorized, the use of ramps is the only one proven to have been used. The ramps were built on inclined planes of mud brick and rubble. The blocks were dragged on sledges to the location of their placement. As the pyramid grew taller, the ramp had to be extended in length, and to do this the base had to be widened to prevent it from collapsing. Several ramps were probably used in the construction of a single pyramid. [Source: Jimmy Dunn, touregypt.net/construction =]

Building Materials for the Pyramids

cutting the blocks

The foundations of the pyramids were laid with limestone blocks. Building stones were predominantly limestone and granite, while mudbrick was used earlier for mastabas. Mudbrick was also used to build later Middle Kingdom Pyramids. A brilliant white limestone provided the final outer layer for the Giza pyramids, creating shimmering perhaps blinding surface cover in the direct Egyptian sun. Limestone was used for all but the lowest course of outer casing on Khafre and the lower 16 courses of Menkaure. These lower casings were made of granite. Some of the stones were quarried from bedrock near the pyramids. The fine white Tura limestone was used from the outer layers of the pyramids came from quarries on the other side of the Nile. Granite used as a build material came from the Aswan area. [Source: PBS]

Jimmy Dunn wrote in touregypt.net: “Many of the pyramids were built with a number of different stone materials. Most of the material used was fairly rough, low grade limestone used to build the pyramid core, while fine white limestone was often employed for the outer casing as well as to cover interior walls, though pink granite was also often used on inner walls. Basalt or alabaster was not uncommon for floors, particularly in the mortuary temples and as was mudbricks to build walls within the temples (though often as not they had limestone walls). [Source: Jimmy Dunn, touregypt.net/construction =]

“Egypt is a country rich in stone and was sometimes even referred to as the "state of stone". In particular, Egypt has a great quantity of limestone formation, which the Egyptians called "white stone", because during the Cretaceous period Egypt was covered with seawater. The country is also rich in sandstone, but it was never really used much until the New Kingdom. Limestone seems to have first been employed in the area of Saqqara, where it is of poor quality but layered in regular, strong formations as much as half a meter thick. This limestone is coarse grained with yellow to greenish gray shading. The layers are separated from each other by thin layers of clay and the coloration may vary according to layer. It could often be quarried very near the building sites, and quarries have been found at Saqqara, Giza, Dahshur and other locations.” =

Pyramid-Era Copper Tools From Giza

Marks made by a copper saw are visible in a piece of basalt paving found near Khufu’s pyramid on the Giza Plateau. Daniel Weiss wrote in Archaeology Magazine: Although nowhere to be seen in the finished product, massive amounts of copper were essential to building the monument. Copper picks were used to quarry the stone. Copper saws were used to cut it, and experiments have shown that an inch of metal was lost from blades for every one to four inches of stone cut. While preparing the stone blocks for use in the pyramid, workers smoothed their surfaces with copper chisels the width of an index finger. The immense quantity of copper consumed by the construction project — not to mention the other pyramids and monumental buildings that preceded and followed it — led to an urgent search for sources of the metal. [Source: Daniel Weiss, Archaeology Magazine, July/August 2022]

A selection of copper tools, dated to the Old Kingdom, 4th Dynasty (ca. 2575–2465 B.C.), measuring 2.5 to 7 centimeters (1 to 2.8 inches) long were found in Giza the 1970s and were perhaps used by workers who built the Pyramids of Giza. Jarrett A. Lobell wrote in Archaeology Magazine: Many of the craftspeople who worked on the pyramid lived in a village in Giza, just steps from the enormous edifice. Metalworkers, spinners, woodworkers, fishers, and stonemasons all require tools, 15 of which were found in this workers’ village in the 1970s. These tools have now been closely examined by a team led by Martin Odler of the Czech Institute of Egyptology and Jiří Kmošek of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. “The tools offer a window through which we can glimpse the material culture of the people participating in pyramid building and connected projects at Giza during the Fourth Dynasty,” says Odler. [Source: Jarrett A. Lobell, Archaeology Magazine, July/August 2021

Many copper tools from Old Kingdom Egyptian burials have previously been analyzed, but those the team examined are the first, much rarer, Old Kingdom metal tools found in a settlement to have been carefully studied. “We want to learn about the technology used to produce the tools and their resulting practical properties,” says Kmošek. “Egyptians worked with materials available to them, especially from the Eastern Desert and Sinai. Thus, craftspeople must have developed approaches tailored to these materials. ” One such material is arsenical copper — copper with a high arsenic content — which is much harder than pure copper, and which can be made even harder by hammering and annealing. “One of the biggest unanswered questions we have is whether the copper ore already had high levels of arsenic, or whether the Egyptians deliberately added arsenic,” says Odler. “If they did so, it probably implies more sophisticated expertise in the Old Kingdom than we thought was the case.

4,500-Year-Old Logbook Documents the Great Pyramid's Construction

A logbook with records detailing the construction of the largest pyramid of Giza was discovered at the Red Sea harbor of Wadi al-Jarfin in 2013. Dated to about 4,500 years ago, making it the oldest papyrus document ever discovered in Egypt, the logbook was written in hieroglyphic letters on pieces of papyri by an inspector named Merer, who was "in charge of a team of about 200 men,"archaeologists Pierre Tallet and Gregory Marouard wrote in an article published in 2014 in the journal Near Eastern Archaeology. [Source: Owen Jarus, Live Science July 19, 2016 ^^^]

Tallet and Marouard wrote: "Over a period of several months, [the logbook] reports — in [the] form of a timetable with two columns per day — many operations related to the construction of the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza and the work at the limestone quarries on the opposite bank of the Nile," Tallet and Marouard wrote. ^^^

Owen Jarus wrote in Live Science: “Merer recorded the logs in the 27th year of Khufu's reign. His records say that the Great Pyramid was near completion, with much of the remaining work focusing on the construction of the limestone casing that covered the outside of the pyramid, Tallet and Marouard wrote. The limestone used in this casing, according to the logbook, was quarried at Tura near modern-day Cairo, and was brought to the pyramid site by boat along the Nile River and a system of canals. One boat trip between Tura and the pyramid site took four days to complete, the logbook notes. ^^^

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

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