The Pyramid Builders

The Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza. Seeking to understand how this remarkable monument was constructed has long been a source of scholarly fascination. Here we see the west side of the pyramid, with the Western Cemetery, which contained officials and retainers, visible in the foreground. PHOTO: © Mark Lehner.


We know it as the Great Pyramid. To the Ancient Egyptians it was the Akhet Khufu or Horizon of Khufu, named after the 4th Dynasty king who reigned from roughly 2633 BC to 2605 BC. By any measure, the pyramid that served as his tomb was a staggering accomplishment. Its four sides were each approximately 230m long, while the edifice incorporated some 2.3 million blocks and originally stood almost 150m high. Within lay an intricate network of chambers and passages, which showcase the skill of Egyptian masons. 

Despite the monument’s impressive statistics, though, there is one thing it is notably short of: text. Unlike some later pyramids, and the famous tombs crowding the Valley of the Kings, the interior of the Great Pyramid is not lavishly adorned with hieroglyphics. Instead, just a few graffiti naming work gangs were daubed in suitably discreet spots. Until recently, these sparse words provided the only contemporary textual glimpse of construction operations.

A decade ago, hoping to secure an eye-witness account of work on the Great Pyramid would have seemed like archaeological wishful thinking of the highest order. But then, in 2013, fragments of the earliest papyri documents ever found were recovered by an archaeological team led by Pierre Tallet, Professor of Egyptology at the University of Paris-Sorbonne. 

It speaks volumes about the scale of Khufu’s grand design that these texts, which were compiled by individuals involved with construction operations, were not found within the pyramid or even at Giza. Instead, they were recovered more than 130km away, in Egypt’s Eastern Desert near the Red Sea shore. The papyri comprise logbooks and other bureaucratic records that detail the activities of teams engaged on Khufu’s mortuary complex. 

Some of these accounts overlap in a remarkable fashion with the results of archaeological work led by Mark Lehner, President of AERA (Ancient Egypt Research Associates), at Giza. Now these two archaeologists have collaborated on a book shedding new light on one of the most renowned archaeological monuments in the world (see ‘Further reading’).  TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE...

Egypt's Pyramids of Giza

An ultra-powerful scan of Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza could help identify two mysterious spaces that potentially house the legendary tomb of the pharaoh. The watershed study was published last month in arXiv by University of Cornell archaeologists.

“We plan to field a telescope system that has upwards of 100 times the sensitivity of the equipment that has recently been used at the Great Pyramid,” wrote the researchers of the proposed scan, which is titled “The Exploring the Great Pyramid Mission.” They use advanced cosmic ray technology to map the internal structure of the Great Pyramid, which is Egypt’s largest pyramid and the last surviving wonder from antiquity.

The team’s research is based on a study by Scan Pyramid group, which conducted a series of scans between 2015 and 2017 that analyzed muons — cosmic particles that regularly fall on Earth — to detect any voids, Live Science reported. Muons react differently to air and stone and are therefore ideal for mapping air pockets in stone structures such as pyramids.

The scientists found two spaces, the larger of which measures 98 feet long and 20 feet high and sits above the grand gallery. Meanwhile, the smaller void is located near the citadel’s north face.

And while neither void’s function is clear, scientists speculate that the large one could lead to the secret burial chamber of the pharaoh Khufu (reign circa 2551 B.C. to 2528 B.C.), for whom the Great Pyramid was originally constructed in the 26th century B.C.

In order to peer inside the void, researchers plan to scan the area with supercharged cosmic ray muons, which are 100 times more powerful than the ones used in the prior scan.

Utilizing them will allow researchers to “image muons from nearly all angles and will, for the first time, produce a true tomographic image [three-dimensional internal images created by analyzing waves of energy] of such a large structure,” per the study.  READ MORE...