Giza: It Wasn't Slaves

You are at Saqqara, facing the Step Pyramid of Djoser. Look at its six stone steps, like a tower of stacked tables. It is almost four thousand seven hundred years old. Before this pyramid, the kings of Egypt were buried under rectangular mudbrick benches. An architect had the idea of building in stone and stacking several of those benches one on top of another. His name was Imhotep. He is one of the first architects in history whose name we know. Centuries later, the Egyptians worshipped him as a god of medicine. This is the world's first great stone building. Everything you will see at Giz…

You are at the foot of the Great Pyramid, the tomb of King Khufu, built around 2560 BC. Step up to one of the base blocks and rest your hand on it. Each block weighs, on average, more than two tonnes. There are around two million three hundred thousand. Some granite ones, deeper inside, weigh fifty tonnes or more. It stood about a hundred and forty-six meters tall. For almost four thousand years it was the tallest structure made by human beings. Its sides face the four cardinal points with a tiny margin of error. Its base is almost perfectly level. The Greek historian Herodotus visited it …

You are in the Western Cemetery at Giza. Look at these orderly rows of rectangular stone tombs. They are called mastabas. They are the tombs of the court elite. One of the largest belongs to Hemiunu. He was Khufu's nephew and his vizier, the highest official in the kingdom. Among his titles is a key one: overseer of all the king's works. Most Egyptologists believe he was responsible for the Great Pyramid. His statue survived. It is now in a museum in Germany. It shows a sturdy man with a serious face and the belly of someone who ate well. Think about what that means. The project was not ru…

You are on the east side of the Great Pyramid, beside the three small queens' pyramids. Look up, halfway up the pyramid. Inside, above the King's Chamber, are five low chambers stacked on top of each other. They spread the enormous weight of the stone. No one was ever meant to enter them. In 1837, explorers blasted them open with gunpowder. On the walls they found marks painted in red. They were the workers' graffiti. The work gangs had names. One was called The Friends of Khufu. Another, on his grandson's pyramid, The Drunkards of Menkaure. They were team names, full of pride and humor. L…

You are facing the pyramid of Khafre, Khufu's son. It looks taller than his father's, but that is an illusion: it stands on higher ground. Now look at the tip. You will see the top section is different: smoother, paler. It is the original casing. All the pyramids at Giza were covered in blocks of white, polished limestone brought from the Tura quarries, across the Nile. They shone in the sun. What you see today, the yellowish stone steps, is the core. The inner structure that was never meant to be seen. A few years ago, at an ancient Red Sea port, the oldest papyri in Egypt were found. The…

You are at the desert viewpoint. From here you can see the three pyramids in line: Menkaure, the smallest, in front; Khafre and Khufu behind. Look also at the hollows in the rock around you: quarries. Most of the stone came from right here, on the plateau. Blocks were cut with copper chisels, wedges and hard stone hammers. The big question is how they raised them. No document explains it. There are clues. A painting in an Egyptian tomb shows a giant statue on a sledge, pulled by dozens of men. In front, one man pours water on the sand. For centuries it was thought to be a ritual. In 2014, …

You are in Khafre's Valley Temple. Look at the pillars and walls of red stone, smooth and undecorated. The blocks fit together like puzzle pieces. That stone is granite. It does not come from Giza. It comes from Aswan, in southern Egypt, some eight hundred kilometers upriver. It was brought down the Nile on great barges, during the annual flood, when the water reached almost to the foot of the plateau. That flood is another key. Every summer, the Nile covered the fields for months. Farmers could not work the land. Many Egyptologists believe that in those months the state called up farmers …

You are facing the Great Sphinx: a lion's body, a human head in the royal headdress. It is about seventy-three meters long and twenty high. It is not built of blocks. It is carved out of the bedrock itself. Quarrymen left this outcrop when they cut stone around it, and turned it into a sculpture. Most specialists believe the face is that of Khafre, the king of the second pyramid. Look at the nose. It is missing. You have probably heard that Napoleon's soldiers shot it off with a cannon. That is false. Drawings by travelers from before Napoleon already show it without a nose. An Arab histor…

You are beside the Wall of the Crow, a huge stone wall about two hundred meters long and ten high. It separated the sacred precinct of the pyramids from the world of the living. On the other side, from the 1990s on, the archaeologist Mark Lehner excavated an entire town. It is called the lost city of the pyramid builders. He found long galleries where workers slept in shifts. Larger houses for the overseers. Streets, storerooms, workshops. And he found bakeries. Huge pottery molds for baking bread. Remains of breweries. Thick, nourishing beer was part of the daily ration. The biggest surpr…

You are in the workers' cemetery, on the slope south of the Wall of the Crow. Look at the small mudbrick and stone tombs, some shaped like miniature pyramids. In 1990, a tourist's horse stumbled on a mudbrick wall buried in the sand. That is how this cemetery was discovered. Hundreds of pyramid workers and overseers are buried here. Their titles appear on the tombs: overseer of the side of the pyramid, director of the workers, craftsman. Beside them were left bread and beer for the afterlife. They were buried in the shadow of their king's tomb. That was an honor. No one buries slaves like t…

You are facing the Grand Egyptian Museum, the huge glass and stone building beside the plateau. It fully opened in 2025. It is the largest archaeological museum in the world devoted to a single civilization. At the entrance you will see a colossal statue of Ramesses II, eleven meters tall. But for this story, look for something else: Khufu's boat. In 1954, beside the Great Pyramid, a pit sealed with stone blocks was found. Inside was a boat taken apart into more than twelve hundred pieces of cedar wood. Restorers spent years putting it back together. It is over forty meters long. It is buil…

You are at the Cairo Citadel, on a hill overlooking the city. Look at the great nineteenth-century mosque with its domes and slender minarets. And, if the air is clear, look to the western horizon for the outlines of the pyramids. Saladin began this fortress in 1176, the sultan who fought the crusaders. To build it, his builders needed stone. A lot of it. A physician and traveler from Baghdad who lived in Cairo around 1200 saw it with his own eyes: the sultan's officials were dismantling the smaller pyramids at Giza to use their blocks. Later, in 1303, an earthquake devastated Cairo. To reb…