Can I ask what you know/evidence you have on how the great pyramid was made? I originally believed it was made by slaves as that makes sense but others have opposed this saying that it was an honour to be a part of the construction and that those who were a part of it were held in high esteem, I now don’t know what to think and if you could shed some light on the subject I’d be much appreciative
I’m just gonna keep saying this because I get asked this periodically and really thought I had this in my FAQ:
Slaves did not build the Pyramids. That is a misconception first put forward by Herodotus – who claimed Khufu kidnapped 100,000 people to work on the Pyramids (he also claimed Khufu whored out his daughter…but Khufu didn’t have a daughter), and then Hollywood combined it with the Exodus story where the Jewish folk were enslaved by Pharaoh to create the myth that slaves built the Pyramids. It’s not feasible that 100,000 people would be simultaneously enslaved and working on the Pyramids at the same time. Where are you keeping them for a start? How do you even police 100,000 enslaved people in one location? How do you stop them just getting in a boat at night and sailing up the Nile to freedom?
Who did build the Pyramids?
Officials were sent out to all parts of Egypt to ask various single men to join the effort to build Pharaoh’s Pyramid (easier not to have families if you’re leaving for 20 years). This was considered an honour because Pharaoh was a literal god at this point in Egyptian history. Work for the god on his project? Excellent.
So the guys travelled to the Giza plateau and began building the Pyramid. Quarrying stone from the nearby limestone quarries, or quarrying it near the Red Sea and transporting it via canals to Giza. The workers were paid in bread and beer. Egypt was a non monetary economy, which means they don’t have coins so they barter with various commodities. Food is payment. They didn’t really ‘receive’ this payment in bulk form, what would happen is that they would be fed by the women who also came to the Pyramid building site. These folks lived in what we now know as the Giza Workers Village which held about 20,000 people (only 5000 were permanent salaried workers, the other 15,000 were seasonal and different workers turned up every year). Men would meet women while working there and they’d settle down and have a family who also lived in the village. We have their graves that show us that ailments were well looked after by an onsite doctor and not just hastily repaired or not allowed to heal. More on this can be found here, here, here, and here.
Finally, were the guys who built the Pyramids were divided into two groups who liked to graffiti their group names onto the insides of the Pyramids: One – the Friends of Menkaure, and Two – The Drunkards of Khufu. Here’s the graffiti:
Slaves don’t generally call their gang ‘drunkards of Khufu’. That name is more ‘stag night in Magaluf’ than ‘enslaved by Pharaoh for 20 years’ so I’d say they were proud of their work.
Hold it! Hold the phone. Now give the phone to me. Okay. You cannot just casually drop the fact that the builders of the big Pyramids divided themselves into gangs and graffiti’d cartouches into the damn pyramids and then not elaborate further. I have SO MANY QUESTIONS RIGHT NOW! Who is Menkaure and why are we their friends? Why are we getting drunk for Khufu? Did they really write graffiti in actual hieroglyphics instead of an easier script like hieratic or demotic? What did they graffiti with, and how is the graffiti still around? Why two factions? How did they get divided in the first place? What’s the difference between them? How long did this feud last? Did it get violent or were they just competitive about stuff? Was there a Field Day for pyramid workers where the Friends and the Drunkards would compete in, like, the Egyptian equivalent of a sack race?
I need answers.
I’m not an actual egyptologist like OP, but I can answer some of this.
First of all, gangs refers to work gangs and these would have been assigned by those in charge of the project, not casual/crime gangs thankfully.
Menkaure was the pharaoh for whom the final, smallest (of the main three) pyramids was built, and as OP said, the pharoah was considered a divine figure and being his pal? Good press. And since these were craftsmen building his grand final resting place in the most modern, cutting edge architectural style, I’d imagine they were pretty favoured by the king for real, and not just by name.
Khufu was the pharoah for whom the first and largest pyramid was constructed – its worth noting that the middle pyramid, belonging to Khafre was built on a slight mound and with steeper sides to make it look bigger than Khufu’s when the complex is viewed from afar. It’s not though. Nice try Khafre. I’m not completely sure of the Drunkard element, but I have to imagine it was some kind of honouring of the king (or his soul) or celebratory thing, as several festivals to gods and ancestors involved getting totally shitfaced.
The graffiti to my knowledge is mostly carved in inaccessible locations, such as the insides of the concealed structural support chambers above the bural chamber proper, and hidden air/construction shafts. It very much seems to be a “we made this, remember us” type deal, not dissimilar to the masons marks you see on old stone buildings in the west. From OPs pic they may have also used paint, unless that was a modern addition to outline very faint markings in the stone?
Having your name remembered by your descendents was a big deal in the ancient egyptian religion, and this may have been related to that. Or indeed, just “Hey, the king gets a whole pyramid, we can have a little etching can’t we?”. The names of the artists, scribes and craftsmen who created the paintings, engravings and statuary of the time almost never had their names recorded on it. You think people are bad at crediting artists nowadays?? Of course some prominent craftsmen got their own tombs, and the architect Imhotep got to be an entire God (good for him), but credit for specific pieces wasn’t really a thing. These workers apparently had other ideas. (Good for them. Well. Collectively at least.).
OP is definitely the language expert, but I do know the pyramids predate Demotic by a good couple of millenia. Hieroglyphs may be due to media, or formality?
I think it’d be better to think of the gangs as like an A Team and B Team on a modern construction project. There was almost certainly rivalry there, but in the end they were both getting paid (in a sense) to do the same job, just different tasks.
Thanks @severalowls! Great explanation! And yes that graffiti is original. It’s done with the paint that would have been used to mark up where things go during the building process.
Just to clarify the hieroglyphs question for @sundayswiththeilluminati: You’re right, the pyramids predate demotic by a good 3000ish years. There are also rules about when certain scripts are used and on what medium. Hieratic is almost exclusively used on papyrus as it is the shorthand form of the script. Hieroglyphs are used on monuments and tombs because they’re clearer. Writing the Kings name in hieratic without the proper honorifics? Really bad. In hieroglyphs you can give him the proper honour he deserves. It’s also debatable whether these guys would have known hieratic. They’re not trained scribes after all.
I think the real take away from this is that not only did they build an architectural marvel that has stood for millennia, they did so while having a drunken piss-up.
