Myth debunked: The pyramids were not built by slaves
And there were not 100,000 people working on them either.
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The ancient Greek writer, historian, and geographer Herodotus is called the “father of history.” His findings and written documents shaped a lot of what we think about the ancient world including the belief that the pyramids were built by slaves.
However, recent archaeological excavations and modern science have proven that long-held belief to be wrong. The pyramids, the world’s largest structures up until the 20th century, were not built by slaves. Here is who built them.
The Pyramid Builders
The three pyramids of Giza, built in the third millennium B.C., represent the finest skill of pyramid building of Ancient Egypt. The revelation of who built them has been called “one of the most important archaeological finds in the last 100 years.”
During an excavation around the Giza pyramids, a digger hit a big block which turned out to be a wall of a building. Archeologists moved in and found a large structure, a village, dating from 2,000 BC. The village extended further than half a square mile.
It was found that those were the houses in which the pyramid builders lived and operated. Large intact bakeries were also found in the village. They were filled with hundreds of massive clay pots weighing up to 25 kg in which bread was baked. They were the first indicators of food production necessary to feed a large workforce.
The chief archaeologist of the Giza plateau, Dr. Zahi Hawass, explained how the second clue came when a lady was riding a horse and the horses’ leg fell into a crack that exposed a little mud-brick wall. These were the walls of the tombs of the pyramid builders and their overseers.
600 of those tombs have been discovered at two levels. The lower-level tombs were simple and contained just bones, pots, and tools of the workers. The upper tombs were more elaborate and that is where the supervisors and architects were buried. The tombs were completely intact because thieves were…
