Record · Ancient world · Africa · 2560 BC · Places & monuments

Who really built the pyramids, and how?

Edited by Song Letter · Researched and written with AI assistance, checked against the sources below · How we make it

Published 2026-07-13 · Reviewed 2026-10-11 · 8 min read

1870 photograph of the Giza plateau with pyramids — The Giza plateau photographed in 1870. Rodolfo Vittorio Lanzone / CC0. Source

TL;DR — Egyptian crews, paid in bread and beer by the state, built the Great Pyramid for Khufu; their town, their cemetery and gang names inside the pyramid show it.

Crews of Egyptian workers, not slaves, built the Great Pyramid of Giza for the Fourth Dynasty king Khufu. Harvard University’s Digital Giza project puts the workforce at “20,000 to 30,000 native Egyptians,” most of them manual laborers, and adds that “Egypt did not use money during this time period, so the workers were paid in food, primarily bread and beer.” The evidence lies beside and inside the monument: a town built for the crews, a cemetery of their dead, and the names their gangs left in the chambers above the King’s Chamber.

Quick facts

When: Fourth Dynasty, Old Kingdom; Khufu reigned within the span IFAO gives for Snefru and Khufu, about 2600 to 2500 BC
Where: Giza plateau, Egypt; casing stone from the quarries at Tura across the Nile
Who: Khufu, for whom the Great Pyramid was built; crews of 20,000 to 30,000 Egyptian workers by Digital Giza's estimate; excavators Mark Lehner (AERA) and Zahi Hawass
Outcome: A workers' town, a workers' cemetery and gang graffiti inside the pyramid replaced Herodotus's picture of a hundred thousand men driven to the work

Herodotus and the hundred thousand

The older picture of a people driven to the work comes from the Greek historian Herodotus. In Book 2 of his Histories he wrote that Kheops, his name for Khufu, “compelled all the Egyptians to work for him,” that “they worked in gangs of a hundred thousand men, each gang for three months,” and that “the pyramid itself was twenty years in the making.”

NOVA, the PBS science series, put that figure in its place. Herodotus visited the pyramids 2,700 years after they were built, and “his impressive figure was an educated guess, based on hearsay. Modern Egyptologists believe the real number is closer to 20,000.” Digital Giza’s estimate of 20,000 to 30,000 sits in the same range.

A town built for the crews

Near the pyramids lies the settlement that Ancient Egypt Research Associates (AERA) has excavated since 1988 and calls Heit el-Ghurab, the Lost City of the Pyramid Builders. AERA describes it as “an urban settlement that sprawled across more than 7 hectares (over 17 acres),” and states that, “purpose-built by the crown, this city served as the base of operations for constructing the great pyramid complexes of kings Menkaure, Khafre, and probably Khufu.” Its excavated streets include bakeries, commissaries and kitchens.

The bones the excavators recovered show how well some of the crews were fed. The zooarchaeologist Richard Redding wrote that he “did identify over 100,000 fragments of bone,” with “14.1 cattle bone fragments for each sheep-goat fragment,” and calculated that “99% of the meat consumed was from cattle.” His report describes particular deposits at the site; it does not say that every worker ate the same diet.

The cemetery and the healed bones

Zahi Hawass, who excavated the workers’ cemetery, described the burials to NOVA. “We found 600 skeletons,” he said, and the dead “were Egyptians, the same like you see in every cemetery in Egypt.” Twelve skeletons had injured hands that someone had supported “with wood” on both sides. In another case, after a stone fell on a man’s leg, “they cut his leg and he lived 14 years after that.” Hawass put the workmen’s age at death at 30 to 35.

Men who were splinted, operated on and buried in their own cemetery were cared for, and that is hard to square with the slave story.

Gang names above the King's Chamber

The archaeologist Mark Lehner told NOVA that the builders left their own records “up in the relieving chambers above the King’s chamber.” The graffiti, he said, show “a gang of workmen was organized into two crews,” and “the crews were subdivided into five phyles.” Some gangs named themselves. Lehner cited “the Friends of Khufu gang” in the relieving chambers of the Great Pyramid, and “the Drunks of Menkaura gang.”

A gang that chose a name and wrote it on the stones it set had an identity of its own.

Stone from Tura, a ramp at Hatnub, water on the sand

The Great Pyramid “was clad in more than 21 acres of hard, white casing stones that the Egyptians had hauled over from quarries at Tura across the Nile,” according to AERA’s survey report. A record of that hauling survives. At Wadi al-Jarf, a Fourth Dynasty port on the Red Sea, a team from the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology (IFAO) under Pierre Tallet found a cache of papyri in 2013. Among them is “the journal of Merer,” which IFAO describes as “the daily report of a minor official who witnessed pyramid construction firsthand.” Tallet and Gregory Marouard identify its pages as logs “from a team of sailors shipping blocks of limestone from Tura to Giza,” dated to “the year 26 or 27 of Khufu.”

How blocks were raised is still argued, but two finds narrow the question. In 2018 a team from IFAO and the University of Liverpool reported a ramp at Hatnub, an alabaster quarry, dated to Khufu’s reign. Yannis Gourdon of IFAO described “a central ramp flanked by two staircases with numerous post holes,” with sledges hauled by ropes tied to wooden posts “on very steep slopes of 20 percent or more.” The ramp served a quarry, not the pyramid; the team said it could offer insights into the logistics and technologies used to build the pyramid.

The second find came from a physics laboratory. In 2014 A. Fall, Daniel Bonn and six co-authors reported in Physical Review Letters that “the addition of small amounts of water can decrease the friction coefficient by almost a factor of 2” when a sledge is dragged over sand. The paper points to a wall painting of about 1880 BC in the tomb of Djehutihotep, where “the figure standing at the front of the sled is pouring water onto the sand.”

The base as surveyed in 2015

In 2015 Glen Dash surveyed the base of the Great Pyramid for AERA’s Giza Plateau Mapping Project. He found that “the average length of the four sides of the casing is 230.363 meters (755.783 feet).” The sides turn from the cardinal directions by an average of “-3 minutes and 54 seconds, plus or minus 44 seconds,” which Dash called “consistent with Petrie’s estimate of -3’ 43”,” and the diagonals cross at “a nearly perfect right angle,” off by 12 seconds of arc. Digital Giza gives the pyramid’s height as “about 481 feet.”

It was the first of three. Digital Giza notes that the large pyramids at Giza “were built for three generations of Egyptian kings: Khufu, his son Khafre, and his grandson Menkaure,” and that the Great Sphinx near Khafre’s valley temple is “generally believed” to date from Khafre’s reign. The builders also worked within a tradition: Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities dates the Step Pyramid of Djoser to about 2667–2648 BC and calls it “the oldest known ancient Egyptian stone structure.” The town, the cemetery and the gang names point to the same answer: the Giza pyramids were the work of organized Egyptian crews, fed by the state and buried with care.

the Great Sphinx of Giza seen from the front against a clear sky — The Great Sphinx at Giza, which Digital Giza says is generally believed to date from the reign of Khafre. Diego Delso / CC BY-SA 3.0. Source

Key facts

Digital Giza (Harvard) estimates the Great Pyramid’s workforce at 20,000 to 30,000 native Egyptians, paid in food, “primarily bread and beer” (Digital Giza).
Herodotus wrote of gangs of 100,000 men working three months at a time and twenty years of building; NOVA calls his figure “an educated guess, based on hearsay” (Perseus; NOVA).
AERA has excavated the workers’ town of Heit el-Ghurab since 1988; it covers more than 7 hectares (over 17 acres) and was “purpose-built by the crown” (AERA).
In the deposits Richard Redding analyzed, cattle supplied 99 percent of the meat eaten (AERA, Redding).
Zahi Hawass reported 600 skeletons in the workers’ cemetery, healed and splinted injuries, and an age at death of 30 to 35 (NOVA).
Gang graffiti in the relieving chambers above the King’s Chamber include “the Friends of Khufu gang” (NOVA, Lehner).
The Diary of Merer, found at Wadi al-Jarf in 2013, logs limestone shipped from Tura to Giza in year 26 or 27 of Khufu (IFAO; Tallet and Marouard 2016).
AERA’s 2015 survey measured the base at an average of 230.363 meters a side, turned from the cardinal directions by an average of 3 minutes 54 seconds of arc (AERAGRAM 16-2).

FAQ

Who built the Great Pyramid of Giza?

Crews of Egyptian workers built it for Khufu. Digital Giza estimates 20,000 to 30,000 people, most of them laborers, paid in bread and beer. The workers' town at Heit el-Ghurab, excavated by AERA since 1988, and the workers' cemetery excavated by Zahi Hawass show who they were.

Were the pyramids built by slaves?

No. The slave picture traces to Herodotus, who visited the pyramids about 2,700 years after they were built and repeated what he heard. The workers' town, the cemetery with its treated injuries and the gang names the builders left inside the pyramid all point to an organized, fed and honored workforce.

How many people built the Great Pyramid?

Herodotus wrote of gangs of 100,000 men. Modern estimates are far lower: NOVA gives about 20,000, and Harvard's Digital Giza 20,000 to 30,000.

What is the Diary of Merer?

It is a set of papyrus logs found in 2013 at Wadi al-Jarf, a Fourth Dynasty port on the Red Sea, by a team under Pierre Tallet. The pages record a team of sailors shipping limestone blocks from Tura to Giza in the 26th or 27th year of Khufu's reign.

How were the stones moved?

The method is still argued. A ramp of Khufu's time at the Hatnub quarry used a central slope, staircases and posts for ropes, and a 2014 study in Physical Review Letters found that wetting sand can cut the friction on a sledge almost in half, as an Egyptian tomb painting of about 1880 BC appears to show.

Sources

The whole world at about the same time: The world in 2500 BC

Cite this article

APA: Song Letter. (2026, October 11). Who really built the pyramids, and how? Our Earth's History. https://ourearthshistory.com/africa/ancient/who-built-the-pyramids/
Chicago: Song Letter. “Who really built the pyramids, and how?” Our Earth's History, October 11, 2026. https://ourearthshistory.com/africa/ancient/who-built-the-pyramids/.
MLA: Song Letter. “Who really built the pyramids, and how?” Our Earth's History, 11 Oct. 2026, https://ourearthshistory.com/africa/ancient/who-built-the-pyramids/.

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