The Step Pyramid of Sakkara and Giza Pyramids

The oldest of the pyramids is the Step Pyramid of Sakkara, then Medum, which is too far off to be seen, then the Dahshur Pyramids, the farthest we can see to the south, then the Giza Pyramids, far the finest of all, and later than these, numbers of smaller pyramids, most of which were built of rubble and, once their limestone casing was stripped off, soon wore down to look only like little mounds on the desert. 

The pyramids were built so long ago, and are so much older than any description of them, that it is very difficult to answer the questions which are constantly being put as to the manner of their erection.

 The best account is given by Herodotus, the Greek traveler and historian, who visited Egypt in the 5th century before Christ. The pyramids were then well over two thousand years old, but he managed to gather some legends which were still current among the people, and, although his description is not fully intelligible, it is of very considerable value, and some of the statements he makes as to the time required, the numbers of workmen employed, and the oppression of the people, are probably very near the truth.
 He tells us that Cheops and Chephren were great oppressors of their people and afflicted the country sorely on purpose to obtain the money and labour needed to build their pyramids, and this may well be a reliable tradition handed down from antiquity, for the rest of his account, which relates to the construction and the time required for it, is extremely probable. Herodotus says that for the Pyramid of Cheops there were 100,000 workmen employed for three months at a time on quarrying the stones on the eastern or Arabian desert and in ferrying them over to the western side.


Ten years were spent on building the causeway, in preparing the rock, and in making the subterranean chambers, and twenty years in building the pyramid itself. Herodotus' statement that the workmen were employed for three months at a time doubtless refers to the three months of high Nile, during which there was no work to be done in -the fields. If Supposing, then, that this army of 100,000 workmen worked three months every year for twenty years or more, and were divided up into gangs of eight or ten, which is as many as could conveniently work on one block of stone, each company would be able to quarry and convey to the site an average of ten blocks in the season, so the total of 2,300,000 could very well be arrived at. The average size of the blocks is estimated at about forty cubic feet, and their weight at two and a half tons.

The stone for the core of the pyramid was probably quarried not very far away, in a hollow to the south of the plateau, known as the Batnel Baqara ; but the whole of the limestone for the outside casing and the passages and galleries of the interior came from the quarries of the Moqattam Hills on the opposite bank, while the granite used in the doorway and in the king's chamber came from Aswan. There were large workmen's barracks, traces of which are still remaining near the Second Pyramid, which would have accommodated 4,000 or 5,000 men.


These were no doubt skilled workmen, who were permanently employed in raising the stones to their places, in dressing the fine stones, and, lastly, in the building and decoration of the temple. No representations of the building of the pyramids has come down to us, but certainly the ground wfcs first leveled and prepared, the underground chambers were excavated and the causeway built.

 The stones were then drawn up the causeway by ropes and rollers and they were lastly raised into place by what Herodotus calls "machines made of short pieces of wood." There are in the Museum several specimens of a kind of cradle, made of rough wood, which are only models, for they are quite little things a few inches long, but were found with other model tools in the foundation deposits of large buildings and evidently were representations of the instruments used in building.

 It is suggested that Herodotus' "machines" were something of this kind, that the stone was rolled on to this wooden cradle, then rocked up by levers to its place. Some traces have been found that a wooden 12 scaffolding was used for raising very large and heavy blocks such as those in the Granite Temple.