Egyptian Pyramids Built By Slaves

There were 10 000 of them considerably fewer than the 100 000 reported by herodotus and they ate relatively well.

Egyptian pyramids built by slaves. Due to a shrinking budget pyramids gradually got smaller over time. Contrary to popular belief it wasn t slaves who built the pyramids. Linking building the great pyramids to slavery is a comical thing to say replied zahi hawass to some english newspaper commentary. Rather it was farmers who built the pyramids during flooding when they could not work in their lands.

Archaeologists now tell us that the workers who built the pyramids were recruited from poor communities in egypt and worked in three month shifts. Graves of the builders were first. Famed egyptian archaeologist zahi hawass said that the commentary of the english newspapers that links casting the statue of a slave trader in the river to the pyramids supposing they were built by forced labor is a ridiculous matter. De mille s the ten commandments in which a captive people labor in the scorching sun beneath the whips of pharaoh s overseers.

The ancient greek historian herodotus once described the pyramid builders as slaves creating what egyptologists say is a myth propagated by hollywood films. One popular myth that egyptologists say was perpetrated in part by hollywood movies held that ancient israelite slaves ancestors of the jewish people built the pyramids. I had the good fortune to work on the site in 2005. Egyptian slaves specifically during the new kingdom era originated from foreign lands.

But the most undeniable evidence that egypt s pyramids were built by paid workers and not slaves is the pyramids themselves. Glen dash an engineer who studies the pyramids at giza as part of ancient egypt research associates aera noted that khufu s pyramid is aligned to true north within one tenth of a degree. Cairo 9 june 2020. Evidence from the workers bones suggests that they had hard lives and died fairly young but they were not slaves.

We know this because archaeologists have located the remains of a purpose built village for the thousands of workers who built the famous giza pyramids nearly 4 500 years ago. This notion of a vast slave class in egypt originated in judeo christian tradition and has been popularized by hollywood productions like cecil b. It took 30 years to build a single pyramid. Rooted firmly in the popular imagination is the idea that the pyramids were built by slaves serving a merciless pharaoh.