Who built the Pyramids

The question of who built the pyramids, and how, has long been debated by Egyptologists and historians. Standing at the base of the pyramids at Giza it is hard to believe that any of these enormous monuments could have been built in one pharaoh's lifetime. Herodotus, the Greek historian who wrote in the 5th century B.C., 500 years before Christ, is the earliest known chronicler and historian of the Egyptian Pyramid Age. By his accounts, the labor force that built Khufu totalled more than 100,000 people. But 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.

Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass have been trying to solve the puzzle of where the 20,000 - 30,000 laborers who built the pyramids lived. Once they find the workers' living area, they can learn more about the workforce, their daily lives, and perhaps where they came from. Mark has been excavating the bakeries that presumably fed this army of workers, and Zahi has been excavating the cemetery for this grand labor force. It is believed that Giza housed a skeleton crew of workers who labored on the pyramids year round. But during the late summer and early autumn months, during the annual flooding of the fields with water from the annual innundation of the Nile flooded the fields, a large labor force would appear at Giza to put in time on the pyramids. These farmers and local villagers gathered at Giza to work for their god kings, to build their monuments to the hereafter. This would ensure their own afterlife and would also benefit the future and prosperity of Egypt as a whole. They may well have been willing workers, a labor force working for ample rations, for the benefit of man, king, and country.