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About 2600 BCEReputable source · 2 sourcesWell documented

Khufu raises the Great Pyramid

On the timeline · around About 2600 BCE · The Old KingdomThe Old KingdomKhufu raises the Great Pyramid2,900 BCE2,800 BCE2,700 BCE2,600 BCE2,500 BCE2,400 BCE2,300 BCE

What happened

On the Giza plateau, the pharaoh Khufu commissioned the largest of all Egyptian pyramids, built from an estimated 2.3 million stone blocks. Most of the body came from local Giza limestone, but the fine outer casing stones were ferried across the Nile from quarries at Tura, and the granite lining the burial chamber came from as far as Aswan, hundreds of kilometres upriver. Quarry marks scratched onto the blocks name specific work gangs, and archaeological evidence from nearby workers' camps points to organized crews of skilled masons working alongside larger rotating groups of part-time laborers, not the enslaved multitudes later Greek writers imagined.

Why it matters

The Great Pyramid remained the tallest structure built by humans for roughly 3,800 years, and it still stands as the only one of the ancient world's Seven Wonders to survive largely intact. It shows a state capable of organizing quarrying, river transport, and skilled labor across hundreds of kilometres on a single project, centuries before the wheel was in common use in Egypt.

How we know

The stone itself carries the evidence: geologists can match the pyramid's limestone and granite to their specific quarries by mineral composition, and the gang marks and workers' camps, excavated near the pyramids, physically contradict the old slave-labor account with graffiti, food remains, and living quarters built for skilled, provisioned crews.

Sources

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Part of a timelineAncient Egypt26 events · Three thousand years of pharaohs, from the first unification of the Nile valley to Cleopatra's death, and the two nineteenth and twentieth-century discoveries that let the modern world read and see it all again.View all →
Khufu raises the Great Pyramid · Ancient Egypt · SourcedStory