One of the most impressive and startling structures in the world is the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, yet the construction of it remains the subject of much debate and discussion to this very day.
Dr Mark Lehner, an archaeologist at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, and Harvard Semitic Museum, has given an exclusive video interview to Heritage Key in which he explains what he and his team are doing in their latest excavation.
Dr Lehner wants to know the answer to a question that rarely gets asked – Where and how did the workers who built the pyramids live? Estimates suggest there could have been anything from 5,000 workers that Dr Lehner suggests, up to 36,000 people, as proposed by Dr Zahi Hawass. However, since the most populated city in this era (thought to be around 40,000 people) was either Uruk, Mesopotamia, or Memphis, it is debatable exactly how many people were used to build the great structures.
In fact, there’s even more debate over how they were built in the first place. French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin spent the past decade working on his Internal Ramp Theory, only for Dr Hawass to dismiss it completely in a recent interview with Heritage Key.
However, there has been much interest in the workers who built the Pyramids. A popular misconception is that they were slaves, when in actual fact both Dr Lehner and Dr Hawass states this is far from the truth. The builders of the pyramids were well fed with copious amounts of prime-cut beef, and graffiti found at the pyramids suggests that the builders were members of various tribes and clans. Dr Hawass is insistent that forensic evidence of the pyramid builders “were examined by scholars, doctors and the race of all the people we found are completely supporting that they are Egyptians.”
In the video, Dr Lehner explains that he is looking to find out more about the people who built the pyramids – what their diet was, how they raised livestock and gathered crops, how they lived and other questions which remain about the workers.
To uncover his answers, Dr Lehner and his team undertake a rare type of excavation – one which is not in search of treasures or riches, but one which seeks to find answers.
You can find out more about what’s happening with ongoing excavations in Egypt, and the quest for KV64 by checking out our video with Dr Hawass, as well as being able to read more interesting facts about the pyramids here at Heritage Key. You can also do your own virtual exploration of the tomb of Tutankhamun – KV62 – in our King Tut Virtual exhibition.