MEET THE MAKERS
How work on the great wonder wasn’t as slavish as thought
Throughout the decades, thousands upon thousands of schoolchildren have grown up in the belief that the pyramids were built by slaves. In Hollywood epics, we watch as they are forced to drag enormous blocks of stone, their bodies undernourished, their backs lashed by the whips of vicious overseers as they plead for water.
Did you know?
The Step Pyramid of Saqqara is the oldest known in Egypt
It was a Greek, Herodotus, who first made mention of slave labour during his visit to Egypt in 450 BCE. The thousands of labourers required for such a monument could never, in his eyes, be found through free will. Without any surviving records to tell the true story, it’s a notion that has stuck right up to recent times, fuelled by the references to Hebrew slaves in the Book of Exodus. The story of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt captured the public’s imagination with the help of the golden age of cinema, but has little historical evidence.