Many today believe it was impossible for humans to build such great structures as the Great Pyramids of Giza, something reinforced by dubious claims made on television programs and the internet. Just google “Aliens built the pyramids” and you will discover that many believe aliens were in fact responsible for the construction of these great monuments.
While there is no known written record or relief detailing how the pyramids were constructed, there is nonetheless abundant archaeological evidence indicating that the Egyptians themselves were responsible for their building. Evidence for their human construction has been found in the remains of the quarries, roads, tools, records of the workers and the towns in which they lived. We also know why they were built and we can see their lengthy and imperfect evolution before they reached their architectural zenith in the Great Pyramid of Giza. What follows is a highlight summary of the evidence.
The Purpose of the Pyramids
Those who believe that aliens built the pyramids think it a mystery that the Egyptians or any other ancient people could or would build such an immense monument for burying a king. However, we do know why the Egyptians built pyramids.
While being tombs for the pharoahs, the pyramids were also symbols of the ruler's supreme power. Above all, they were monuments to divine Egyptian kingship, where the king would be transformed into a god. Based on an ancient myth, Egyptians believed that at death, kings took on the role of the god Osiris, ruler of the underworld, while their sons took the role of Horus and the kingship. Though deceased, the former king would join the eternal cycle of life to be reborn every day with the sun god. The Egyptians believed that the pyramid facilitated this. Thus, more fundamentally, they were also “resurrection machines,” designed to produce and ensure eternal life. They also legitimised a successor’s rule on the throne, since the pyramid symbolised their father’s new divinity. But why the pyramid shape? And, does that have meaning?
First, pyramids developed from an older form of royal tomb called a mastaba, which were rectangular flat-roofed buildings. Under the brilliant architect, Imhotep, a series of mastabas, each one smaller than the previous one, were stacked one on top of another resulting in the form of a stepped pyramid. Second, based on an Egyptian creation myth in which the world was a primeval mound that arose (came into being) out of the waters of chaos, the pyramid, which is a stylised mound, was intended as a place of rebirth.
Since the sun perpetually shines in Egypt, the sun god Re was the supreme deity, and the king aspired to join him in being reborn every sunrise. The pyramid form was shaped like the rays from the sun and its staircase-like form allowed it to serve as the means of ascension. Each pyramid was capped with a pyramidion—a pyramidal stone block. The carvings on the pyramidion of Amenemhat III’s pyramid at Dashur confirm its celestial role for the king, as it is inscribed with a pair of eyes looking up at the sun disk and hieroglyphs that read “Amenemhat beholds the perfection of Re.”
The ancient names for the pyramids reveal their purpose as royal monuments and symbolic locations for the pharaoh’s divine transformation and journey to heaven. The Great Pyramid is called “Khufu’s horizon,” and the other two Giza pyramids are called “Great is Khafre” and “Menkaure is Divine.” Other pyramid names include “Djedefre is a Sehed-Star” and Sahure’s “Rising of the Ba-Spirit.” Being interested in the celestial aspect of the afterlife doesn’t mean the Egyptians were influenced by aliens any more than astronomers are influenced by aliens because they search space with their telescopes.
Pyramids were clearly part of Egyptian religion, forming the focal point for the worship of the deceased king. Rituals involved cleaning, dressing and offering food and drink to statues of the king. Documents such as the Abusir papyri even record the day-to-day activities centred around the pyramids.
Some alien-builder websites claim that pyramids were never used as tombs, however this is definitely incorrect, as some still contain huge stone sarcophagi that were used to hold royal mummies. Funerary texts are even written inside the burial chambers of pyramids built after the Giza ones, and temples attached to the pyramids were used for funeral mortuary rituals.
The pyramid’s purpose is no mystery, since the Egyptians themselves reveal what their purpose was and how they were used and maintained.
Pyramid Building Developed Over Time
It is often claimed by “alien” theorists that the pyramids suddenly appeared out of nowhere. But this ignores clear evidence for the evolution of the form and building process of the pyramids. A number of early pyramids show that the Egyptians got things wrong before they were able to make the great Giza monuments.
The first pyramid was the Step Pyramid at Saqqara. It began as a traditional mastaba for the Third Dynasty king Djoser. Imhotep, the architect, then enlarged the basic structure to be a square and then built a smaller mastaba-like square on top. Inspired by it, Imhotep expanded the building by adding a fourth, fifth and sixth level to eventually form the Step Pyramid.
However, it was not a true pyramid with smooth sides. Other stepped-pyramid projects followed and finally the first attempt at a true pyramid was developed at Meidum for Pharoah Sneferu. It was originally intended to be a seven-step pyramid, but was then expanded to eight steps and completed in the 14th year of Sneferu’s reign. However, in his 28th or 29th year, workers returned to fill out the rest of it into a true pyramid. But, unfortunately, due to constructional deficiencies, the outer casing collapsed.
However, before Sneferu attempted to change the Meidum pyramid into a true pyramid, he began building another pyramid at Dashur, which was the first true pyramid to be intended as such from its beginning. Unfamiliar with building such a structure, construction began at too steep an angle (60?). After severe structural problems were noticed, the architects altered it to a 55? angle as a precautionary measure. Following more problems, it was again changed, this time to a 44? slope, which gives it a bent look, thus leading it to be called the Bent Pyramid.
In order to support their theory, some advocates of the alien hypothesis claim that the Bent Pyramid was a human imitation of the alien-built Giza pyramids. However, the Bent Pyramid is conclusively dated to years 15–30 of Sneferu’s reign and therefore before the Giza pyramids.
Since this first attempt at a true pyramid proved too problematic, Sneferu also abandoned it, and started yet another pyramid at Meidum. Learning from the mistakes of his previous attempts, this north pyramid resulted in the first successful true pyramid.
Only after less successful attempts, and experience gained by architects and workers, was the stage set f
2. Quarrying
A limestone quarry, located on the Giza plateau, 300 m (985 ft) south of the Great Pyramid, reveals that local limestone was used for the pyramid core. The quarry reveals how the blocks were cut out. In the quarry are the stumps of approximately 3- x 3-m blocks removed thousands of years ago. Trenches are found between them where the stonecutters would have worked. Blocks of stone were cut by pounding channels into the limestone using hammer stones to separate them from bedrock. These channels are clearly visible even today. The blocks were then detached using large wooden levers. Near the Sphinx, and in Menkaure’s quarry, can be found a number of unfinished quarry blocks that are almost detached from the bedrock. Huge lever sockets are also visible in Menkaure’s quarry.
The outer casing of the Great Pyramid was made from finer limestone and granite that were transported by boat via the Nile from Tura and Aswan, while the king’s chamber was made entirely from blocks of Aswan granite. Tool marks preserved on many soft-stone quarry walls (e.g. the sandstone quarries at Gebel el-Silsila) indicate that some form of pointed copper alloy pick, axe or maul was also used during the Old and Middle Kingdoms. Mallet-driven pointed chisels were used from the Eighteenth Dynasty onwards. However this technique would have been unsuitable for quarrying harder stones such as granite. Workers in Old Kingdom quarries probably simply prised large boulders of granite out of the sand. From the Eighteenth Dynasty, granite was cut from Aswan quarries. Unknown tools were used to cut the edges of the granite block that was to be extracted. Workers then cut slots in the bottom of the holes using the same tools. Wooden pegs were then rammed into the slots and filled with water. As the water expanded the pegs, the stones splintered off. An unfinished obelisk still sitting at an ancient quarry in Aswan reveals this process.
Archaeologists have also discovered that the pyramids show human construction in their flaws: The outer shell has very fine polished limestone laid with great accuracy in its joints, while the inner core was very sloppy, with stones not accurately joined at all, and pebbles, cobbles, broken stones and large amounts of gypsum mortar jammed down between the large spaces between the stone blocks.
Fragments of tools, tool marks in the stones and bits of pottery characteristic of the Old Kingdom period were found in many places, even in the largest of the Giza pyramids, again revealing construction by humans.
3. labour used
There is abundant evidence left of the people who performed the work of building the pyramids. In recent years Egyptologist, Mark Lehner, discovered a city of the pyramid builders on the Giza plateau, complete with bakeries; institutional buildings; a building for working copper (the hardest metal known to the ancient Egyptians, and used in tools for quarrying and dressing stones); long corridor-like rooms (the Gallery Complex) for sleeping 1600–2000 workers; a site for the processing or consuming of fish; and huge quantities of cattle, sheep and goat bones—“enough to feed several thousand people, even if they ate meat every day,” said Lehner.
Even the tombs of workers who constructed the pyramids have been discovered. The city and tombs demonstrate that the pyramids were built by paid labourers rather than slaves.
Early in the twentieth century, George Reisner found workers’ graffiti that revealed the pyramid builders were organised into labour units with names like “Friends of Khufu” or “Drunkards of Menkaure.” They even graffitied their clearly Egyptian names on the buildings! We now know that the workers were organised into crews of roughly 2000 conscripted peasants, made up of two gangs of 1000. These gangs were divided into five groups of 200 men. Each group was made up of 10