Who Really Built the Pyramids?

History has not been kind to some of us. We typically refer, for instance, to the Great Pyramid of Giza, built by the Egyptian pharaoh Khufu during the Fourth Dynasty (c. 2575–2465 B.C.). But King Khufu did not build his pyramid; rather, he hired or conscripted others to do the work, a crew that must have numbered in the thousands. What do we know about them? The answer, until now, has been “very little.” The Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484–425 B.C.) reported that during a visit to Egypt his guides had told him that 100,000 workers had labored […]