Giza in brief
The Giza plateau lies on the western edge of Cairo, Egypt, beside the Nile valley. It holds three large pyramids, built for the pharaohs Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure of Egypt’s Fourth Dynasty, in about 2600 to 2500 BC, along with smaller pyramids for queens, tombs of officials, temples, and the Great Sphinx. They are part of the UNESCO site Memphis and its Necropolis, listed in 1979.
The pyramids
- The Great Pyramid of Khufu. Built between about 2580 and 2560 BC. It was originally about 146.6 metres high, and now 138.5 m, because its outer casing of white limestone is lost. It is made of about 2.3 million blocks, mostly local limestone, with granite for the king’s chamber, brought from Aswan, 800 km to the south. It is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World that still stands.
- The Pyramid of Khafre. Slightly smaller, but on higher ground, so that it looks taller. It keeps some of its casing at the top.
- The Pyramid of Menkaure. Much smaller, about 65 metres high.
- The Great Sphinx. A huge limestone statue of a lion with a human head, about 73 metres long and 20 metres high, carved from natural bedrock. It is generally thought to represent Khafre, though this is debated.
Who built them?
In the 1990s the archaeologist Mark Lehner and his team found the town where the workers lived, with houses, bakeries and breweries, to the south of the plateau, close to the workers’ cemeteries that Zahi Hawass had found. The skeletons show the workers were fed on meat, and had good medical care for injuries, and that they were buried with honour near the pyramids. They were not slaves, as popular stories tell, but Egyptian labourers, on rotation, supported by a large organisation.
In 2013 archaeologists led by Pierre Tallet found papyri at Wadi al-Jarf on the Red Sea coast, the oldest known inscribed papyri, with the diary of an official called Merer. It records the transport of limestone blocks for Khufu’s pyramid, by boat, along the Nile and canals, from the quarries at Tura.
The boats
Two pits next to the Great Pyramid held Khufu’s funeral boats, dismantled. The first, reassembled, is a 43.6-metre ship of cedar, moved in 2021 to the Grand Egyptian Museum.
Why it matters
The pyramids show the power of the early Egyptian state, which was able to organise tens of thousands of people and feed them for decades. They are also a store of information about Egyptian religion, with the king’s burial seen as a journey to the heavens. Ideas that they were built by aliens or by a lost civilisation have no support from the evidence, which includes the workers’ town, tools, quarries, ramps and records.
Visiting
The plateau is open every day, and visitors can walk around the pyramids and enter some of the tombs. The Grand Egyptian Museum is located near the plateau. See also Abu Simbel.
Sources
- Lehner, M. (1997). The Complete Pyramids. Thames and Hudson.
- Tallet, P. (2017). Les papyrus de la mer Rouge I: le journal de Merer. Institut français d’archéologie orientale.
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Memphis and its Necropolis, the Pyramid Fields from Giza to Dahshur.