Great Pyramid of Giza: Khufu's Tomb and Ancient Wonder

The Great Pyramid of Giza is the largest of the three pyramids on the Giza plateau near Cairo, Egypt. It was built around 2560 BC as the tomb of the pharaoh Khufu, during Egypt’s Old Kingdom. The oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and the only one still standing, it remained the tallest human-made structure on Earth for more than 3,800 years.

Background: the age of the pyramids

In ancient Egypt the pharaoh was seen as a divine king whose afterlife mattered to the whole country. Royal tombs grew from rectangular mud-brick structures, called mastabas, into the first stone pyramid, the Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara, built around 2650 BC.

Khufu’s father, Sneferu, built several pyramids and achieved the first true smooth-sided pyramid, the Red Pyramid at Dahshur. His builders learned through trial and error: the Bent Pyramid, also at Dahshur, changes angle partway up, probably because the original steep slope proved unstable. Khufu, the second king of the Fourth Dynasty, chose the Giza plateau for an even larger monument. His reign is usually dated to about 2589–2566 BC, although exact dates vary between scholars.

Little is known about Khufu as a person. Remarkably, the only securely identified statue of him is a tiny ivory figure, less than 10 centimetres tall, found at Abydos. Later Egyptian and Greek traditions remembered him as a harsh ruler, but these stories were written long after his death and probably say more about later attitudes than about the king himself.

How it was built

The pyramid was made from an estimated 2.3 million blocks of stone, with a total mass of about 6 million tonnes. Most of the core blocks were limestone quarried on the Giza plateau itself. Fine white limestone for the outer casing came from Tura across the Nile, and granite for the inner chambers was shipped down the Nile from Aswan, far to the south.

Its base measures about 230 metres (755 feet) on each side and is aligned with remarkable accuracy to the four points of the compass. Originally it rose to about 146.6 metres (481 feet). The vizier Hemiunu, a relative of the king, is thought by many Egyptologists to have overseen the project.

The pyramid was the centre of a larger complex. It included a mortuary temple on its eastern side, a causeway leading down to a valley temple near the edge of the cultivated land, three small pyramids usually attributed to Khufu’s queens, and pits for full-sized boats. Around it lay cemeteries of mastaba tombs for members of the royal family and officials. Khufu’s successors added their own complexes nearby: the Pyramid of Khafre, with the Great Sphinx beside its causeway, and the smaller Pyramid of Menkaure.

The workforce

The popular image of slaves building the pyramids is not supported by the evidence. Excavations led by Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass uncovered a workers’ town south of the pyramids with large bakeries, and nearby a cemetery where workers were buried with honour. Modern estimates of the workforce vary, commonly ranging from about 10,000 to 30,000 people at any one time.

In 2013 archaeologists at Wadi al-Jarf on the Red Sea found the oldest known inscribed papyri, including a logbook kept by an official named Merer. It records his team shipping limestone from Tura to Giza in the last years of Khufu’s reign. How the blocks were raised remains debated, but most theories involve ramps of mud brick and rubble.

The builders worked with simple but effective tools. Limestone was cut with copper chisels and saws, while harder granite was shaped by pounding with balls of dolerite, a very hard stone, and by sawing with sand as an abrasive. Blocks were dragged on wooden sledges, and later Egyptian art shows workers pouring water in front of a sledge, which makes wet sand much easier to slide over. The base was levelled with great precision, and the sides were aligned to true north, probably by observing the stars or the sun, although the exact method is unknown.

Inside the pyramid

The pyramid contains three main chambers. The lowest is an unfinished chamber cut into the bedrock. Above it lies the so-called Queen’s Chamber, which in fact was probably never meant for a queen.

The Grand Gallery, a steep corridor about 8.6 metres high and 47 metres long, leads up to the King’s Chamber. This room is lined with red granite and holds a lidless granite sarcophagus. Above it, five low compartments help spread the immense weight of the stone overhead. When the British officer Howard Vyse blasted his way into the upper compartments in 1837, he found builders’ marks painted in red, including the names of work gangs that incorporated Khufu’s name. These marks are important evidence that the pyramid belongs to Khufu’s reign.

Narrow shafts, only about 20 centimetres square, lead from the King’s and Queen’s Chambers into the body of the pyramid. Their purpose is debated, though many Egyptologists link them to beliefs about the king’s soul rising to the stars. Robots sent up the Queen’s Chamber shafts from 1993 onwards found small stone blocking slabs fitted with copper pins.

The tomb was robbed in antiquity, and no mummy of Khufu has been found. Scientific scans by the ScanPyramids project detected a large hidden space above the Grand Gallery in 2017, and in 2023 a sealed corridor behind the north face was confirmed. Their purpose is still unknown.

Later history

The Greek historian Herodotus visited Egypt in the 5th century BC and wrote that the pyramid took 20 years to build. Much of his account, written two thousand years after the event, mixes fact with stories told by local guides.

The original entrance on the north face was hidden after the burial. Today’s visitors usually enter through a lower passage traditionally said to have been forced by workers of the Abbasid caliph al-Ma’mun in the early 9th century AD, although the story cannot be confirmed.

In the Middle Ages much of the smooth casing was stripped away, especially after a severe earthquake in 1303, and reused in buildings in Cairo. This left the stepped core visible today. Scientific study of the pyramid began with the scholars who accompanied Napoleon Bonaparte’s expedition to Egypt in 1798–1801, whose measurements and drawings appeared in the great Description de l’Égypte. In 1880–1882 the British archaeologist Flinders Petrie carried out the first accurate survey, showing how precisely the monument had been laid out. In 1954 a dismantled cedar boat belonging to Khufu was found in a pit beside the pyramid; reassembled, it is more than 40 metres long. The Giza pyramids became part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979.

Myths and facts

Myth: slaves built the pyramid. The workers’ town, bakeries and honoured tombs at Giza point instead to a large, organised workforce of skilled craftsmen and rotating labour teams who were housed and fed by the state. Herodotus’s figure of 100,000 men working in three-month shifts is not supported by modern estimates.

Myth: the Hebrews built it. The Great Pyramid was completed more than a thousand years before any possible date for the biblical Israelites in Egypt, so the two cannot be connected.

Myth: it was built by a lost civilisation or by outsiders. Quarries, tools, ramps, workers’ settlements, the Merer papyri and builders’ marks naming Khufu all show that it was an Egyptian achievement of the Fourth Dynasty.

Myth: it was a granary. Medieval European travellers sometimes called the pyramids the “granaries of Joseph”. The buildings are almost entirely solid stone with only small internal chambers, and they were tombs.

By the numbers

Timeline

• c. 2650 BC: The Step Pyramid of Djoser is built at Saqqara.
• c. 2589 BC: Khufu becomes king (dates vary between scholars).
• c. 2560 BC: The Great Pyramid is completed.
• 5th century BC: Herodotus describes the pyramid in his Histories.
• 1303: A major earthquake loosens casing stones, many later removed for building in Cairo.
• 1954: Khufu’s dismantled boat is discovered beside the pyramid.
• 1979: The Giza pyramids are listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
• 2013: The Merer papyri, describing stone shipments for Khufu, are found at Wadi al-Jarf.
• 2017: Scans reveal a large hidden void above the Grand Gallery.
• 2023: A sealed corridor behind the north face is confirmed by scans and a camera probe.

Why it matters

The Great Pyramid shows how a state more than 4,500 years old could organise labour, food, transport and engineering on an enormous scale. It is a key source for understanding Egyptian religion and kingship. Its height was not exceeded by any human-made structure until the spire of Lincoln Cathedral in England was completed in the early 14th century. Built in roughly the same centuries as Stonehenge, it remains one of the most recognisable monuments ever made.