Egypt’s Pyramids are an archaeological wonder, rising high above desert sands and staying visible for miles on end. Building the pyramids was 100% an enormous task, but who were the people that pulled it off?
There are so many theories about who built Egypt’s pyramids. Which includes teams of enslaved Jewish people and also wilder ideas, such as inhabitants of the ‘Lost City of Atlantis’ or aliens.
But there is no evidence to back those theories up.
The pyramids could not have been built by Jewish slaves. There is no archaeological evidence that can directly be linked to the Jewish people have been found in ancient Egypt. Additionally, there was a story told in the Hebrew Bible about Jews being slaves in Egypt referring to a city named “Ramesses.” There was a city named pi-Ramesses was founded during the 19th dynasty. The city was named after Ramesses II, who ruled 1279–1213 BC.
“We have no clue, not even a single word, about early Israelites in Egypt. Neither in monumental inscriptions on walls of temples, nor in tomb inscriptions, nor in papyri,” wrote archaeologists Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman in their novel. “The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts.”
Also, no archaeological evidence has been found for the lost city of Atlantis in any time period. Scholars believe that the story is fictional. As for aliens, that’s out of the question.
Almost every piece of evidence out there shows that ancient Egyptians built the pyramids. But, how did the pyramids live, how they were compensated, and how people treated them is still being researched.
The Pyramids Builders
Egypt has more than 100 pyramids, but it’s most famous is the first step pyramid. It was built during the reign of pharaoh Djoser (about 2630-2611 B.C). The first true pyramid, one that has smooth sides, was built under the rule of pharaoh Snefru (about 2575-2551 B.C.).
The Great Pyramid was established under the rule of pharaoh Khufu (about 2551-2528 B.C.), and two of his successors, Khafre (about 2520-2494 B.C.) and Menkaure (about 2490-2472 B.C.), also had pyramids built at Giza.
Pharaohs had slowly stopped building pyramids during the New Kingdom Era (1550-1070 B.C.) and instead chose to be buried in the Valley of the Kings. Over the past decades, archaeologists have found more remains that provide clues to who the pyramid builders were and how they lived.
Surviving written records, including papyri, were found in 2013 at Wadi al-Jarf on Egypt’s Red Sea coast. The papyri that were found at Wadi al-Jarf show a group of 200 men led by an inspector named Merer. The group of workers transported limestone across the Nile River on a boat.
Egyptologists theorized that the pyramid builders were made up of seasonal agricultural workers. However, this still hasn’t been proven yet. The papyri detail the pyramid’s histories are still in process of being deciphered and analyzed.
Archaeologists have been exploring a town in Giza where the workers lived at. So far, they have found evidence that the town used to bake large amounts of bread, slaughter thousands of animals and brew large amounts of beer.
The workers were buried in graves right near the pyramids. The bones were inspected and they showed to be very healthy which indicated that the workers had access to medical care that was available at the time. It also indicated that they had a rich diet.