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Jonathan Shaw, Who Built the Pyramids Who Built the Pyramids? Not slaves. Archaeologist Mark Lehner, digging deeper, discovers a city of privileged workers. by ONATHAN SHAW he pyramids and the great sphinx slave class in Egypt originated in Judeo-Christian tradi- rise inexplicably from the desert at Giza, tion and has been popularized by Hollywood produc- relics of a vanished culture. They dwarf tions like Cecil B. De Mille’s The Ten Commandments, in the approaching sprawl of modern Cairo, which a captive people labor in the scorching sun a city of 16 million. The largest pyramid, beneath the whips of pharaoh’s overseers. But gra∞ti built for the Pharaoh Khufu around 2530 from inside the Giza monuments themselves have long b.c. and intended to last an eternity, was until early in suggested something very different. Tthe twentieth century the biggest building on the Until recently, however, the fabulous art and gold trea- planet. To raise it, laborers moved into position six and sures of pharaohs like Tutankhamen have overshadowed a half million tons of stone—some in blocks as large as the e≠orts of scientific archaeologists to understand how nine tons—with nothing but wood and rope. During human forces—perhaps all levels of Egyptian the last 4,500 years, the pyramids have drawn every society—were mobilized to enable the construction of kind of admiration and interest, ranging in ancient the pyramids. Now, drawing on diverse times from religious worship to grave robbery, and, in strands of evidence, from geological the modern era, from New-Age claims for healing “pyra- history to analysis of mid power” to pseudoscientific searches by “fantastic living arrangements, archaeologists” seeking hidden chambers or signs of bread-making tech- alien visitations to Earth. As feats of engineering or tes- nology, and animal taments to the decades-long labor of tens of thousands, remains, Egyptologist they have awed even the most sober observers. Mark Lehner, an associate The question of who labored to build them, and of Harvard’s Semitic Mu- why, has long been part of their fascination. Rooted seum, is beginning to fash- firmly in the popular imagination is the idea that the ion an answer. He has pyramids were built by slaves serving a merciless found the city of the pyramid pharaoh. This notion of a vast builders. They were not slaves. Photograph by Kenneth Garrett “I first went to egypt as a year-abroad student in 1973,” he “dig” appeared to be out of the question until ARCE assistant di- says, “...and ended up staying for 13 years.” His way was paid by a rector James Allen, an Egyptologist from the University of foundation that believed a hall of records would be found be- Chicago, essentially adopted Lehner professionally, took him neath the paws of the Sphinx. Young Lehner, a minister’s son under the wing of his own Ph.D., and designed a mapping project. from North Dakota, hoped to discover if that was true. But the The German Archaeological Institute loaned photogrammetric more time he spent actually studying the Sphinx, the more he equipment, the sort used by highway departments for taking became convinced that the quest was misguided, and he ex- highly accurate stereoscopic photographs from the air, and Lehner changed its fantasies for a life grounded in archaeological study soon produced the first scale drawings of the Sphinx, which are of the Giza plateau and its monuments. now on display at the Semitic Museum. Actually, he became, in the words of one employer, an “archaeo- During the mapping, Lehner’s close scrutiny of the Sphinx’s logical bum” who soon found work all over Egypt with German, worn and patched surface led him to wonder what archaeologi- French, Egyptian, British, and American expeditions. “At the end cal secrets it might divulge. “There are layers of restoration ma- of these digs, there were lots of maps and drawings left to be sonry going back all the way to pharaonic times,” he says, indi- done,” he adds—steady work once the short dig season was over. cating that even then, “the Sphinx was severely Lehner discovered he had a knack for drafting, and got his first weathered.” What Lehner saw, in essence, was lessons in mapping and technical drawing from an archaeological site, in plain view, that a German expert. “I fell in love with it,” he had never been described. confesses. To better understand the di≠erential weather- His first big break came in 1977, when ing in the natural layers of rock from which the the Stanford Research Institute con- Sphinx is cut, Lehner initially consulted a ge- ducted a remote sensing project at ologist with expertise in stone conserva- the Sphinx and the pyramids— tion. Then his interest in the geological a search for cavities using non- forces that created the Giza plateau invasive technologies. The brought him into contact with a Sphinx is carved directly young geologist, Thomas Aigner, of from the sedimentary rock the University of Tübingen, who at Giza, and sits below was studying the local cycles of the surface of the sur- sedimentation. The layers in the rounding plateau. Lehner lower slope of the plateau, where was put in charge of a the Sphinx lies, tend to alternate group of men cleaning out between soft and hard rock. The the U-shaped, cut-rock ditch softer layers of rock were deposited that surrounds the monument, during geological eras when the area so that the sensing equipment was a backwater lagoon protected by could be brought in. In order a coastal reef; they are highly vul- to plot the locations of any nerable to erosion. Aigner anomalies, the largest ex- pointed out to Lehner that the isting surface maps of the “hard-soft” sequence of layers Sphinx—about the length in this part of the plateau of an index finger—were would have made it easy for enlarged and found to be ancient stonecutters to extract extremely inaccurate. blocks of stone for building. By then a seasoned His analysis revealed that the mapper, Lehner asked stones used to build the the director of the temples in front of the American Research Sphinx had been quar- Center in Egypt ried from the ditch that (ARCE, a consor- surrounds it on three tium of institutions sides. Many of these including museums huge blocks, some of and universities such them weighing in as Harvard) if they at hundreds of would sponsor his tons, are so big e≠ort to map the that they have Sphinx. But Lehner, two or three despite his experi- di≠erent ge- ence in the field, ological didn’t have a Ph.D. layers Running his own running The ancient Egyptians, having already quarried the mate- rials for other pyramids for generations, “probably were good geologists in their own right,” says Lehner. through them, and they Left: Lehner’s front photogrammetric are loaded with form- elevation of the Great Sphinx. Above: As inifera. Detailed logs of seen in a north elevation, weathered lime- stone and bedrock form the Sphinx’s head the fossils—gastropods, and upper body. On the lower portions, bivalves, sponges, and restoration masonry predominates. Right: corals—in each block and Lehner maps a site. Below: Lehner works fast to document features briefly exposed layer allowed Lehner and by modern construction projects. Aigner to actually trace the stones back to the quarry. “We began to un- build these temples in our minds,” Lehner explains, “and realized that the same could be done for JOHN BROUGHTON the pyramids themselves ancient Egyptian society organized itself around the and for the whole Giza task of large-scale pyramid building? plateau.” Lehner had often imag- Studying the geology of an archaeological site ined what Khufu’s archi- is standard practice today, but it had barely been tect must have envisioned RONALD DUNLAP done for Giza, Lehner says, because “Egyptology when he looked down from the Maadi formation knoll high grew up in the study of inscriptions.” When Jean-François above the southeast slope of the plateau and planned the very Champollion deciphered hieroglyphics in 1822, “suddenly huge first pyramid: quarries, a port for bringing in exotic materials like temple façades and tombs everywhere started ‘talking’ to ex- granite and gypsum mortar, a place for the workers to live, provi- plorers.” Then came the overwhelming abundance of “fabulous sions for their food, a delivery route from the port to the con- art objects—fabulous in their own right,” he says, “but less use- struction sites. The ancient Egyptians, having already quarried ful out of context than they would have been if properly docu- materials for other pyramids for generations, “probably were mented. Egyptology grew up largely as a philological and art his- good geologists in their own right,” says Lehner. They knew how torical discipline. Archaeology as a standard practice was late to to line up all three of the massive examples at Giza precisely on come to Egypt.” the strike of the plateau’s slope (if you can walk around a hill Over several seasons, Lehner surveyed the plateau to an accu- without going either up or down the slope, you are on the strike). racy of within a millimeter, and began to see with greater cer- In consequence, all the pyramids—which align on their southeast tainty how the pyramid builders had arranged themselves across corners—begin at nearly the same elevation. Most modern schol- the landscape. An ancient wadi—a desert streambed that flows ars think they were built with ramps: the crumbling stone chips with water only during the occasional downpour—would have from the Mokattam formation quarries were close by and may made a perfect harbor, he surmised.
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