How Were the Pyramids Actually Built?

This is the Great Pyramid of Giza. For over 4,600 years, it has endured in the Egyptian desert. For most of human civilization, it was the tallest building in the world. It was built to last for eternity because it was meant to house a god. It has survived earthquakes, erosions, and wars, countless plunderers, British explorers blasting their way in with dynamite, even Mr. Beast. Someone 4,500 years ago put this rock right here. The 2.3 million stone blocks, some of a mass of up to 50 metric tons, make it one of the heaviest human-made objects of all time. It's also built with incredible precision. Its base is roughly the size of seven New York City blocks and almost perfectly level, never deviating more than an inch. The four sides are aligned to the cardinal directions with near-perfect accuracy, thousands of years before the compass was even invented. To this day, no one has found out how exactly it was built. To really understand the Great Pyramid, we modeled the whole thing, and we will tackle three fascinating theories of its construction. This is the insane engineering of the pyramids. This is Khufu, a pharaoh of ancient Egypt. He's king of the wealthiest nation on the planet, and he's a god. He's going to live forever, and he needs somewhere to live out his immortality, a home that will last. It will need to be incredibly secure to house all of his riches, and it should also look amazing. His father, Sneferu, also a god, is buried here. He's the pharaoh who taught Egypt how to build its pyramids, but the lines on his aren't quite perfect. Something went wrong. Khufu can do better. He can bring even more glory to Egypt. The nation is still mourning Sneferu's death. Khufu wants to lift the people up by drawing them into the most incredible project humanity has ever attempted, and then surely they'll love him and later remember him, more than his dad. A project as grand and ambitious as the Great Pyramid can only be pulled off by a very wealthy and very organized nation. The nation of Egypt is just that, thanks in large part to the Nile. Every year, the Nile overflows and fertilizes the land with rich topsoil. This gives ancient Egypt the ability to grow excess crops to keep its production well-fed and to sustain a standing army. The army regularly goes out and terrorizes Egypt's neighbors, plundering their wealth to bring home for the pharaoh. So Khufu has all the money he needs to build something very, very extra. But money isn't everything. Khufu also needs the smartest architect to design a building that will set him up for eternity. There's only one man for the job, Khufu's half-brother, Hemi-Unu. He was born for the role, a once-in-a-generation genius. The design for his pyramid won't just follow in his father's footsteps, it will surpass it in every way. He envisions a pyramid far grander, more complex, and more secure than anything built before, a true quantum leap in architectural mastery. Hemi-Unu plans to build a pyramid primarily out of solid stone. Inside will be three burial chambers with a passageway leading to each. The first is built underground in case Khufu dies early into the pyramid's construction. The second will be hidden behind a false wall so nobody can plunder the riches inside. Leading up to the third and highest burial chamber is a majestic corridor with stunningly high corbelled ceilings, the Grand Gallery. The king's chamber will be breathtaking, a chance for Hemi-Unu to flex. It'll be huge for ancient Egyptian standards. It'll be built entirely from pink granite monoliths, quarried far away from Aswan, fitted together so precisely that you couldn't slip a razor blade in between them. Inside a granite sarcophagus, Khufu will finally be laid to rest. Once complete from the inside, the pyramid will be encased in perfectly smooth white limestone. It will dazzle in the sunlight and gleam in the moonlight. Finally, a golden capstone, the Pyramidian, will be placed on top. Once all is put in place, Khufu will be ready for eternity. Building a pyramid might take an empire, but to build your dream business, you only need Shopify. Shopify is an amazing all-in-one platform We've personally used it since 2018 for a sustainable clothing project. We started out with just an idea. Thanks to Shopify, our brand now reaches customers around the world. We built a beautiful storefront with ease. We tracked orders seamlessly and get a ton of valuable insights from the dashboard. One of our favorite tools is Shopify Live View. You can see where customers are shopping in real time. There are over 8,000 apps to customize your store, like sustainable shipping options or loyalty programs. Shopify isn't just for online sales. Shopify Point of Sell helps you sell IRL, perhaps in that pop-up store you always wanted to go for. If you've been waiting for the perfect moment to start your own thing, this is it. Any idea can grow into a fully developed, global business with Shopify. Try it free today at shopify.com slash fern or by scanning this QR code. Hemiunu doesn't have time to waste. The pyramid should be built as quickly as possible so that at least one of the burial chambers is ready before Khufu's mortal self dies. Hemiunu is aiming for a timeline of 20 years for the whole project. He calculates that the Great Pyramid will require up to 25,000 builders, a significant portion of ancient Egypt's population of about 1 million. So a great recruitment drive begins. But how exactly did they do it? Well, nobody knows. The debate's been raging for hundreds of years and researchers are constantly uncovering new archaeological evidence and bizarre engineering quirks that give birth to new theories, sometimes with cutting-edge tech, sometimes by sheer dumb luck. There are theories supported by scientific research, which we will cover, and there's tons of dubious theories that rely on wild speculation, which we'll ignore. We've broken down three scientific theories about what the Egyptian secret could be in order of easy, medium, and hard. Imagine you and some co-workers have to hoist a block as heavy as a double-decker bus 130 meters into the air. The only tools your boss gives you are some rope, some wood, and some rubble. If you've got something heavy, you've got to move somewhere high. The simplest, most straightforward way is to just drag it up a ramp. You tie it with some rope, get help from as many people as can fit on the ramp, and heave it up together. As the pyramid grows, the ramp would be raised and extended to accommodate the increasing height. Easy. No crazy advanced machinery necessary. Most Egyptologists have traditionally supported the external ramp theory. It continues to be the go-to explanation for how the builders pulled it off. And there's loads of archaeological evidence that confirms ancient Egyptians used big ramps for construction all the time. But there's no consensus on the size, shape, and incline of such a ramp. That's because after a certain height, the external ramp theory starts to fall apart. To move a two-ton block up a slope, you need a team of about 12 workers. And as the pyramid starts to grow, your ramp either needs to become steeper or longer to reach the top. You're going to want that incline to be as gentle as possible. Otherwise, the job is too intense, and workers will start dropping like flies. The remains of the workers suggest most were in decent but not spectacular health. These were everyday people, not super elite athletes. Many died before 40 due to the incredibly hard work. Engineers calculate that 8% is the steepest incline for average workers to complete their task. In consequence, the ramp has to become longer. To build a ramp to the full 147-meter height of the pyramid at a gentle enough incline, this ramp would need to be very, very long. Like way more than a kilometer. It'd require a few million tons of material, up to three times as much volume as the entire pyramid. Remains of such an enormous ramp haven't been found, and it would take thousands of workers decades just to build it. Decades Khufu doesn't have to spare. There is a way to keep the ramp shorter. You could build a corkscrew ramp that spirals around the sides, like a road winding up a mountain. Every time the pyramid grows, the ramp grows with it, and eventually just becomes part of the pyramid itself. That would be a pretty ingenious way to save up on space and material, and it would explain why we haven't found any remains of a ramp. But it comes with a whole new set of problems. The pyramid's triangular faces need to be accurately maintained at precisely 51.9 degrees from the bottom to the top. Surveyors need to measure the edges constantly to ensure there's no deviation. If you're off by even a few centimeters at the bottom, the top could be off by several meters. Since the spiral ramp blocks your sight, it's almost impossible to ensure that all the lines of the pyramid are actually straight, which would leave you with a crooked pyramid at the end. And as we know, the Great Pyramid is in fact not crooked. This brings us to theory number two. It's the late 90s. A French engineer, Henri Audin, is watching a documentary about the pyramids. It explains the pyramid construction with the external ramp theory, but Henri is skeptical. To his engineering mind, it just doesn't make sense. He calls up his architect son, Jean-Pierre Audin, and asks his opinion. Jean-Pierre is intrigued. Without knowing much about ancient Egypt at all, or even visiting the pyramid, he starts puzzling over other ways the blocks could have been lifted. He labors over it obsessively for years until he's finally ready to share it with Egyptologists. Most of them ignore him. He's an outsider, and it's a field notorious for gatekeeping. A French guy who knows nothing, because there is no evidence. But his theory has since gained traction because Audin has put himself into the shoes of Emmy Ounu, thinking through every last detail. His theory could even explain how the heaviest granite beams might have been moved without needing to be hauled by 600 workers. Here's a concise version. Emmy Ounu does use an external ramp for the first part of the pyramid, up to around 60 meters. But he doesn't just build a basic ramp made of rubble. No, his ramp is made of limestone. Limestone blocks that will later compose the upper layers of the pyramid. That would explain why we haven't found any remains of a ramp around the pyramid. They're right there in front of us. The short external ramp is used to build the widest, lower levels of the pyramid. It's also used to haul the heavy granite beams that compose the King's Chamber. But hundreds of workers hauling a 50-ton block in a small space is logistically challenging. So Audin believes Emmy Ounu used the long 46-meter corridor, the Grand Gallery, as an ingenious counterweight system. It would have been built opposite the external ramp and its size and slope would be leveraged with counterweights that would assist workers in getting the granite up to the King's Chamber. The Grand Gallery is a weird space in the Great Pyramid. It has details that puzzled archaeologists for a long time, like why it's so tall, so narrow, and why it has stone benches running along the inside. Audin believes the Grand Gallery helps move impossibly heavy stones by functioning like a railroad track. The stone benches are actually the rails for carts on wooden rollers. Remember, no wheels. Essentially, a huge granite block at the bottom of the external ramp would be attached with a rope to a trolley car loaded up with heavy blocks at the top of the Grand Gallery. When the trolley cars rolled down the Grand Gallery, the heavy granite block would be pulled up the ramp. There's even evidence of scuffing from the repeated impact of something heavy in the Grand Gallery, so it's a plausible explanation of what this unique corridor was used for. Once the heavy granite beams are in place, the external ramp has served its purpose. Now, the pyramid is too tall for it to be practical, so the builders switch things up. They dismantle the external ramp and use its blocks to start building the rest of the pyramid from the inside out with an internal ramp, kind of like the driveway spiraling up inside a parking garage. This second ramp would have been built from the bottom up, with an incline of about 7%. It would go straight up until it hits one of the pyramid's sides, where it would make a sharp left continue up another side at the same incline. The ramp continues zigzagging up the pyramid, with the flights of the ramp getting shorter as the pyramid narrows. From the bottom to the top, the internal ramp is over a kilometer long. Moving heavy blocks up an incline is manageable, especially if you're using a sled over smooth limestone. But each time the ramp turns a corner, the workers have the enormously difficult task of pivoting the heavy stones. Hodong calculates the ramp had to be less than three meters wide, and the workers would have needed somewhere to stand to turn the block. So he proposes that at the end of each flight of the ramp, there must have been a big space left open for the workers to turn the block, possibly with the help of wooden levers or cranes. The empty spaces would also be a nice place for the workers to catch their breath. There's actually evidence of one of these spaces. There's a previously unexplained notch that corresponds to Hodong's predictions for what the spaces would look like, about 83 meters up the pyramid. Hodong's theories about the grand gallery and the internal ramp offer viable solutions to two of the pyramid's biggest mysteries, how two-ton blocks were lifted so high, and how 50-ton beams were moved without the space for the hundreds of workers needed to haul them. But if he's right, the ramp's design would have been highly complex. Its path would have to be designed with great care to avoid intersecting with any passageways or chambers within the pyramid. Critics of his theory are either unconvinced that its construction is supported by archaeological evidence, or wave off the internal ramp as overcomplicated. Many suggest the external ramp theory is likelier because it's simpler, but ancient Egyptian workmanship exhibits extraordinarily high levels of precision in so many aspects. Why not also apply this ability to a highly sophisticated ramp design? And also, why not entertain an even more sophisticated theory for how they built the pyramids? In 2024, a flurry of newspaper articles announced that the mystery of the pyramids was finally solved, thanks to brand new archaeological evidence. As it turns out, the Nile might just be the key to the mystery of how the pyramids were built. Nowadays, the Giza Plateau lies in an arid strip of the Sahara Desert, kilometers away from the lush banks of the Nile. But during the time that the pyramids were built, the landscape may have looked very different. A 2024 study combined radar satellite imagery with deep soil coring techniques. This way, it identified what appears to be a long lost branch of the Nile flowing alongside the majority of the pyramids. The pyramid builders probably used this branch to move heavy stones straight to the pyramid base, instead of dragging them all the way from distant quarries. More than plausible that the builders used the Niles to transport the blocks horizontally, but what about vertically? Another peer-reviewed study from 2024 offers a fascinating theory. It proposes a radical and controversial idea. The ancient Egyptians might have used hydraulic power to raise heavy stones. In other words, a water-powered elevator. The idea of such an elevator is not new, but for a long time, credentialed Egyptologists considered such theories fringe and unscientific, just speculations cooked up by pyramid-iots. They might sound cool, but there was zero evidence to actually support them. Until, perhaps, now. The researchers, including hydrologists, mechanical engineers, and geographers found evidence that the earliest Egyptian pyramid could have been built using a floating wooden elevator capable of raising heavy stones with far less human labor. The water elevator would have worked something like this. Rainfall and flood water would be collected into a nearby structure that functions as a dam. A system of underground conduits guides that water into a shaft running from underneath the pyramid up through its central axis, kind of like a volcano. This internal shaft is where all the upward movement is generated. Within the shaft, floating on the water's surface, is a heavy wooden platform, which workers would load up with heavy stones from the ground level. Then they'd open and close valves near the bottom of the shaft, which would feed in or drain out the water. Manipulating the water levels in this way would raise and lower the wooden platform like an elevator. It could raise the platform to heights of at least 17 meters. Then workers would unload the stones and construct the pyramid from the inside out. The study's lead author claims his theories could also help explain why later ones aren't as large as the Great Pyramid. As the climate dried out of the region over time, builders couldn't have captured enough water for a hydraulic lift system. They'd have to rely on human strength to lift heavy stones. So does this theory hold water? Experts are mostly skeptical. Zahi Hawass, a leading figure in Egyptology, says the theory is completely wrong. The pyramid in the study is not only smaller than Khufu's Great Pyramid, but differs structurally and was built of far lighter stones. So if Khufu's pyramid were built with some kind of water elevator, it would have to be bigger and perhaps more complex. So far, no comparable shaft is known to exist in the Great Pyramid. Ramps, however, are found all over archaeological excavations of ancient Egypt. So the most common theories continue to put forward some sort of ramp as the dominant construction model. There are other potentially viable scientific theories that try to solve pieces of this puzzle. One expert we spoke with suggests multiple smaller ramps from all sides to cut down on construction time. But to this day, there is still no generally accepted theory for how they did it. In any case, it's good to be wary of all the claims coming out about finally solving the mystery. Everyone wants to be the one to definitively figure it out. The Great Pyramid is the last of the seven wonders of the world we have left. It's so old, even Cleopatra considered it ancient. But even though they've been around thousands of years, it's actually very strange we haven't found any blueprints for the pyramids. The ancient Egyptians were obsessive documenters. We have their tax records, their love poems, their receipts for donkey feed purchases from 4,000 years ago. But papyri with plans for the pyramids have never been found. Whether the plans were lost, hidden, or intentionally destroyed, we don't know. But what we do know, and what science might be at the brink of confirming, is already very incredible. In 2017, scientists discovered a mysterious void in the Great Pyramid using cutting-edge particle physics. Researchers have yet to access these spaces. Some archaeologists believe the big void isn't so mysterious, that it's probably just structural, built as a stressful leaving spaces so the inner chambers wouldn't collapse. Some believe it helped refine Udan's theory of the Grand Gallery counterweight system. Others, including Egypt's top archaeologist Zahi Hawass, suggest the void might be Khufu's real burial chamber. Because that's the other great unsolved mystery of the pyramids. Khufu's mummy and all of his treasures have never been found. Whatever it's for, the big void reveals there's a lot more investigation needed to fully understand the Great Pyramid.