Khufu’s Pyramid: The Discovery That Breaks The Myth

The Great Pyramids of Egypt. The sheer size of these monuments is fascinating. The two highest and biggest were built for Pharaoh Khufu and his son Khafre. The Khufu Pyramid, 146 meters tall, and each pyramid contains about 2.5 million blocks. How were they built? Over the past few decades, significant discoveries have been made on the very site where they were erected. But now, far from the Giza Plateau and hundreds of kilometers from the pyramids themselves, we are gaining more insight into just how they were built. How these huge worksites were created, cementing the strength and power of Egypt. Two teams of Egyptologists, one based in the middle of the desert, the other located on the Red Sea coast, are currently discovering more about the Egypt of Khufu's time than at the foot of the pyramids. What have they found? How can these new discoveries help them figure out how ancient Egyptians worked? By reconstructing their techniques and methods, will these teams manage to unlock certain secrets of these great builders? The Khufu Pyramid and those constructed after it were built on the Giza Plateau. This exceptional site was a huge necropolis for centuries, before being practically forgotten under the sand. When Napoleon and his troops arrived at the end of the 18th century, the bottoms of the pyramids were not visible and the Sphinx was half buried. For the next century and a half after this memorable expedition, monumental excavation work was carried out to remove the sand from the Giza Plateau. In the 1980s, a major new development. Egyptologists Zahia Was and Mark Lenner discovered the village and cemetery of the workers who built the pyramid of Khafre, Khufu's son. The lives of the pyramid builders began to emerge from the shadows and contradict the clichés written in the Bible. The pharaoh's workers were not slaves. They were treated and fed well. They were organized into 40-person teams. These men were proud to be buried next to their king. These excavations have continued for 30 years, but the occupation and looting of the site for centuries and centuries after Khufu's death have obscured a great number of clues. No papyrus, no written document dating from his reign, have ever been found on the Giza Plateau. The ravages of time have also destroyed all the large-scale statues of him. The only likeness of Khufu that has miraculously survived the ages is a tiny ivory figurine currently housed at the Cairo Museum. Ironically, today it's necessary to leave the Giza Plateau in order to move the investigation forward. More than 200 kilometers from the pyramids, on the Red Sea coast, at Wadi al-Jarf, new discoveries are changing the situation and bringing new insight into Khufu's world. Egyptologist Pierre Tallet and his team come here every year to excavate for two months. During their mission, around 60 workers supervised by about 10 Egyptologists and archaeologists live here self-sufficiently. Their camp, in the middle of the desert, is just a few meters from this ancient site that hasn't been occupied since it was abandoned 4,500 years ago. What has Pierre Tallet found here that could not have been discovered at the foot of the pyramids? What was the purpose of these galleries carved into the rock? We're in a gallery that is typical of Wadi al-Jarf. These galleries had several functions, but their main function was to house dismantled boats that were stored inside these chambers between two Red Sea expeditions. But so far, after 8 years of excavating these galleries, an entire boat has not been found, just a few fragments that sometimes bear inscriptions. Pierre Tallet has not found the boats he's looking for, but he has discovered traces of Khufu all over the site. Here you can see Khufu's cartouche very well. You have to imagine it. In fact, it is written vertically, even if the block is horizontal. Here you can read King Khufu's full name very clearly, Khnum Khufu, which literally means, May the god Khnum protect me. Here, a scribe drew Khufu's name in cursive with a brush. But in the official version in hieroglyphs, you can see that the sign of the ram, representing the god Khnum, is clearer. Pharaoh's names were often linked with a deity because they themselves were considered to be like gods. Pierre has found traces of Khufu almost everywhere on this site, which has been untouched by men for 45 centuries. But the real game-changer was a totally unexpected discovery that any archaeologist who has ever excavated at the foot of the pyramids would have loved to find. Here it is, in this very ordinary hole. In 2013, between these two blocks, Pierre Tallet's team found papyrus fragments, thousands of fragments, which proved to be the oldest ever discovered in Egypt. We absolutely did not expect to find this kind of documentation at such a faraway site. At the beginning, we were searching for a pharaonic harbor since we had already discovered several. Very quickly, Pierre was able to translate a few pieces, and he realized that they had just found the detailed reports of a foreman who worked for Pharaoh Khufu. You can see that these were logbooks kept by a lower-level supervisor named Merer who recounted a part of the Giza Pyramids' construction. This priceless treasure is now protected in the Cairo Museum. What they found is so fragile and voluminous that six years later there are still many papyrus fragments to restore and reassemble. For this extremely delicate task, Pierre asked one of the world's foremost specialists in ancient papyrus restoration to take care of his precious discovery. So that's really fantastic. I don't think anyone's ever seen papyrus like this before. This papyrus is an administrative report written by a scribe official called Merer. It's a bit like an Excel sheet that's 45 centuries old. It scrupulously records the movements of a team of workers, what they do every day, and what they receive in exchange. Everything in black is what the team does for the king. Everything in red is what the government does for the team. Notice in red you can see the bread deliveries which keep the workers fed for a month. But what truly new information, what scoop, have these papyri revealed? This document is very important because it allowed us to date all of the archives that were found on this white-and-jarf site in 2013. We have here the date that corresponds to the year after the 13th census of large and small livestock in the reign of Khufu. During the ancient kingdom, the accounting of time is done biannually, according to an inventory of the wealth of the territory that takes place every two years. The papyrus proves that Khufu's reign lasted longer than previously thought. He ruled for at least 27 years, not 20. That gave him much more time to build his pyramid, almost a third more time, which changes the estimations Egyptologists have made to unlock the secrets of this immense monument. But what were Merer and his team of 40 boatmen doing? Where were they going? One clue can still be found atop the Khafre pyramid. These white and shining facing stones once covered these gigantic monuments. There are also a few left at the foot of the north side of Khufu's pyramid. These blocks of fine limestone, different from those that make up 95% of the volume of the pyramids, come from a quarry located about 12 miles from the Giza plateau. In the Wadi al-Jarf papyri, Supervisor Merer explains how it took him two or three days to transport these blocks from Tora to the foot of the pyramids with his team of about 40 boatmen. A port had been constructed next to the construction site, allowing heavy materials to be transported when the Nile was at its highest level during the annual flooding. But that's not all. It seems that our fragments indicate an area called Ojo Khufu, literally Long Live Khufu, which is supposed to be at the foot of the pyramid of Khufu. Pierre thinks that the pharaoh built his palace in this area to have a clear view of the construction site. After discovering the length of Khufu's reign, this is the second big scoop that Merer's papyri have revealed. Khufu's palace is probably currently located under the modern city and is undoubtedly waiting to be discovered. Merer recounts that he stopped in this particular place because the royal archives containing all the important papyri of Khufu's government was near the palace, a real gold mine of information that could be buried under the modern city of Cairo. One person in particular is extremely happy about the discovery of Merer's papyri. It is the Egyptologist Marc Lenner who has been excavating the Giza Plateau for over 30 years. Ah, Pierre! Hello, Marc. Good to see you. I'm really pleased to meet you again. Good to see you. Our lab. It looks small, but it's actually much bigger inside. Come inside and have a look. Here, carefully organized and catalogued, there are millions and millions of objects from the village of the workers who built the Pyramid of Khafre. They are both excited to discuss their mutual finds and check if their discoveries match. This one's unfinished. All of this, I think, is like a detective in a crime scene that's making an inference. When you find texts, then they speak to you directly, and it's like opening that window. We have all the signs that are naming the different files of the gang. The smaller one, the bigger one. We have the crooks for the bigger one, the three strokes, the four strokes for the smaller one, and so on. It's almost every time inscribed. Ooh, that one's broken. But it's perfect. So this is what you have. Yeah, exactly that. That's amazing. We have got, I think, about 50 of them. You know, there's a huge, huge irony here. So you are in the periphery. You're out there in an expeditionary force at the frontier of Egypt, and you have all these inscriptions and texts. We are at the center of the bureaucracy in the Egyptian state, and all our material culture, many of which is the same, is blank, is anonymous. Yeah, it's strange. We certainly are keeping our eyes open. Yeah, of course. It would be great to find the house that Merer stayed in. Really great. Name written over the door. Merer lived here. But why was Merer's diary found at Wadi al-Jarf and not on the Giza Plateau? What was Merer doing with his team of 40 boatmen on the Red Sea coast? After several years of intensive work at the Wadi al-Jarf site, Kertaleh and his team are able to reconstruct part of the story. A few kilometers from the galleries cut into the mountains, they excavated a building and port facilities where hundreds of men could work and sleep. And at the seaside, they found a jetty from which Khufu's ships set sail for Sinai. Another important clue. While searching underwater and in the port buildings, they found about a hundred boat anchors. At that time, anchors were simple limestone blocks with a hole for a rope to pass through. But what were they looking for on the other side of the Red Sea? It's certain that they were going to the Sinai Peninsula. That was certainly one of the major reasons for building this port, because Sinai had the largest copper deposit that the Egyptians could mine directly. Several copper mines dating from Khufu's era and even before his reign have been found in Sinai. At that time, there was no iron, so the tools that cut the Great Pyramids' 2.5 million blocks of limestone were made of copper ore. Starting at Wadi al-Jarf, donkeys must have transported tons of copper across the desert to the pyramid construction site. Using this desert road, Merer and his team may have made several round trips. Before returning to the pyramid site with their copper cargo, they would have first arrived in Wadi al-Jarf with the pieces of their dismantled boats. From there, they would also have been part of the expeditions to Sinai, an adventure that was apparently not without risk. Local populations didn't really welcome the Egyptians. We found a veritable fortress that the Egyptians had built at exactly the same time as a landing area, so they protected themselves. The ancient camp at Wadi al-Jarf that Pierre has yet to excavate is also higher up. This allowed them to monitor their surroundings and prevent any attacks that could threaten their expeditions. In this hostile context, ancient Egyptians tried to protect their installations at all costs. Sometimes several years passed between two expeditions to Sinai. Before leaving, to avoid having their equipment stolen, they stored the dismantled boats in these galleries, and they carefully closed them with limestone blocks cut especially for that purpose. Bedouins living in the desert may have been curious about what was inside the galleries. Using these large blocks as a locking system was a way to protect what was stored inside. So these galleries were like safes. At that time, quality wood was extremely rare and precious. There was none in Egypt. They had to go and get it from Lebanon, a land then covered with huge cedar forests. But how were these huge blocks, used to seal the galleries, cut and transported here? Today, we would really like to know how long it took and what techniques were used to create this locking system. This is the major experimental archaeological project that Pierre Tallet wants to carry out on the Wadi el-Jarf site. He asked Frank Burgos, a stonemason and a specialist in ancient architecture, to help him with the project. Their experiment's goal is to better interpret all the archaeological data they can see on the site, but also to understand how the Pyramid of Khufu might have been built. This experiment will take place about 300 yards from the camp, just next to the quarry where the ancient Egyptians carved the blocks used to seal Wadi el-Jarf's galleries. An unfinished block, abandoned before it was finished, has allowed Frank to understand some of the techniques they used. The block is surrounded by trenches that go all the way around it and are used to extract the block. We realized that there are workstations that are approximately one meter long. So every meter, there was a worker. But then when he entered the trench, he was in a crouched position. Then he would cut the stone, and once he had finished cutting in front of him, he would turn around and cut behind. Using this ancient block as a model, Frank and his team of four workers will extract a 1.5 cubic meter block with copper tools. Now we're going to do an experiment to time how long it takes to extract a block. Frank starts by drawing the trenches that will define their work area and the size of the block they want to extract. You have to stay at the same angle or you'll damage the chisel. Copper is a soft metal that wears down quickly when cutting stone, so the technique is different working with these tools than working with steel chisels. But with these copper chisels, the work is extremely long and tedious. How did the ancient Egyptians manage to produce more efficient results? Last year, I had the idea to wet the stone because I encountered big problems in my experiment with copper tools. I realized that there was a lot of salt in the stone. Because salt is soluble, I had the idea of wetting the stone to see if it would soften it up. We made five times more progress when we wet the stone. We realized that the stone is really crumbly. You can crumble it with your fingers. It is less solid than it was before. So far, no one has carried out this type of archaeological experiment using water. And this technique is not mentioned in any ancient documents or Baori leafs. If his intuition is right, it's a real discovery. Five of them will work eight hours a day to carve out this block, which is about the same size as the average block in the Pyramid of Khufu. And every half hour, they have to sharpen their copper tools again. This archaeological experiment, using copper tools and not steel tools, has never been done properly before. The result of this test will reveal a lot about the ancient techniques used during Khufu's time. Wow, I hadn't seen this. You've made a lot of progress. With one liter of water, you can remove seven centimeters from an area that's 50 centimeters squared. If we hadn't wet the stone, we'd be still at 10 centimeters from the surface all around. That's a huge discovery. What's surprising is that it broke at the bottom. You can see the crack that goes down there. It split at the lowest point. Bravo! Thanks to you guys. Thanks to all of us. It took us about eight days to finish this experiment. Now we just have to transport it. The tools didn't wear down too much, and we used about three liters of water for the experiment. Without the water, it would have taken us two or three times longer. Frank believes that by using water, ancient Egyptians, who were more experienced than the men on his team, could have cut a block in four to five days at the most. But what did they do with all the rubble? The extraction waste was used to make ramps, but also at the entrance of quarries to load the blocks to handle them easily. If it took two million or two and a half million cubic meters of stone to build the Khufu pyramid, that would mean that there were about two to 2.5 million cubic meters of gravel. So according to Frank Burgos, ancient Egyptians would most probably have also used water to cut the millions of stone blocks needed to build the pyramids more rapidly. At the foot of the Pyramid of Khufu, we can still see the quarries from which most of the blocks were extracted. By building the pyramids, the ancient Egyptians transformed the landscape, changed the geography of the place. They literally tore off much of the rocky base of the Giza Plateau. The Sphinx itself is a remnant of this hard limestone plateau, an immense area of which was used to cut the stones needed for the pyramids. And all the gravel and excess stone this method produced would have been reused to build ramps. But what type of ramp did they use 4,500 years ago to transport blocks to a height of 146 meters? The debate is raging between Egyptologists and specialists, and so many models have been proposed. A single ramp is either too steep or too long to maintain a realistic slope of no more than 12%. Several ramps seem to be a very costly solution in terms of time and effort. Is it an external wraparound ramp, or the kind of internal ramp proposed by architect Jean-Pierre Houdin in the 2000s? For now, there is no definitive evidence that would settle this debate. Again, it may be necessary to distance ourselves from the pyramids to find some answers. 300 kilometers south of the Giza Pyramids, a Franco-British archaeological mission, with the help of 100 Egyptian workers, is possibly about to make a major discovery. We are at Hathnub, one of the oldest calcite quarries in the world. This is where the great pharaohs went to look for a hard and crystalline stone that is also called Egyptian alabaster. Today, there is no alabaster left in this quarry, which was totally depleted and abandoned in ancient times. Clearing all the rubble and sand accumulated over the past 2,000 years is a gargantuan task. And here, there is no tomb or funerary treasure to find. So why put so much effort into it? What Yanis Gourdand's team has begun to find on the site could revolutionize our understanding of the major pharaonic construction sites, particularly that of the Khufu pyramid. Because here we know that they extracted and hauled a huge alabaster block to make a 58-ton statue for a pharaoh. While they were clearing the quarry in search of new inscriptions, Egyptologists found steps and holes carved into the ramp. They think that these holes were used to wedge huge wooden poles that were part of a very ingenious towing system. They have one month to clear as much gravel as possible around 6,000 tons to see if there are similar holes on the right side of the ramp and lower down in the quarry. But how can we date this ramp carved into the rock inside a quarry that was used for almost 3,000 years? How can we be sure that it was used in Khufu's era? What helps them are the hundreds and hundreds of inscriptions left there by expedition leaders who came all the way here to extract the sacred alabaster. So let's have a look at Khufu's inscriptions. Roland Denmark and Yanis Groudon are experts in hieroglyphics. By listing all the inscriptions in the quarry, they have identified two cartouches from pharaoh Khufu. Even if some of the hieroglyphs have been destroyed, they can still decipher Khufu's royal name. Yep, there's definitely a vase there. And the quail. Yes, the quail chick. And the viper. It is the same signature that has been found all around the Wadi al-Jarf site and in Mera's papyri. Yanis Groudon and Roland Denmark decided to dig a trench under a second Khufu cartouche that's also damaged to access the bottom of the towpass to see if it's possible to link the Khufu cartouche with the ramp. A month later, the team has been able to clear the top of the ramp entirely and a large part at the bottom of the quarry where the Khufu cartouche is located. Were they able to find the clues and information they were looking for? The amount of rubble and sand deposited here over the past 2,000 years is much greater than they had estimated. After digging down about 10 meters under the Khufu cartouche, they have finally reached the base of the ramp. Yanis and Olivier Lavigne are happy to find another hole carved into the rock that's similar to the one found at the top of the ramp. Yes, we've got a new structure here. Here there are some nice tool marks. So this means that everything was cut in one go, in one piece. The wall, then the steps, and then after, the holes for the poles. So now the oldest inscriptions on these walls... Yeah, that's Khufu. Which means that the whole thing was made at the latest during Khufu's era. Thanks to these discoveries, they believe that the ramp must have been created during Khufu's time or even before. And at the top of the ramp, just as they had hoped, they uncovered more pole holes and lots of tool marks. Olivier measured all the tool marks the workers left in the quarry, especially on the ramp, and the holes and walls next to it. He found the same marks everywhere. Here, apparently, the same teams that arrived on the site and cut this wall also carved the steps and the holes for the poles in that order. In no other quarry have these types of elements been found. A ramp at a 20 or 25 percent grade or even more, depending on the location. And on the sides, there are stairs with holes cut into the rock. What were these holes used for? How did this ramp work? Can it provide new clues about the construction of the pyramids and the ramp system used at the time? Olivier Lavinia has analyzed all these clues and developed a hypothesis. So here we have a pole hole. The wall in front of me is vertical, so the pole was placed here, a large circular pole. You have to imagine it because it's rather large. And here we really have a structure that enables, when a big block gets to the towing path, to have teams above pulling the block, and others below with ropes wrapped around the poles here, and who are able, pulling like this, to make the block go up again. They take the ropes and pull towards the bottom, and that's what actually makes the block move up. Behind here, there's a big structure, a crossbar that goes here, that ties, that dovetails the pole to wedge it just behind, because behind here, the hole is a little slanted. It's not easy to make a vertical hole with this kind of tool, and there's another hole here that makes a strut, and arrives here in the upper part, which supports the upper part of the pole to prevent it from tilting. Here you need a log, a tree trunk that's very smooth and quite circular, so that the rope can easily slide around it. They would have used mud, silt from the Nile, to lubricate the ramp and slide the block, eliminating friction as much as possible. They could move very large blocks up this towpath. There's a story about a 58-ton colossus that came out of an alabaster quarry like this one, and that could have been possible here. So as the block advanced, the teams above would have positioned the ropes ahead of time on the next poles, so that the block would have moved forward as smoothly as possible. According to Olivier, this ramp system could have been adapted to the pyramid of Khufu. But a ramp on a pyramid was not rock. It was built with gravel and bricks. So they had to secure and stabilize the space between the poles using wooden crossbars inside the ramp and also above it. But is this system feasible? This hypothesis needs to be tested under real conditions to know for sure. Of all the pyramids, Khufu's is the most difficult to decipher because its interior architecture is unique. It raises questions that can't be found anywhere else. The immensity and ceiling height of the Grand Gallery is a mystery in and of itself. But the most surprising of all is the King's Chamber, built with huge granite blocks, some of which weigh up to 70 tons. Wow. It is the only pyramid that has this kind of interior burial chamber that's located so high up, at 43 meters from the ground. How did they manage to extract and cut these blocks so perfectly? Can you see the chisel marks of the stonemasons who made the sarcophagus? Yes, of course. There are several there. Look here. You can really see them. What tools and techniques did they use to shape these angles that are so geometrically perfect? Part of the answer can be found a thousand kilometers from the pyramids in southern Egypt, in the city of Aswan. The old granite quarries used during the Pharaonic period are located here on the banks of the Nile. Some blocks were never finished and extracted from the quarry because they were so gigantic. The most famous of these monuments is the unfinished obelisk in Aswan. This giant stone is 42 meters long and weighs about 1,200 tons. It is believed that they stopped working on it because a crack appeared during the extraction process. These unfinished monuments give astonishing testimony about ancient Egyptians' stone carving techniques. They reveal some secrets, like how the masons were able to work the stone using other stones that are even harder than granite. It's amazing the work that's been done. To extract the obelisk, you can see the trench they had to create with balls of dolerite, which is a relatively hard stone. It is magmatic rock and it is the only tool they had at their disposal to cut granite. It's really incredible. Here, there are the same vertical trenches as for the obelisk, but what we have in addition are horizontal trenches that were used to remove the block, visible here. It's crazy. It's very, very uncomfortable. I think they must have sat down instead. They were flexible, flexible and small, I think. So the dolerite balls were used to extract the granite. But how did they manage to make right angles and perfect edges? Since it is impossible to do experimental archaeology on this historic site, Frank has decided to launch a new experiment in Cairo. Sculptor Nathan Doss and his student Islam El-Sharkawi are used to sculpting granite using modern techniques. But they have always wondered how their ancestors carved this hard rock without iron tools. This test is a challenge for them. After a few minutes striking the stone with the dolerite balls, they have already loosened a large amount of granite dust. But for Frank, the real challenge is not to prove the dolerite's effectiveness. He has no doubt about that. What he would like to test is how to make perfect angles, like in the king's chamber, without steel tools. If we hit the edge of the ridge with dolerite balls like this, we'll break the ridge. According to Frank and other researchers who experimented before him, the perfect recipe is to use an abrasive paste composed of Nile silt and emery powder. Emery is one of the only rocks that is much harder than granite. When emery powder is applied with a single copper blade, it can actually sod the granite. OK, do you hear that? That sound means it's good. OK, need to squeak. You just have to be very, very, very patient. 5 mm. 5 mm? Not bad. We got to 5 mm. I think we sawed for 25 minutes to get a 5 mm depth but over a short length. With a longer length, I think it would take a little longer. For three days, Nathan, Islam and two workers will level two sides of the block, removing 4 to 5 cm of their surfaces with dolerite balls. Then they will start sawing on two sides to prepare the cutting of a perfect edge. In Wadi el Jarf, the mission is coming to a close. But Frank would like to try to move the limestone block he cut the year before to the camp. To best prepare the experiment, the workers remove the stones, level the surface and smooth the towpath as much as possible. In a symbolic gesture, Pierre draws the Khufu cartouche and the name of a team similar to Merer's, whose marks he found on several blocks blocking the galleries. Time, we're not enough. We need more guys. Under the old blocks blocking the galleries at Wadi el Jarf, archaeologists found only timber but no sleds. Frank therefore starts with this technique. His method is to go from the simplest technique to the most complicated. Come on, all together. Stop! Look at the path. It's not good. The wood is slowing us down. The sand between the stone and the wood serves to make the stone slide to reduce the friction between the stone and the wood a little bit. All together! Yes! Stop! Wait! It's not doing what we want and I'm really annoyed. We don't have the right method. It's not smooth. And yet, we're going the steepest slope. We've got to do several hundred meters to get it where we want it. Several hundred meters wetting the clay all for a fairly mediocre block for a mediocre structure. I don't think they did it this way. Maybe we should try moving it with a sled. Even a rudimentary one because for the moment the block looks like it's stuck to the planks. I don't know. I just see that it's a lot of effort for too little return. We'll see tomorrow. We'll think about it together and we'll see. In one day with 33 workers the block only moved 50 meters on a 25% downward slope. Frank has only one more day. How can he save the situation? The decision is made to quickly build a makeshift sled. Wood against wood the block suddenly moves much faster. It's moving much better now. We just started from there 10 minutes ago. New test. They try to replace the sand with wet clay. Look, the sled's not moving. And so? Well, it's stuck. When you put a little wet clay that is supposed to lubricate the system the block stops moving. Damn! And so they go back to the sand solution. As the experience progresses workers learn to work together and are more and more efficient. They reach the camp at the end of the afternoon 300 meters from their starting point. Next year Frank wants to come back with a real sled and do more tests with pure clay and also try to pave the path with some pebbles whose marks they spotted near the ancient quarry. He would also like to do tests where the block has to go up a slope. But what can we understand from this first archaeological experiment concerning the construction of the Khufu pyramid? To make a connection with the Great Pyramid I think we can expect on 35 meters per hour for a block of this size that might be the most pessimistic estimation. I think they were more experienced. They had a much more functional technique that certainly allowed them to go faster than that. Before leaving for France Frank returns to Cairo to the workshop of the Egyptian sculptors just as the edge begins to emerge from the block. For this delicate operation Nathan decided to use flint tools rather than dolerite balls that are too big and therefore less precise for this finishing work. They managed to make a perfect angle with the tools available in Khufu's era. Dolerite balls, a copper blade, an abrasive emery paste, and flint. Laughter It's a great experiment. I've always read about the ancient techniques. Something that worried me a lot since I'm a sculptor. So, to be able to do it yourself that's something. Experimental archaeology really allows us to better understand the movements and techniques used by ancient Egyptians. Frank's experiments showed that they probably used water to cut the 2 million blocks of limestone that make up the Great Pyramid of Khufu. Otherwise, they would not have been able to cut so many blocks in less than 27 years with copper tools. With this method they would have extracted as much rubble and unusable material as they did cut stones which would have allowed them to build ramps easily and be able to transport the blocks up to a height of 146 meters. Hadnub's ramp indicates that they could pull large blocks on ramps at grades over 20%, not just 12% maximum as previously thought. They used wood, wooden sleds, perhaps moistened with silt, and maybe sand to reduce friction. Many major archaeological experiments still need to be carried out to try to get a clearer picture. These tests require long preparation and training for the teams involved because again, the devil is always in the details. Thanks to decades of archaeological work done on the Giza Plateau confirmed by Pierre Talet's discoveries, it has become possible to reconstruct the Giza Plateau and the workers' daily lives during the construction of the Khufu Pyramid. We know where the pools and canals, specially built to carry the materials, were located and where the Khufu Palace and the Royal Archives probably stood. To build the pyramids, these exceptional builders also had to create a strong centralized state where everything was planned and organized down to the smallest detail. The wood that was essential to construct boats was brought from Lebanon. The copper ore to build the tools came from Sinai. The granite was carved in Aswan and transported along the Nile to the construction site on the Giza Plateau, as were the stones from Tura. Without the pyramids, perhaps ancient Egypt would not have become the great civilization it was. A reference, an inspiration that has spanned the centuries and that still challenges our thinking today.