Why egyptians built pyramids

All proposed hypotheses lack an explanation for this important aspect. Comments 0. Leave a Comment. Additionally the story told in the Hebrew Bible about Jews being slaves in Egypt refers to a city named "Ramesses.

This city was constructed after the era of pyramid construction had ended in Egypt. What's more, no archaeological evidence has ever been found for the lost city of Atlantis in any time period, and many scholars believe that the story is fictional.

As for aliens, well, that idea is out of this world. In fact, all the evidence shows that the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids, Egyptologists say.

But how the pyramid builders lived, how they were compensated and how they were treated is a mystery that researchers are still investigating. Egypt has more than ancient pyramids, but its most famous include the first step pyramid, built during the reign of the pharaoh Djoser about B. Pharaohs gradually stopped building pyramids during the New Kingdom B. Over the past few decades, archaeologists have found new pieces of evidence that provide clues as to who the pyramid builders were and how they lived.

Surviving written records, including papyri discovered in at Wadi al-Jarf on Egypt's Red Sea coast, indicate that large groups of workers — sometimes translated as "gangs" — helped bring material to Giza. The papyri found at Wadi al-Jarf tell of a group of men headed by an inspector named Merer. The group of workers transported limestone by boat along the Nile River a distance of about 11 miles 18 kilometers from Tura to the Great Pyramid, where the stone was used to build the outer casing of the monument.

The hard granite, used for burial chamber walls and some of the exterior casing, would have posed a more difficult problem. Workmen may have used an abrasive powder, such as sand, with the drills and saws.

Knowledge of astronomy was necessary to orient the pyramids to the cardinal points, and water-filled trenches probably were used to level the perimeter. A tomb painting of a colossal statue being moved shows how huge stone blocks were moved on sledges over ground first made slippery by liquid. The blocks were then brought up ramps to their positions in the pyramid. Finally, the outer layer of casing stones was finished from the top down and the ramps dismantled as the work was completed.

Most of the stone for the Giza pyramids was quarried on the Giza plateau itself. Some of the limestone casing was brought from Tura, across the Nile, and a few of the rooms were cased with granite from Aswan.

Marks of the quarry workers are found on several of the stone blocks giving names of the work gangs such as "craftman-gang". Part-time crews of laborers probably supplemented the year-round masons and other skilled workers.

The Greek historian Heroditus reported in the fifth century BCE that his Egyptian guides told him , men were employed for three months a year for twenty years to build the Great Pyramid; modern estimates of the number of laborers tend to be much smaller. Pyramid building was at its height from the Fourth through the Sixth Dynasties.

Smaller pyramids continued to be built for more than one thousand years. Scores of them have been discovered, but the remains of others are probably still buried under the sand.

As it became clear that the pyramids did not provide protection for the mummified bodies of the kings but were obvious targets for grave robbers, later kings were buried in hidden tombs cut into rock cliffs.