The press conference concerned a group of tombs recently found near the far northern edge of the cemetery of the pyramid builders, on the edge of the plateau. Here we found three large tombs belonging to overseers, one of them, a man named Idu, had his name inscribed on a stela. These overseer’s tombs are surrounded by shafts that contain the skeletons of the workmen who worked under the overseers.  Inside the shafts, we found pottery dated to the 4^th Dynasty. Based on the style of the shafts, which is similar to shafts found in the cemetery of Dashur, and the location of the tombs close to the pyramid, these could be the first tombs built in this cemetery, so they may date to the reign of Khufu, the builder of the Great Pyramid.

 

The tombs of the pyramid builders were first discovered in 1990. I had wanted to find them for years, and even wrote in my doctoral dissertation about where I thought they could be located on the Giza plateau. When I returned to Egypt in 1988 from the University of Pennsylvania, I began excavations in this area in cooperation with my good friend Mark Lehner, but we found nothing for a while. But, one day in August 1990, the chief of the workmen, came to tell me that a tourist was riding a horse at Giza, and the horse stumbled over a mudbrick wall. We investigated the wall and it turned out to be part of an Old Kingdom tomb belonging to an overseer named Ptah-shepsesu. This was the first tomb found of hundreds that cover the low desert south of the Wall of the Crow. There are two distinct cemeteries, the lower cemetery with large tombs of the overseers surrounded by smaller tombs of the workmen they supervised, and the upper cemetery, with more elaborate tombs of minor officials and artisans. 

 

Titles found in the tombs are of draftsmen, craftsmen, overseer of the workmen who move the stones, etc. The titles found and the location of the tombs so close to the pyramids, as well as their quality, indicate that the people buried there did, in fact, build the pyramids, and were most certainly not slaves. Slaves would not have been able to build their tombs so close to the tomb of their king. It is also clear that these people who built the pyramids were Egyptian, not from any lost civilization.

 

The layout of the cemetery of the pyramid builders further supports the idea that the workmen were divided into gangs, and that each gang had an overseer and a name. For example, the name of the gang “friends of Khufu” is recorded in the 5 relieving chambers above the king’s burial chamber in the Great Pyramid.

 

We also know from the excavations in the area east of my work, that the workmen slaughtered about 11 cows and 33 goats every day, which could feed around 10,000 workmen a day. Herodotus recorded that there were 100,000 workmen who built the pyramids, but from estimates of how many people it would take to move the amount of stone needed to build the pyramids, and the amount of food available, 10,000 workmen is the best estimate.

 

On Monday, the press gathered at the site of Giza to ask me questions about who built the pyramids and what this new discovery says about them. They were especially interested in what this discovery tells us about who built the pyramids. The two topics I was asked the most questions about were slaves building the pyramids, and whether the pyramid builders were Egyptian or not. My answer to the first is that there is no way the builders of the pyramids were slaves. The location of these tombs near the pyramids proves this, as there is no way slaves would have been allowed to build their tombs so close to the king. Also, although slavery could build huge buildings, it could never construct something as genius as the pyramids. As to the second issue, it is clear that the pyramid builders were Egyptian from our new discoveries. The tombs are in Egyptian style, and we have examined the bones of the pyramid builders, they were definitely Egyptian.