The Ancients - The Great Pyramid of Giza

Episode Date: March 6, 2024

The Great Pyramid of Giza is the only ‘Wonder of the Ancient World’ still standing. Built over 4500 years ago at the same time as Stonehenge, the Great Pyramid has become synonymous with all things Ancient Egypt. But what was its original purpose? How long did it take to build? And just how did the Pharaohs manage to erect what was then the tallest structure in the world? In today’s episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes begins our four-part mini-series focusing on the ancient world’s greatest architectural wonders with Dr. Joyce Tyldesley OBE. Together they explore the origins of the Great Pyramid, explain why it was built next to the gushing waters of the River Nile and discover what it can tells us about the people who built it and the society they came from. This episode was produced by Joseph Knight and edited by Aidan Lonergan.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code ANCIENTS - sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. new mini-series this March all about great architectural wonders of the ancient world stretching from Rome to China. In this first episode, we're heading back 4,500 years to the Giza Plateau in Egypt and the story behind the building of the only official wonder of the ancient world still standing, the Great Pyramid of Giza. Now, to explain all about this marvel that still awes millions of visitors every year,

well, I was delighted to welcome back to the podcast Professor Joyce Tildesley OBE from the University of Manchester. Now, Joyce, she is one of Britain's leading Egyptologists who has previously been on the podcast to talk all about Nefertiti, about Cleopatra, has previously been on the podcast to talk all about Nefertiti, about Cleopatra, and most recently about Tutankhamen. Now she's back to talk all things The Great Pyramid of Giza. I really do hope you enjoy, and here's Joyce. Joyce, it is such a pleasure to have you back on the podcast today. Oh, thank you for inviting me. It's great to be here. And you're more than welcome. And we're doing it in person in your office at the University of Manchester

to talk about the only official wonder of the ancient world still standing. And when we talk about the Great Pyramid of Giza, it has become such an iconic picture, monument of ancient Egypt today. It has. We have to remember, I think, that we're not actually looking at it as it would have appeared to the people who built it. Because you tend to forget this. Actually, it would have been slightly bigger because the outside casing has gone and the top has gone.

And it would have been white limestone, very well fitted together because it's not very well fitted together if you look closely at the moment. And in the sunlight, it would have reflected the light and it would have shone and it would have probably radiated heat. And it would have looked amazing. I mean, it's pretty amazing still today. But to see it in all its glory would have been absolutely fantastic and to have seen it in all its glory how far back in time would we have had to go well we know that it was built for the king called kufu and he was in what we call the old kingdom he wouldn't have known the term old kingdom it's a modern term that we put onto him. His fourth dynasty, and he ruled starting in approximately 2,589 BCE. We're a bit uncertain. We can't be absolutely precise about these dates, but roughly then, so well over 4,500 years ago, a long time.

And this is when that amazing fact kind of comes up, isn't it? With the names like Cleopatra, we're living closer to the time of Cleopatra than she was to pharaohs like Khufu yes yes yes ancient Egyptian civilization is so long it starts in about 3100 BCE and it ends with the death of Cleopatra in 30 BCE massive amount of time it's really hard to comprehend sometimes for students I do like piles of pennies representing years to show them, or we've done things on the computer showing blocks, because it's so hard to work out compared to events of our own history, which are relatively close to us. So be that ancient Rome, be that ancient Greece, indeed. I mean, Joyce, in the past, we've done episodes on Tutankhamun and on Nefertiti and Cleopatra. I know your main

focus is on like actual people from ancient Egypt and learning a lot about their stories. But when we go so far back as a figure such as Khufu, is it more difficult to learn more about the man or the person themselves because they are so far back in history? It is. Really, Khufu and several other kings of this time, we know more about them because of their funerary monuments. We know about their pyramids, the natural, their lives. There are a few records, but we don't have anything like eyewitness accounts, diaries, anything like that. And the records that we have are quite stilted. For example, we know that Khufu, he imported and exported wood and he maintained trade links and so on. But that's about it. We know that obviously we can guess things as well.

We can guess that he was rich and that he ruled Egypt at a time of prosperity and that he had very good control over his resources. But that really is all we know about him. But it hasn't stopped him developing a legendary persona. So we think we know more about him than we actually do. And what is this legendary persona? Because I got in my notes that he almost has kind of an infamous reputation as a tyrant almost from later sources. He does. A lot of that's due to Herodotus. Herodotus regarded him as a tyrant who was

really cruel to his people and inflicted hardships on them and forced them into slavery to build the pyramid. But there's no archaeological or written evidence for that contemporary to Khufu. And it seems quite likely that Herodotus is first of all picking up on sort of oral history. I mean, he's a visitor to Egypt, he's not Egyptian, he's visiting roughly halfway between us and Khufu. So he's certainly not a contemporary. He's thousands of years later. He's maybe picking up on an oral tradition, but he's also as a Greek, assuming that any massive construction has to be built with slaves. And that doesn't seem to be the case in ancient Egypt. But because he assumes

this, because he's got the biggest pyramid, obviously he must be the biggest tyrant. And it's something that's picked up by later writers about Egypt. It's also something that is reflected by people who've commented on the Bible. They've assumed that Khufu subjected the Hebrews to subjugation, for example, and it snowballed from there. But actually, the evidence that he's a tyrant, there really isn't any at all. It doesn't mean he wasn't, of course. I shouldn't cover it that way. But you know, there's no evidence to support it either. Well, it's interesting what you mentioned about the workforce, because we're going to get there when we talk about the construction itself. But a bit more on the background, first of all, because I'd like to talk a bit about pyramid building at the time of Khufu and before. I mean, the Great Pyramid of

Giza, I'm guessing that it's not the first of its type ever built. Do we know how popular pyramid building is before the time of Khufu? It's something that's been developing in the royal family since, really, Egypt became unified. They've been working towards it. The first kings, though, they have massive mud brick funerary structures. They have tombs made of mud brick. And when I say mud brick, it sort of sounds like it's kind of primitive, doesn't it? And not difficult. These are huge structures. Plus, a lot of them had funerary enclosures, which were slightly separate from the tomb. But there was a lot of building.

And gradually gradually within these these funerary structures we start to find little pyramid shapes or mounds within them we get to the third dynasty the beginning of what we call the old kingdom and suddenly egypt is a much more settled place the kingship is settled the kings have got control over egypt's resources and we find step pyramids emerging and they are they are just what they sound like they like steps going up to the heavens and then from that it carries on forwards we get to the king called snefru who is the father of kufu and snefru builds several pyramids in fact he's actually if you did it by amount of stone used in building he is a greater pyramid builder than kufu because

he builds three substantial pyramids and plus others, smaller ones possibly. And he builds a step pyramid, which he converts into what we'd call the true or straight-striding pyramid. It's not a great success because it eventually collapses, but the idea is there. And then he, after that one, well, partway through it, he starts that pyramid. He abandons it because he moves his capital city he builds a pyramid that is from the outset going to be a straight-sided pyramid but the angle isn't quite right and it's not built on the right sort of ground and the blocks are the wrong shape it doesn't go well and the people building the pyramid the architects at the end decide to actually bring the angle in so he's built what we call the bent pyramid

oh this is the bent pyramid, which is worthy of a podcast in its own right. It absolutely is, yes. So it's got a definite angle in it that brings it into the top, which made it more secure. And we're assuming this wasn't deliberate because there are problems with the original structure.

So it does seem likely that this was an attempt to save the pyramid. But it does look very odd because it bends in the middle. And then after that, he went on to build a third pyramid again starting with a true pyramid but this time he kind of knew how to do it or the architect knew how to do it so for example they started to put the blocks flat rather than angling them in towards the centre of the pyramids but they gave it they must have been a bit cautious

by then they gave it a very shallow angle so it's not a tall pyramid it's quite a flattened pyramid they probably had to do that anyway because Sneferu has been spent so much time pyramid building that he must be approaching death and of course you want to finish your pyramid before the king dies so you can use it as a tomb so the final flattened pyramid would have taken up less stone but also would have been much more secure this is all the reign before Khufu. Khufu then comes to the throne, and he's quite young. So he's got a reign ahead of him of at least 20 years, he must imagine, to perfect it.

And he just builds one, but he builds it perfectly. It's so interesting to understand, as with so many of these big figures from ancient history and prehistory, the importance of the person who came before them, their predecessor. In this case, it seems to be Sneferu. who seems to be this massive pyramid builder as you see and it's almost it's that evolution of the pyramid i remember going to sakara and seeing the step pyramid of joseph and marveling at that yes and then all yet with the bent pyramid almost in between and then he gets the true pyramid and kufu's there and just like okay thanks to the people who helped my father and all these experiments, when I come to the throne, when I want to build my pyramid, I've got all of this information to

hand to create, well, the best true pyramid that's been seen to date. Absolutely. And we should remember that it carries on as well. We always regard the Great Pyramid as the Great Pyramid, but I'm not sure the Egyptians would. We regard it as great because it's big and it's almost perfectly built. But they carry on. They don't stop at that. But there's a change of emphasis again, and we get an emphasis more on the buildings around the pyramid.

So size to the Egyptians doesn't matter quite as much as it does to us. There are other things that become important. So we should see it as part of a progression. It's not the end. It's not the ultimate pyramid, and it went downhill from there. To the Egyptians, what came after was equally valid, but different. But it's one important thing that we should always remember that the pyramid is just part of the pyramid complex. And it doesn't function as a tomb properly if it's taken in isolation. You have to regard it as part of this religious,

almost magical construct to allow the king to achieve his afterlife. And is that the main purpose of the pyramids? Are they meant to be the tombs? Or is there another purpose when they're being built to kind of convey the great power of the pharaoh? I would say it's several things. I mean, at its most practical level, it's a place to keep the body of the king. But obviously, you don't need to build a pyramid to do that. And the first pharaohs didn't.

obviously you don't need to build a pyramid to do that and the first pharaohs didn't it's also demonstrating his power and his ultimate control over egypt and egypt's resources because you couldn't build that unless you had this control and there's a huge amount of industry behind it it's not just cutting blocks there's we probably talk about this later so there's a lot behind that it also though it's important because it helps the king to achieve his afterlife. The earlier kings were quite interested in afterlife where they might go and be an undying star in the sky. But by the time you get to Khufu's reign, he's quite interested in becoming either one with the sun god, Rey, or one with the god Osiris, the god of the dead. And this is all reflected in it. And by having a straight-sided ramp that goes up to the sky, first of all, it is almost like a

stairway to heaven that you could do that. But it also is very reminiscent of the rays of the sun coming down. If you look at it, particularly that was shining. So it's not too far removed from obelisks, those tall, thin monuments that are solar monuments that they raise. And also there's another connection is that the pyramid arising from the desert is reminiscent of the mounds of creation at the beginning of time that came out of the water with life on it. with life on it. And it's something that was replicated and very familiar to the Egyptians because every year when the Nile flooded and the floodwaters would recede, they would see islands coming out from where the Nile waters had been. So all this is reflected in the shape of it and the position of it in the land of the dead. It's positioned so that the king can be buried with a court around him of important people. So there's a lot to it it's not just putting the king's body in there but ultimately yeah that's what it is not that everybody else always thought that but

today yes that's what we think so much meaning to these monuments whether it's in Orkney with stone age monuments or the great pyramid and so on and so forth I know I wish it'd be so great if we could talk to the people who built it and and because i'm sure we're only picking up a quarter an eighth you know even less of what it actually meant to the people building it because another thing is that you you could say and i don't know if this is intentional or not but perhaps it was that building the pyramids stimulated so much of egypt it stimulated um the civil service to to kick them into action mathematics developed art developed so you it has been said not it's not original to me but it's been said that the pyramids the egyptians didn't build the pyramids the pyramids built egypt so again whether that would be a deliberate cause or whether that's

an effect i don't know but amazing it is absolutely amazing well if we go back to the great pyramid itself you mentioned how kufu when he comes to the throne, he's quite young. I know it's 4,500 years ago, so it might be a bit vague. But do we have any idea how long it takes before Khufu decides, right, I'm going to start building my own Great Pyramid? We don't know, but I would imagine he'd do it straight away. Because what you don't want to do as an Egyptian is to die without your burial place sorted. And he's seen his father struggle and only just get something completed. And he probably knows that quite a few of the

earliest step pyramids after Zosa's, between Zosa and Sneferu, there were a lot of failed pyramids or incomplete pyramids. So you would want to start building it straight away. But another thing about the ancient Egyptians and the monuments they built, they very rarely finished them. It's strange. Even the massive temples, they were constantly being added to and enhanced. So I think the plan would probably be to build it. And then if it was anywhere near finished, you could tweak it and you could make it bigger or expand it in different directions. There would be no harm in starting early, but there could be a great deal of harm in starting late because of course, nobody knows when they're going to die.

And why, of all places, does he choose the Giza Plateau? I mean, what does this plateau look like when Khufu decides to build this pyramid? Well, there's nothing there. And I think that might have been an interesting point for him. He might have, you know, he would be the pyramid, which is good. He'd be the only visible one. It's also good quality rock. Some of Sneferi's pyramid buildings suffered

because the underlying rock wasn't good quality and the Egyptians don't build foundations to pyramids. So that would be very useful. It's near his capital city, which is located close to modern Cairo. It's got good transport links. They can cut a canal to the river to transport things. And there's a limestone source nearby. So a lot of the building materials can come from this quarry

nearby. Not all of it. The good quality stone will come either from Aswan for the hard stone or from a better limestone quarry for the outer casing. But the stone that you shouldn't be able to see, but it's the stone we see today, comes quite locally it all fits together really nicely makes sense to do that as you say to get all the resources and so on and close the cap is it memphis i'm guessing memphis is the capital at that time yeah it developed into memphis later white walls memphis it's the same thing really so to begin such a massive undertaking with all these different laborers coming in civil servants as you've highlighted and so on i mean do we know how it all kicks off for something so massive? Is there almost kind of what you'd expect to begin with?

We don't know how it kicks off. But imagining again, you have the idea, you choose your site, and then you've got to have someone obviously in overall control. But the Egyptians are very, very good at breaking work down. It's something that we see throughout all their building projects that they will have a top person and they'll halve the work then halve it again and then halve it again and you get lots and lots of groups who've got a supervisor and then they're grouped together so it breaks down into really nicely controlled units but it wouldn't just be at Giza you would also have to be thinking about working the quarries at Aswan and the good limestone quarries you're going to need wood for the boats that are going to transport up and down the Nile not just stone but people because you're going to need people

to get the people they have a system of national service but they have to call people up they go to the site they work there for a bit they go back home again so transport is important you need catering you need medical help there's all sorts of things needed so it wouldn't just be at the site so the logistics would be huge and very very impressive but from the actual building of the pyramid itself in its purest forms actually drawing out plans for it, I think wouldn't be that difficult. It's the supporting logistics, isn't it, that's the problem. And do you have any sources that kind of might shine some light on how the pyramid was built? Well, for a long time we didn't. And this caused people to think that maybe it wasn't even built by the Egyptians. Particularly after the turn of the last century, when sci-fi became popular, people were saying, well, there's no evidence this was built by the egyptians you know people particularly after the turn of the last century when sci-fi

became popular people were saying well there's no evidence this was built by people so maybe it wasn't maybe it was built by aliens or so on and people have also suggested people from other civilizations came in and built it but gradually increasingly we're finding more and more evidence that it was built by real people so we're starting to find the place where they worked kufu's pyramid itself doesn't have his name on it but inside the pyramid right at the top on top of the burial chamber there's what are called relieving chambers which are put in there to stop the weight of the pyramid pressing down on the roof of the burial chamber and crushing the dead pharaoh which would be

unfortunate there's graffiti in there hidden away that no one can see and recently really excitingly we've got some written evidence, which has become known today as the Red Sea Scrolls, which is actually part of a logbook by a person who worked on transport, taking things to and from Giza. No way. Yeah, for Khufus and actually names the pyramid. So transported several different things,

but including the fine quality limestone to the site. So increasingly, as time goes on, we're starting to find more and more evidence that this is absolutely human made. I mean, most of us thought it was anyway, but it's great to have the evidence and we can start to see how it works. The advantage the Egyptians have, I mean, they don't have electricity and they don't have complicated machines or anything, but they do have a lot of person power a lot of manpower in particular and they do have really really good bureaucracy they're really good bureaucrats accountants scribes and so on and this is helping us but finding actual written evidence of someone who's actually worked on this is brilliant and finding it near the red sea it's not been found

at giza because obviously it's a transport operation it's on a boat so yeah so yeah massive connections massive undertaking and to have a voice from someone 4 500 years ago involved choice is absolutely astonishing i've got to ask then like we were talking a bit about laborers earlier with names such as herodotus and then that name slaves came up do we know much about who these labourers were who built the pyramid? Not a great deal. But again, we're finding out year by year that people are excavating there and doing excellent work and more and more is coming to light. Originally, it was assumed that we're slaved. Herodotus, I think, told us that there were 100,000 slaves worked on the site at the time. That, I think, would be impossible because there just won't be room for them.

A lot of people have tried to work out how many people there would be on the site at any given time, and it's difficult because we don't know how long it took to build. But assuming it took between 20 and 40 years, because we don't actually know how long the king was on the throne either. Some people say 27 years, some people said up to 40 years. Assuming it is about 20 years the most recent thinking is that you would have a core group of people who live there who were the architects the master masons and so on their families would live there too and there's a there's um

a town established outside the cemetery the royal cemetery for them to live in and they've got you know that they've got food, they've got healthcare, they live a normal life there. And then maybe you're bringing in, in batches of three months, 20,000 other people who will do the grunt work, the unskilled work, although many of them will be skilled labourers, of course, because they'll work in the fields, and then they will go away. There will be some times when you'll require more labourers than others. At the beginning,

you'll require fewer labourers. And at the end, you'll require fewer labourers because there are fewer blocks being placed. So that will happen. But you'll also have people being put in the quarries. And again, as I said, working in other places as well, the rope industry will be very, very important to you. It's something we don't often think about. There'll be boats going up and and down the nile and so on but they've got boats and they've got a lot of manpower but do we know of any other like contraptions that were available for these laborers when they were building something like the pyramid surely it's not just ropes and lots and lots of people they've got copper tools the limestone that's close to the site is, I say easy to split, I wouldn't like to try it, but relatively easy to split using copper tools and mallets. The way you do it is that they

cut a trench round the block and then they sort of decapitate it. So we can actually see this. This is more evidence of how it's been built because it's like a checkerboard effect that's left behind. Once you've got the basics done, the plan laid out, you've actually actually started building you can only really build as fast as you can get the blocks to the site so that would be the important part of it but they don't have any really sophisticated equipment no what they do have are ramps because you would absolutely have to do that you couldn't do without it although we don't having said that we don't actually know what form these ramps took. We're fairly confident that they didn't have just one long ramp that went up one side of the pyramid because to build that ramp would actually require more material than building the pyramid itself. But there are all sorts of possibilities. Maybe a short ramp up one side or up four sides,

followed by a wraparound one, maybe a wraparound one on the inside and the outside or both. You know, it's difficult to know, but that would help them. And they'd be using wooden sledges to drag the blocks up the ramp and put them in place. and how does this all begin so we've got the manpower we've got the design and process you've got the architects and so on at the giza plateau how do you start building a pyramid from the bottom i'm guessing you need a foundation layer first of all you do with the first thing you've got to do is get it flat so So they've got good quality rock there, so you don't need to do anything about that.

But what you do need to do is just plan it out properly and put a grid out to work to that. Because with a pyramid, it's very easy for it to twist. And that sounds silly. It sounds a bit weird to say. It does, doesn't it? But you've got to watch your angles as you're going up. You've got to make sure your sides are the same size.

And of course, it's also orientated to the points of the compass. So they wanted to get that right as well. And happily, they were already good at astronomy. And by using, there were various techniques. You can use the sun, the light of the sun. If you stick up at noon, I'm not an astronomer or very good at this at all, but there are ways that you can measure. You can also use stars and build a false horizon

and watch the progress of the stars. You could do all of these, and presumably you would double-check and triple-check. So you can align it, you can get your edges straight, and they seem to have an understanding of Pythagoras' 3-4-5 triangle, even if they don't call it that, obviously, because Pythagoras isn't a wren. They are good, basic mathematicians, very practical mathematicians.

They're already measuring grain to go in silos and so on. So for them, I don't think the maths is too complicated, but you would really, really plan it out, and you'd have to work out because you want to have the blocks of the right size. And then you level it, and then you just basically start building but if you want to have an underground structure you build that first you don't build the pyramid then put the put the rooms inside it you build the inside of the pyramid as you go up so if you're going to have a substructure you would build that first and then you would build on top of that.

There isn't much of a substructure in the Great Pyramid. Most of the important rooms are in the masonry of the building, but you have to plan where they're going as well. We don't really know how many blocks are in the pyramid. That's another thing. It's quite often quoted that there is just over 2 million and so on. We don't really know we do know that there's rocky outcrops on the giza plateau inside the pyramids some

incorporated in but we don't know how much natural rock is in there obviously you try and use that as much as you could because there's no point in bringing blocks if you could build around rock and recently it's also been discovered that there are gaps or spaces within the Pyramid Masonry, which again isn't really surprising because it would lighten the weight of the pyramid and it would also mean you didn't have to build so much. So you might well put effectively a chamber into it to reduce the number of blocks you need. So it's difficult to tell how much of that was planned for as well. But then after you've got all that sorted out out it's just a case basically of going upwards you drag your block you put it in place and carry on going up and then when you get to the top you work your way you you put the casing on then you work your way down trimming it

to make sure that it fits as neatly as it possibly should and you would presumably dismantle your ramps at the same time obviously your internal ramps would have gone but you would just dismantle your external ramp as you came down trimming the casing blocks I'm just trying to get in my mind

this kind of these ramps as they're building as the pyramid is slowly getting higher over all that time and then having to kind of build those ramps

as they get higher and higher that is a monumental task in its own right it is I mean we have areas of sort of mud and gravelly bits that look like they might have been part of the ramps but absolutely yes it's a skill in its own right particularly it then starts to wrap around the pyramid because you've got to

anchor it onto the pyramid as well you can't just have it hanging off it so yes i mean health and safety i'm imagining was not a great concern in those days but it must have been pretty dangerous to be working on that pyramid absolutely and you mentioned how you get to the top you've kind of finished that initial design of the outside and then you're polishing off so is this the dressing of the stone yes yes you'd have them in place but you dress them as you came down dismantling we imagine and i am imagining this and there are other interpretations available but this is what people more people think i think that you you dismantle the ramp as you came down and made sure that the outer casing was exactly how you wanted it the inner casing can be a bit rough

rough and ready because no one can see it but the outer casing has to look smooth and polished so you get that reflective look to it and going on a bit of a tangent and i appreciate we may well not know the answer for this but I know when looking at obelisks and when going to Karnak and seeing those great obelisks, how looking at the sun god Ra, how it was believed originally they might have been topped with gold, a third of it was topped with gold to kind of really

show off the beauty and reflecting in the sun. It would have been really impressive in its height. Do you have any idea whether the tops of the pyramids at the beginning might have been covered in gold for a similar purpose, or just do we not know? I don't think we know about many of them, but there are indications that some of them at least might have had a golden top, not necessarily these pyramids. It would make sense, wouldn't it, because of this wanting to sparkle. But get the limestone right and the whole thing should sparkle.

That's the effect that you're aiming for. You've mentioned obelisks. I have to say that raising an obelisk in front of a temple, I think, would be harder than building a pyramid. I mean, building a pyramid is just continual, continual work, isn't it? But it's the same work, whereas raising an obelisk in front of a building, we still don't know how they did that. Wow.

Amazing. Fair enough. Without dropping it and breaking it. One other thing before we kind of look at the interior of the pyramid, Joyce, is kind of this idea that, so you've got the labourers, they're working, they're going up the ramps, they're kind of finishing off the outside of the Great Pyramid and then dressing the stones.

But we must also remember, isn't it, having those architects and the mathematicians and so on, all the while they must have been groups of those people kind of watching on and making sure that the alignment of it is absolutely bang on. Yes, you want to make sure the alignment, the corners are going down right. Again, if you have a problem with the ramp, if you've got a ramp that's wrapping all the way around, it's less easy to see. But if your ramp isn't wrapping all the way around,

or at certain points you're able to see it, you might also have to go far away and look at it you have to constantly keep correcting yourself i would imagine it seems like the corners were possibly built with stronger limestone than the than the sides but all the same it's a case of and you can also of course when you put the blocks in place you can adjust things you can cut them there if it's not right but yes that is the difficulty isn't it keeping it aligned and not going off your plan shape and do they succeed in doing that i only ask because i've seen the great pyramid from afar in caribou i've never been right up close do they really succeed in keeping it really perfectly aligned or can you see a little bit of of a wobble or is it actually very much the greatest true pyramid that had been built to that time

definitely the greatest one that had been built i mean if you're close to it actually it's really hard to see because those blocks are huge so you're looking at huge blocks and you can't even see up to the top if you're right at the bottom but as you step back from it it does look good but it's like a lot of little steps from you know people used to victorians used to climb up it you can climb up it in its finished form it wouldn't have been like that and that's when the perfection would come in you would make sure that your final casing no matter what the underneath casing the other stones were like you would make sure your final casing was was perfect and that would be really when they would be being very very cautious with with how they proceeded with it but it's

astonishingly accurate i looked up the figures for you in case you asked about it, but the sides got an average length of 230 metres, just over 230 metres. They vary less than five centimetres and they're oriented almost exactly towards the compass points. The base is almost completely level with, again, less than five centimetres difference from north to south how they did that we're not quite sure it's been suggested that they might have used water in trenches to try and get things level originally it was believed that they flooded the whole base with water but that would be so difficult to do and control that we think maybe water in trenches was the thing they did there's just such control over it such Such extraordinary stow masons. And let's now talk about the interior.

What do we know about the entranceway to get into the pyramid itself? Well, they wanted that to be hidden. Well, Khufu did, definitely, because you didn't want to attack thieves. This is one of the massive problems if you decide to build a pyramid. I don't know why I'm laughing

because it's a really serious problem, but it's a very obvious one, isn't it? That as soon as you do that, it's going going to attract especially if it sort of lights up and shines most of the signs absolutely so they wanted to hide the entrance so it wouldn't be visible but of course now that the casing has been taken off it is far more visible than it would have been to the people it's also of course very vulnerable because it's been built by so many people that there will just happen to be so many people who know where the entrance is.

So it's not as if a robber's turning up from nowhere and walking around not even knowing which side it is. There'll be quite a few people who pretty much know what's inside that pyramid. So that's another problem for security. But anyway, they cased over the entrance so that the first explorers who came to try and find it couldn't find it and had to do a bit of experimenting and we actually had robbers who

who tunneled into the pyramid and managed to hit the end the correct entrance way so there's actually two entrances into it the original one and the robbers entrance they'd worked out that it would be on the north face so you go into the official entrance and you walk in immediately what you have do you have a passageway leading in what follows in the inside of the pyramid it goes in and it's tending downwards you can go down and then you'll get to a point where you can go up and these are called the ascending corridor and or passageway and the descending corridor or passageway if you go down you come to a subterranean chamber eventually. This is quite rough. It looks unfinished. It's got an unfinished passageway coming out of it. We assume that it's not deliberately left unfinished, that there was just the last

thing that was being built and that when the king died, all work stopped. But there's a possibility that maybe it's meant to be like that we tend to associate the subterranean chamber this rough and ready place with the god osiris and maybe it's linking in some way to to him being a god of the afterlife and the underground if you like it but we're not quite sure we're not quite sure what it's for we're not quite sure how it would have ended up being left if you go up you start to go up through the masonry of the pyramid and you eventually come to a parting of the ways where you can go either into a chamber that's in the middle of the masonry, which we call the Queen's

Chamber. These names are modern names, they're not the names that the Egyptians would have used and it's a shame because it gives the wrong impression. The Queen's Chamber was never, as far as we're aware, intended to house the body of a Queen but it was possibly intended to be a cult room to maybe house the statue of the King. We're not quite sure but maybe. If you don't go into that but you want to carry on going up you come to what we call the Grand Gallery which is a magnificent structure within the Pyramid of Masonry with massive slabs of overlapping stone on the wall. Go up through there, you come to an antechamber and then you get to the King's Chamber,

which is the burial chamber itself. And in there, there's a stone sarcophagus. And is that a 4,500 year old stone sarcophagus that was originally meant to house the body of King Khufu? The only way it could have got into that room is to be put in when the pyramid was being built it's because it's so big so yes that's original to it unfortunately there was no remains of kufu it had been robbed despite all the precautions that were taken it was robbed but it's actually quite a simple

structure within it but you have to remember that that would be being built as the pyramid was going up that would be being built at the same time so a bit of three-dimensional modeling is needed to work out what's going where there's other bits to it but the king's chamber and the queen's chamber have what are called air shafts we again we call them air shafts they're probably not air shafts they go out to the exterior exterior of the pyramid we don't know what they're for, so we fall back on calling them ritual purpose, unknown ritual purpose, because they're not air shaft because they don't really allow any air in them.

And it's hard to know what else they're for. They're not big enough for people to get in and out of the pyramid. I was going to say, so they're not other potential entrances that people would come back down into the pyramid. No, they're smaller than that. And of course, we don't have the casing

to see what happened when they got to the casing. But they were provided, and they're slightly blocked up. They're provided than that. And of course, we don't have the casing to see what happened when they got to the casing. But they were provided and they're slightly blocked up. They're provided for some purpose that we don't know what they provided. And there's also a little passageway known as the well that goes from the bottom of the Grand Gallery and hits the descending passageway. We think that's very interesting. It's not a well and that wasn't properly blocked up in any way.

We think that's the escape mechanism for the people who after the funeral sealed up the burial chamber and the the um the grand gallery and then they they bobbed down that that escape chute came down almost to the subterranean chamber and came up the descending passageway and got out of the doorway that way because again in films sometimes starring joan collins the assumption is that the people built the pyramid and then were killed to stop them revealing the secret of it but no there's no evidence of that it seems that a small group of people would be in the pyramid at the very end the funeral the rituals would be over and they would seal these chambers and they would get out and then they would seal up the entrance.

And I know this is all theory because if we don't have the body of Khufu surviving, but is it therefore strongly possible that the building of the pyramid is finished before Khufu dies? His body is placed in there. There's this lavish funeral ceremony in the Great Pyramid

and all of this ceremony happens. And then once that's finished everyone goes out the monument is completely concealed there's no entrance visible anymore and that's what it's intended to be it's intended for no one else to go into the pyramid i think they probably had most of the funeral rituals in the temples associated with the pyramid because you wouldn't be able to take many people into the pyramid but then yes they would have had to carry the coffin I mean there would have been a coffin presumably I'm assuming that maybe not maybe just a body they would have to carry it inside the pyramid and exactly as you say you seal it you've said all the prayers you've done everything

you need to do and it's at that point at least we know this from later tombs, so I'm assuming and I'm extrapolating backwards and making assumptions, but presumably that's when the magic starts to work and that is when the king is able to leave the tomb and to meet his destiny, which will probably be to either be one with the sun god, Ray, or the god of the dead, Osiris. He's lucky because most of the people in ancient Egypt at this stage don't believe that they can leave the tomb after death. You have to really be a king with a very powerful spirit to do this. The elites who are building the tombs around Khufu's pyramid don't have that expectation. They think that they might be trapped in that tomb forever. So that's why they take so

much stuff with them. Because if they're trapped in there forever, they need all the food and clothes and drinks and toilets. Underpants and stuff like that. Yes, toilets. All that stuff with them. The king doesn't actually need a lot of grave goods because he knows that if the rituals are right, and the pyramid will act sort of almost like a battery when it's sealed up, and it will start him on his journey and he'll ascend or descend if he's going with Osiris, and he won't

be in there anymore i tell you joyce it is so astonishing to kind of hear all that because my mind i mentioned earlier orkney and i'll go there one more time with mace howe which is built at a similar time maybe a bit older 500 years or so than the great pyramid however you see with mace howe the wall and ramp kind of small ditch that was built around it there's no obvious entrance so it's believed that after the person or the family was buried in Mace Howe, that was completely sealed up. And it was meant just to be this big monument in the landscape that people could see, but not enter.

And it's fascinating when you see those kind of similarities with another ancient culture, like the fourth dynasty Egyptians. I mean, it's quite there. You would be able to enter the temples. I mean, it's just part of a bigger complex, but not many people would enter them. It's going to be priests, people making offerings to the soul of the dead king in the temples, but the pyramid itself, no, no one was expected to enter it. Do we have any idea just how long it would have taken for a workforce to build

the Great Pyramid? It's difficult because we don't know. Well, we don't know how many blocks were cut because we don't know how many blocks are in it, how many spaces there are, how much rocky outcrop there is in it. And we don't know how hard they worked. We think somewhere between 20 and 40 years. So 20 years minimum, I would say. But that was achievable. He was on the throne for at least 20

years more than that so it worked out and at the same time of course you've got to build the mortuary temple the valley temple there's a causeway that connects the two of them there's a wall around it and of course you've got to build the accommodation for the workers and all that as well but yeah i think 20 years between 20 and 40 years i, that's important that you mentioned that the wall and obviously the place for the work and the labourers to live and the mathematicians and so on. I mean, are there any other key architectural features of the Great Pyramid that we should highlight

before we move on to legacy and wrapping up? I don't think so. Apart from pointing out that the pyramid complex itself also started to attract tombs of elite around it because it's the centre of its own little cemetery because it was considered very valuable to be

buried near the king because the king's powerful spirit might help your spirit in the afterlife so he's almost got his own little

court there which is great but that building work will start and it'll gather pace as the pyramid nears completion you'll

be starting getting that sort of building work as well but these mini bearers are they kind of different bearers they're not

like mini pyramids or anything no they're not pyramids thepyramids or anything like that, right? No, they're not pyramids. The pyramids is very much a royal shape. Royal thing, got it. But no, they're what we call mastaba tombs, sort of stone tombs. There you go.

My mind instantly goes to Stonehenge. Beautifully decorated. Whereas Khufu's pyramid, there's no decoration in it whatsoever. Whether there were things in it that were decorated that are no longer there, that were stolen, you know, tapestries or sorts of things, we don't know. Or whether it was always empty, because as I said, he didn't need stuff. He didn't even have any written down prayers that we know of. But have they been stolen? Have they decayed? Were they never there? Were they all in

the mortuary temple and the valley temple? We just don't know. Later pyramids have inscriptions. They have what we call the pyramid text, so we can read the prayers and the spells that are going to help the king. But Khufu doesn't have those. It doesn't mean he doesn't have the spells. It just means he doesn't have them written down. You know, I'd love, if I could go back in time to see what that interior of the pyramid looks, and 4,500 years ago, with a candle, with light or something, and just to see if it was incredibly colourful, like Tutankhamun or different,

it would have been perhaps one of the most incredible sites in the whole of the ancient world. Absolutely, it must have been. I mean, he might have been there. But that itself would be awe-inspiring, wouldn't it? Just one person in the sarcophagus. Or he could have been surrounded by goods. How does this Great Pyramid influence later pyramid building? Let's say first by the fourth dynasty, later rulers,

and then later Egyptian pharaohs. Well, his son, Jedd Ephraim, comes to the throne but decides not to build at Giza and goes somewhere else to build. But he's not a long-lived king and his pyramid, it's there, but we wouldn't class it as a great pyramid. A second son then inherits the throne, Kaephrae, Kephron to Herodotus, and he builds alongside his fathers so that they look like a pair. He returns to Giza, but he's cunning. He builds his. It's smaller, but on a higher piece of ground, so it actually looks bigger. And the top of his is still in place so we can get some idea of what it might have looked like. And then his son, Menkaure, also builds at Giza. So we end

up with three big pyramids at Giza. But by the time Menkaure is building his pyramid, Menkaure, also builds at Giza. So we end up with three big pyramids at Giza. But by the time Menkaure is building his pyramid, he's possibly had to finish off the Kaifure pyramid. His pyramid is smaller, possibly because he's so busy finishing off other people's works. And then we get some variations coming in when we get out of the fourth dynasty. We get pyramids that are smaller,

but have associated solar temples, not directly attached to them. We get into the Middle Kingdom, we start getting mud brick pyramids that are built of mud brick with stone on the outside so you can't tell from the outside but inside they're not as well made but of course they collapse more easily because they're mud brick. Get on again into the kingdom, which is the period of Tutankhamun, and suddenly pyramid building for the royals comes to a complete stop, and they start to build their tombs in the Valley of the Kings, small rock, relatively small rock cut tombs, hidden away, complete opposite. Whether it's because they got fed up with the pyramids being robbed, whether it's a change of religious belief because they changed to worship the god Amun of Thebes

rather than the solar gods of the north. We don't really know, probably a combination of those. But it goes on for a long time, then it stops, and we get a complete change to rock-cut tombs for kings. You do, don't you? And then there's the Kushites a bit later in the 25th dynasty in El-Kurru. Yes, they're building pyramids. They're building pyramids, and I guess they're influenced by the Great Pyramid in a 25th dynasty in el kourou yes they're building pyramids they're building pyramids and i guess they're influenced by the great pyramid in a sense or just in general yes

they are in many ways more egyptian than the egyptians at this point and but their pyramids use they're very distinct if they're taller and thinner aren't they so you can always spot that they're not egyptian pyramids but yes and we also get non-royals in the new kingdom when the royals are not building pyramids non-royals might build a little tiny pyramid as part of their chapel associated with their burial. They might have, say, a pyramid on the roof for it. So it becomes a bit more widespread, but it's not a royal thing anymore. And how does the Great Pyramid, when we get to Greco-Roman times, how does the Great Pyramid of Giza influence, maybe even inspire, Greeks and Romans who see it? Well, it's already been inspiring when you get to

the new kingdom we get new kingdom tourists going to giza they know what they're visiting they know that they're king's tombs and they leave graffiti so we can read their graffiti like i came here for a picnic to look at the pyramids so it's an ongoing thing and you get people like herodotus being inspired by them the greeks and the romans So particularly thinking of the Romans, if you go to Rome, there's the Pyramid of Gaius Cestius, which is obviously not big, but interesting. But even, I mean, I went to Liverpool University and there's a cemetery in Liverpool where it's got a pyramid in the graveyard and it's a Christian cemetery attached to a church. The idea of a pyramid as a place for burial really, really spreads from the Egyptians

and from Egyptian revival happening from the egyptians and from egyptian revival happening from the time of napoleon onwards in the west so we start to have these egyptian obelisks and pyramids as well it does blow your mind when you think some 2000 years ago when there are greeks in egypt and they look at the great pyramid and one of them's just like you know what that's going on our list of official wonders alongside the mausoleum of hadid karnassus that's right there and do you think it was the tallest building in the world wasn't it yes for a very long time thousands of years i mean it is an utterly breathtaking achievement still standing today and when you see it you can't help but be amazed but think that this is still standing after 4 500 years yes yes i'm still

very robustly standing yes it, it's absolutely astonishing. Joyce, this has been absolutely fantastic. And it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Oh, thank you for inviting me. I've really enjoyed it. Well, there you go. There was Professor Joyce Tilsley kicking off our special Wonders of the World miniseries this March by talking all things the Great Pyramid of Giza. I hope you enjoy today's episode. We've got so many awesome episodes coming your way in the next few weeks. All of these amazing wonders, for instance,

a massive wall in ancient China, one of the most iconic monuments from ancient Rome and, I would argue, an overshadowed great monument of the Mesopotamian metropolis of Babylon. That is all to come in the next few weeks. Last thing from me, wherever you're listening to the Ancients podcast, please make sure that you are subscribed, that you are following the Ancients so that you don't miss out when we release new episodes twice every week. But that's enough from me and I will see you in the next episode.