Who built the pyramids? Slaves, as Hollywood’s version would have it? Jewish slaves, as an Israeli prime minister famously remarked?
Neither, say Egyptian archaeologists, who on Monday presented further evidence to reinforce what they and other experts have long maintained: The Great Pyramids were built by free men – paid labourers who worked out of reverence for the pharaohs and were rewarded with burial near the ancient monuments, in graves discovered last week.
The latest findings come from a dozen skeletons in newly discovered pits more than 4,000 years old, perfectly preserved by dry desert sand, along with jars that had once contained beer and bread to feed the dead in the afterlife.
The mud-brick tombs, each three meters (nine feet) deep, were found last week beyond a larger burial site first discovered near the pyramids in 1990 and dating to the 4th Dynasty (2575 B.C. to 2467 B.C.), when the giant structures were built at Giza, on the fringes of modern-day Cairo.
The previously discovered graves already pointed to their occupants being pyramid-builders, and the latest findings reinforced the paid-labourer theory, according to Egypt’s archaeology chief, Zahi Hawass.
They are the first to be found containing supplies for the afterlife, indicating how respected the workers were, and one tomb was found containing a limestone piece with an inscription identifying its occupant as Idu, a supervisor of a group of builders.
Herodotus, the Greek historian of the ancient world, described the pyramid-builders as slaves. Hollywood films and an offhand remark by the late Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin put forth the idea that those slaves were ancient Israelites.
The Jewish angle did not come up at Hawass’ presentation to reporters Monday, but it has long rankled Egyptians, for whom the pyramids are a source of national pride. Even as Egypt was negotiating peace with the Jewish state in the late 1970s, the argument flared anew with Begin’s remarks during a visit here.
Archaeologists, Jewish and other, generally agree that the Jewish role is a myth.
“No Jews built the pyramids because Jews didn’t exist at the period when the pyramids were built,” said Amihai Mazar, professor at the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “If the Hebrews built anything, then it was the city of Ramses as mentioned in Exodus,” said Mazar.
Dorothy Resig, an editor of Biblical Archaeology Review in Washington D.C., said the idea probably arose from the Old Testament Book of Exodus, which says: “So the Egyptians enslaved the children of Israel with backbreaking labour” and the Pharaoh put them to work building ancient cities such as Ramses.
Menachem Friedman, professor emeritus at Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv who specializes in religious identity in society, said few Jews believe “this fantasy that that their ancestors built the pyramids.”
“Most Jews believe the ancient Hebrews were made to do forced labour in Egypt like the other slaves of the period,” he told The Associated Press.
Dieter Wildung, a former director of Berlin’s Egyptian Museum, said centuries separate the construction of the pyramids and the story of the Israelites in Egypt.
“The myth of the slaves building pyramids is only the stuff of tabloids and Hollywood,” Wildung said in a telephone interview. “The world simply could not believe the pyramids were built without oppression and forced labour, but out of loyalty to the pharaohs.”
Hawass said the builders came from poor Egyptian families and were so respected for their work that those who died on the job were honoured with a burial near the sacred pyramids and preparation for the afterlife.
The tombs survived grave robbers because they contained no valuables, and the bodies were not mummified. The skeletons lay in a fetal position, head pointing west and feet east according to ancient Egyptian beliefs, surrounded by the jars once filled with supplies for afterlife.
Hawass said some 10,000 labourers – not the 100,000 chronicled by Herodotus – worked in three-month shifts, and ate 21 cattle and 23 sheep sent to them daily from farms.
Because the bodies were not mummified, there is no likelihood of finding DNA evidence in the bones, said Adel Okasha, supervisor of the excavation.
But from their arthritis and lower vertebrae, “their bones tell us the story of how hard they worked,” he said, and Wildung agreed.
They were free men and ordinary citizens, Wildung said, “but let’s not exaggerate here; they lived a short life and … suffered from bad health, very much likely because of how hard their work was.”
Doesn’t the word Pyramid sound like a contraction of the words Pisom and Ramses!!??
but moshe buried some yidden !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well, we know we were slaves, who said we had to build the pyramids, we designed them, they worked for us!!!!!!
it doesn’t say anywhere the yidden build pyramids the Torah just says they built pisom & ramses.
this doesnt make sence how would you know it was jewish bones and how do you know that it was beer and bread do you have evidence that it was actully jewish bones and beer and bread
Its about time they realized….but how do we “know” that it was free men? Maybe it was some who-knows-what from mars or something, and I actually dont think we should be wating our time like this……
this is all crazy & these shlamazels are making things up like
they have been ever since they tricked us into galus mitzraim.
moshiach is about to be here & then they will see & regret it
all.
I thought that mitzrim didn’t eat sheep, they worshiped them… help?
You guys are so full of yourselves and paranoid, I don’t blame the goyim for thinking you’re nuts, every word here is more racist than the other, I agree 100% with 13, and 15 you need a doctor..
Just for the record the Jewish People did NOT build them they pre-date the Jewish Enslavement
the Torah says they built citys Pisom and Ramses not pyramids!
yidden were killed r”l…. tortured, and the come and say, 4000 yrs later that it was built by some ***** paki????!!!!!
The pyramids were the store houses that Jesoph had them build in preperation for the years of famine…? (Wild guess)
Then it makes sense. ‘Before the jews… Not by the Jews ..’
everyone here who is seeming to have straight out conniptions abt this article….TAKE A LOOK AT THE FACTS!!! no where in this article does it state that the Jews were not enslaved and endured forced labor!! all it is saying is that the PYRAMIDS were not built by them. and in NVR EVR says anything in the Torah abt them building pyramids. it says in the Torah that while enslaved the Jews built Pitom and Ramses (which btw is actually mentioned and agreed upon in this aritcle)….NOT PYRAMIDS!! so b4 we all start shouting out abt how misunderstood and misrepresented… Read more »
please! it doesn’t make a difference! we know what we know, who cares what they think they know?
moshiach’s coming now anyway’s and they’ll find out
The Torah teaches us the same thing. The Jews built the store cities of Pithom and Ramses, not pyramids. The midrash explains further that what the Jews built would sink into the ground so the Jews could not even see the fruits of their own labor. The work given to the Jews was for the sole purpose of breaking the Jews, not for being productive.
I think the Rebbe said in a Farbrengen once that the Yidden did build the pyramids.
Anyone remember?
of course it was the Jews!! they just want to sound like they tortured the slaves… just listen to the way that egyptian speaks!!!
and say that jews didn’t invent the A-Bomb or something like, Bernie Madoff was actually an Irish-Italian. While they’re at it, Monika Lewinsky was just a figment of our imagination, and pink fluffy bunnies etc.
big bobemases
what?
… but the builders might have been slaves.
GOYIM! ANTISEMETIC ARCHAEOLOGISTS!
Isn’t the the building of the western-wall a greater Mystery, and that was certainly done by the Jews.
Why is this news? This has long been a known fact— even Biblical archeologists agree that the pyramids were built several hundred years before the Jews were enslaved by the Egyptians…
never know when 2 believe these people…in 4 minutes they’ll say maybe they did and in 2 and a half weeks they’ll say they for sure did!