The Private Lives of the Pyramid-builders

Page 3 of 8

• 1. Mystery builders
• 2. Scale of the workforce
• 3. The pyramid village
• 4. Managing the task
• 5. The temporary workers
• 6. The industrial complex
• 7. Who were the pyramid builders?
• 8. Find out more
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The pyramid village

The sacred precincts of the Giza pyramid village cemetery were defined by the 'Wall of the Crow', a massive limestone boundary which separated the land of the living from the land of the dead. The main pyramid village lay outside this wall, close by the valley temple of the Great Pyramid. Unfortunately, this settlement now lies beneath the modern town of Nazlet es-Samman, and is largely inaccessible.

'The village dead - men, women and children - were buried in a sloping desert cemetery.'

The village dead - men, women and children - were buried in a sloping desert cemetery. Their varied tombs and graves, including miniature pyramids, step-pyramids and domed tombs, incorporate expensive stone elements 'borrowed' from the king's building site. The larger, more sophisticated, limestone tombs lie higher up the cemetery slope; here we find the administrators involved in the building of the pyramid, plus those who furnished its supplies.

'...the permanent workers lived with their families in the shadow of the rising pyramid.'

Tomb robbers more or less ignored these workers' tombs, their rather basic grave goods being of little interest to thieves in search of gold. Consequently many skeletons have survived intact, allowing scientists to build up a profile of those who lived, worked and died at Giza. Of the 600 or more bodies so far examined, roughly half are female, with children and babies making up over 23 per cent of the total. Thus we have confirmation that the permanent workers lived with their families in the shadow of the rising pyramid.

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Published: 2002-09-20