The Private Lives of the Pyramid-builders

Page 6 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 industrial complex

To the south of the pyramid town lay an industrial district, a gigantic, cohesive complex divided into blocks or galleries separated by paved streets equipped with drains, and including some workers' housing.

Again investigations are still in progress, but Mark Lehner has already discovered a copper-processing plant, two bakeries with enough moulds to make hundreds of bell-shaped loaves, and a fish-processing unit complete with the fragile, dusty remains of thousands of fish. This is food production on a truly massive scale, although as yet Lehner has discovered neither storage facilities nor the warehouses.

'The animal bones recovered...include...most unexpectedly, choice cuts of prime beef.'

The animal bones recovered from this area and from the pyramid town include duck, the occasional sheep and pig and, most unexpectedly, choice cuts of prime beef. The ducks, sheep and pigs could have been raised amidst the houses and workshops of the pyramid town but cattle, an expensive luxury, must have been grazed on pasture - probably the fertile pyramid estates in the Delta - and then transported live for butchery at Giza.

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Published: 2002-09-20