As soon as Pharaoh Khufu ascended the throne around 2575 BCE, work began on his eternal resting place. The architect of the structure, Himeono, determined that he would need 20 years to complete the royal mausoleum.
But what he could not have predicted was that the monument would remain the world's tallest human structure for more than 3,800 years.
To build the Great Pyramid,
Hamyunu had to dig a 6.5 kilometer canal, excavate a lot of limestone and granite, and use kilometers of rope to pull the stones into place. Even today, there is still great debate about the exact methods used by the Egyptians.
But we do know that the first Hameono needed a building site. The Egyptians spoke of death as going west like the setting sun, and the west bank of the Nile had a plateau of bedrock that could better support the pyramids than moving sand.
In a brilliant time-saving move,
the builders carved the plateau itself to look like the stones used for the rest of the pyramid. With this level foundation, construction can begin.
The project called for a staggering 25,000 workers, but fortunately, Hameono had an established labor supply. Egyptians had to do manual labor for the government year-round, and citizens came from all over the country to contribute.
Workers performed a wide range of tasks,
from crafting tools and textiles to administrative work to manual labor. But contrary to popular belief, these workers were not slaves.
In fact, these citizens were housed and fed with better rations than the average Egyptian could afford. To complete the project in 20 years, one block of stone would need to be excavated, transported and pushed into place every 3 minutes, 365 days a year.
The workers spent an average of 10 hours a day picking limestone from two different quarries. One was near the site, but its fossilized yellow stone was considered suitable only for the interior of the pyramid.
Stones for the exterior were hauled from a distance of about 13 km, using 9 m long sleds made from pine trunks. When mined from the ground, limestone is soft and easily splits in straight lines.
But it hardens after exposure to air,
requiring a wooden mallet and a copper chisel to shape it. More than two million stones were used in the pyramid, each weighing up to 80 tons.
And there was no room for error in their appearance. Even the smallest mistake at the bottom of the pyramid can result in a catastrophic failure at the top.
Researchers know where the materials used to build the pyramids came from and how they were transported, but the actual construction process remains a mystery.
Most experts agree that limestone ramps were used to move the stones into place, but there are many theories about the number of ramps and their locations.
And the exterior of the pyramid is only half the story.
Because death could come at any time for a pharaoh, Hameono always needed an accessible burial chamber, so three separate burial chambers were built during construction.
The last of these, known as the King's Chamber, is a vast granite room with a high ceiling, located in the heart of the pyramid.
It lies above an 8.5-meter-high passageway known as the Grand Gallery, which may have been used as an ancient freight elevator to transport granite to the interior of the pyramid.
Granite was used for all the support beams of the pyramid. Stronger than limestone, but extremely difficult to shape, workers gradually used the dolerite rocks as hammers to quarry the stone.
To ensure that the granite beams would be ready when he needed them, Hameono dispatched 500 workers in the first year of the project so that the material would be ready 12 years later.
Five floors of granite sit above the King's Chamber, preventing the pyramid from collapsing in on itself. Once completed, the entire structure was encased in white limestone, sanded and polished until it gleamed.
Finally, a capstone was placed on top. Covered with electrum and shining like gold, this peak shone like a second sun over all of Egypt. This video is made possible in collaboration with Marriott Hotels.
With more than 590 hotels and resorts worldwide, Marriott Hotels celebrates the curiosity that drives us to travel.
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