The pyramid effect

The true meaning of the pyramids lies in the social system that grew thanks to them. New findings discovered in the ancient city of Hitt al-Ghorab, located near Giza, and in an ancient port from the same period located on the shores of the Red Sea, known as Wadi al-Jarf, reveal the infrastructure of government, employment and trade developed by the pharaohs for the construction of the pyramids

The article was published with the approval of Scientific American Israel and the Ort Israel network

For many years, archaeologists studying the pyramids of Giza in Egypt focused on the engineering details of these monumental structures. But the real meaning of the pyramids lies in the social system that grew thanks to them. New findings discovered in the ancient city of Hitt al-Ghorab, located near Giza, and in an ancient port from the same period located on the shores of the Red Sea, known as Wadi al-Jarf, reveal the government, employment and trade infrastructures developed by the pharaohs for the construction of the pyramids, and first and foremost, the Great Pyramid of Giza. These infrastructures contributed to Egypt's tremendous prosperity over hundreds of years and enriched its trading partners.

The days are late summer in Egypt, the year is approximately 2525 BC, and the Nile is overflowing. The rising water is in a way a sign of the laborer and his name is Merer that the time has come to bring a building block to the construction site which is only about 13 km away. But the weight of the cargo, a bright white limestone intended to be part of the outer finishing layer of the monument, makes the task of transportation difficult. And the rising river, rising and overflowing its banks, suddenly seemed as vast as an ocean. But this is not the first time that Merer sails the waves; He is experienced in sailing on the open sea. The fleet of rigs and the 50-man crew under his command are in good hands.

He looks towards the target. From a distance he can make out the water lapping up a heavy limestone wall. Ships carrying grain, logs, and livestock sail around the eastern edge of the wall on their way to unload their cargoes in the nearby town, but Merrer's rigs don't sail that far. They are supposed to be anchored north of the wall, at the place where the golden rock bed of the Giza Plateau slopes towards the river and by the way creates a kind of natural ramp that will facilitate the transfer of the limestone to the construction site.

From the river's edge, Merrer can see the structure that will be the tallest in the world, at least for the next 3,800 years. Thousands of workers are scurrying here and there like laborious ants at the construction site of the pyramid intended to be used as the burial place of Pharaoh Khufu one day, as they drag the huge stones into place, checking again and again if they are properly aligned. The building is close to completion. Soon the upper layers of the stone blocks will be placed in their place, and the pyramid will be completely covered with gas stones from the limestone quarries of Tora, and at its summit a gold-coated pyramidion (capstone) will be placed.

Who were the people who built the pyramid of Pharaoh Khufu and the pyramids of the other pharaohs who reigned in ancient Egypt, and why did they dedicate their lives to the task? The Greek historian Herodotus, who lived in the fifth century BC, believed that the pyramids were built by legions of slaves who were encouraged to persevere in the craft with whippings, when the foremen ransacked them. However, other written sources discovered in recent decades show that most of the workforce was composed of groups of Egyptian citizens. But these sources reveal almost nothing about the lives of those people. As far as archaeologists could guess, they could have been simple, hard day laborers, working for low wages in conditions not much better than slave conditions: half-starved men, clad in sackcloth, unloading the huge limestone blocks from the rigs onto wooden sleds under the terror of the whipping whip, and hauling them to the pyramid

New findings, including accounting records preserved on papyri documenting the activities of Merer and his staff, are finally turning the spotlight on the builders of the pyramids, and shedding a whole new light on the iconic monuments they built. Archaeological excavations conducted at two central sites show that beyond the impressive engineering achievement, the pyramids have a much deeper meaning. It turns out that the builders of the pyramids were not simple workers who just dragged blocks of stone. In fact, they belonged to an elite workforce and also embarked on maritime trade missions and sailed hundreds of kilometers to distant sites to bring equipment and building materials with them. The incredibly sophisticated occupational infrastructure and trade network that were required for the construction of the pyramids and developed simultaneously with them not only enabled the construction of enormous monuments of these dimensions, but also laid the foundations for hundreds of years of prosperity in ancient Egypt and changed the course of later civilizations.

aim high
The construction of pyramids did not begin in the Giza plateau. Pharaoh Netgerikhet [also known as Djoser], who reigned in Egypt from 2650 to 2620 BC, built the first monumental structure of its kind, a six-story step pyramid that rises to a height of about 60 meters, and still dominates The skyline of Saqqara, located about 24 km south of Giza. The trend of building huge pyramids gained momentum only during the Fourth Dynasty, with the ascension to power of Pharaoh Sneferu, who during his reign, from 2575 to 2545 BC, built three large pyramids. After Pharaoh Sneferu finally passed away, his son Pharaoh Khupo (also known by his Greek name Khupos) took his place on the throne. Khufu had only one way to surpass his father: he had to build an even bigger pyramid. And he will place it on the outskirts of Ramat Giza, where it will be seen by all. Khufu's ambition led to the construction of Egypt's most famous monument, the Great Pyramid of Giza, which was 147 meters high and 230 meters wide at its base.

But in this Khupo did not say enough. Next to the pyramid, to the east of it, Khufu built a mortuary temple, where the religious priests could communicate with the pharaonic king after he was gathered to his ancestors and bring him offerings that would enrich him in the afterlife. Along each of the temple's side walls were dug deep, arms-wide trenches capable of holding full-sized ships, perhaps so that Khufu could sail in them in the afterlife. Two additional canals for sailing ships were dug on the south side of the pyramid. Three smaller pyramids intended to be used as a burial place for high-ranking women of the royal dynasty stand near the Temple of the Dead, to the south of it. The construction of the entire complex was a major engineering project.

For years, archaeologists have tried to decipher the secret of the engineering marvel of the pyramids. Experts estimated that the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza alone required about 26,000 workers in the first stage, where the huge blocks of stone were placed at the base of the structure. According to estimates, the number of workers on the site gradually decreased as the construction of the pyramid progressed and its surface area became smaller in the upper part. Countless theories try to explain how the pyramid builders dragged the heavy blocks of stone into place. According to the prevailing theory, they built an internal ramp to transport the limestone to increasing heights in the structure. But delving into the details of the performance aspect distracted the researchers from a much more important aspect of the project of building the pyramids, until recently.

Mark Lehner greets visitors to Hitt al-Horab ("The Wall of the Crow") with a handshake and a warm welcome in Arabic: a stone barrier a little more than nine meters high, standing east of the Great Pyramid of Giza. In Merer's time, the wall was located north of the nearby city, which was also called Hitt al-Ghorab. Today, after the course of the river was diverted to the east, it is no longer the Nile water that washes the stone wall, but a suburb of Cairo, which is undergoing a process of accelerated urban expansion. Tourists photographing the pyramids usually turn their backs on this area, as they prefer the expanses of the desert, rather than the broken skyline of Cairo. Archaeologists also ignored the place for many years: the area of ​​the desert between the steepness of the Giza plateau on one side and the sprawling city on the other. Lehner, an Egyptologist at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago and head of the Massachusetts-based Association for the Study of Ancient Egypt, began his research work in the region in 1988 with a clear and well-defined goal in mind. He understood that the mystery of the pyramids of Giza is not limited to the question of how the builders of the pyramids managed to carve and stack such a large number of such large building blocks; The mystery is the people themselves. "We see the human touch in every corner," says Lehner. "Well, where did the people go?" He went to Hit al-Ghorab to look for them.

Lehner is equally comfortable in both modern Cairo and the ancient city of Hitt al-Ghorab. On the day we meet, he goes to work in the field wearing blue jeans and a multi-pocket vest, a wide-brimmed hat on his head and a pair of dusty boots on his feet, items that have all absorbed the color of the desert sand. He exudes friendly authority and has the status of a local celebrity. During the day, random passers-by call out to him more than once: "Hi, Doctor Mark!" trying to get his attention. One of the women, with whom he exchanges a few words, opens a locked iron gate for us, and Lehner leads the way to the old city.

Lehner and his team during archaeological excavations at the site expected to find nothing more than a modest camp: a handful of squalid buildings where simple laborers from the people's door who barely got enough for their living went to each night from their day's toil, and from which they retired early the next morning for another grueling day of work hauling stones to build the pyramids. Instead the team uncovered something much more complex: an entire city with building plans and architecture carefully designed by Khufu's administration. Next to the stone wall, the excavators discovered the residential complex of the work crews, which Lehner called the "gallery complex" because of its structure: a series of long, narrow buildings separated by streets. Each of the buildings had a fireplace for heating and sleeping surfaces for 20 people, as the number of workers in each work team, as well as another room that was probably used by the team's foreman.

Photos of objects uncovered in the excavations in Hit al-Ghorab, molds for baking bread (top photo) and flint knives (bottom photo) were found
Walls made of mud bricks mark the place where the buildings stood; The height of the remains of the walls found on the site is only about 60 cm, after apparently being eroded by the desert winds. To the south of the gallery complex were located the bakeries and the beer breweries, as evidenced by the ovens for baking bread and the beer jugs found in the remains of the buildings. To the south of the bakeries stands a large building and near it buildings that appear to be grain storage silos were uncovered, as well as a wall that enclosed a fenced area that was most likely used as a pen for farm animals. To the west of the bakeries it was possible to distinguish the remains of the district boasting large buildings. The dumps that remain in the area testify to the rich menu enjoyed by the residents of the district, which included fine and expensive veal, and the clay stamps found scattered around bear the titles of high-ranking people, which indicates that this district probably housed the offices of the local government and the residences of the city's government officials.

It turns out that in complete contrast to the image of legions of workers working in conditions that are not much better than slave conditions, the members of Merer's staff and all the other residents of Hitt al-Ghorab, who according to the estimate at the time numbered about 6,000 people, enjoyed a fairly comfortable life. Based on the findings in the field, one can assume that the builders of the pyramids would have returned to the city to eat their hearts out after a long day of work during which they unloaded the cargo of the rigs, when the aroma of the breads baked in the oven and the beer produced in the breweries carried in the air for hundreds of meters, heralding the menu that awaited them. Meat was also included in the daily menu: apparently, goat meat for the labor teams and beef for the foremen. And the remains of the unique ceramic containers found at the site show that they probably also had a regular supply of olive oil imported from the Levant, from the eastern part of the Mediterranean basin, a luxury that most Egyptians at the time did not get to enjoy.

Why did Pharaoh Khufu invest so many resources in Hit al-Horab and its inhabitants? Well, at the time when the pyramids were built, the city was in an excellent location, thanks to the route of the Nile that ran along its northern and eastern borders. According to Lehner, it was not a gray and neglected "working town" at all, as one might think. In fact, in those days, Hitt al-Ghorab was a prosperous port city on the banks of the Nile, a central junction of an extensive network of trade routes through which all the equipment and supplies needed to build the pyramids were brought to the city. This supply included not only building blocks, but also most of the food and clothing for the workers, as well as tools used by them during the construction work. Even luxury items intended for the religious priests and the government officials who supervised the construction project were apparently also brought through the port of Hit al-Ghorab. The city played an essential role in the construction of the pyramids. And the workers themselves constituted a valuable resource. They not only hauled the limestone from Torah, but could also sail on trade missions to much more distant sites. An examination of the charcoal found in the workers' quarters reveals that the wood they used for heating was mostly cedar, olive and pine trees that only grew in the Levant, hundreds of kilometers away. The origin of these exotic woods may have been from parts of broken ships, and Lehner infers that the work crews who lived at Khit al-Ghorab were not only skilled masons who were engaged in placing stones on top of each other, but also experienced sailors who sailed away from there on maritime trade missions.

All for one

Khufu knew how to take advantage of the government, trade and employment systems that his predecessors on the throne had planned and developed. However, the project of building the pyramids that he initiated, which was unprecedented in its scope, accelerated the development of these infrastructures and brought them to new heights that were not known before, and thus laid the foundations for the prosperity of Egypt in the following centuries. Archaeological excavations currently underway at another site in Egypt are also yielding insights into the way in which Khufu fulfilled his ambitious vision.

At a distance of about 193 km to the southeast of Hitt al-Ghorab, archaeologist Gregory Marwar looks as if he is walking on the surface of the water in the Gulf of Suez. In fact, he is walking across an ancient stone pier that stands exactly at sea level, on the site of an ancient harbor known today as Wadi al-Jarf. The pier winds for hundreds of meters into the heart of the sea, and Maruar takes advantage of the low tide when the sea level is particularly low to make precise measurements of the pier. Pierre Thale from the University of Paris-Sorbonne, who heads the archaeological excavation team at the site, stands on the beach in the strong wind, and explains the importance of the site.

Preliminary findings indicate that it was Khufu's father, Sneferu, who built the port, from which one can cross the Red Sea and reach the copper mines in the Sinai Peninsula by the shortest route. Copper mining was an extremely complex task that required the recruitment of about 1,000 workers, bringing them to the mine, equipping them with supplies for two or three months of mining the metal, and finally, transporting the copper to the cities where it was in demand. Most of the pharaohs, including probably Pharaoh Sneferu, were content with launching only one copper mining expedition during their reign. However, Khupo had the money, the manpower and the will to launch at least two such expeditions, as he used for this purpose the port that his father had built much more vigorously than his own father had done. Khufu needed copper to make the chisels, saws and many other tools needed to build the Great Pyramid. Wadi al-Jarf is a rare archaeological find. "We don't know anything about ants in the ancient Egyptian period," says Tale. "This is probably the oldest harbor ever discovered."

Findings indicating the connection between the port and the mining expeditions organized by Khufu are scattered all over Wadi al-Jarf. For example, just a few hundred meters from the shoreline, the excavators are busy uncovering two long rectangular buildings divided into equal sized compartments. One of the buildings has five cells, and the other has ten cells. Taleh says the cells may have been used to store goods and also to accommodate the crews of the ships docked in the port. Dozens of clay seals were found scattered along the length and width of these buildings. The goods were often sent in sacks tied with a rope and sealed with blocks of clay in which the seal of the owner of the goods was stamped. Many of these seals bear the name of Khufu.

At the excavation site in Wadi al-Jarf, on the shores of the Red Sea, archaeologists discovered the remains of the earliest port ever discovered. Other finds document in amazing detail the activities that took place in Wadi al-Jarf. Tale's team devoted a large part of its efforts to uncovering a series of rooms excavated in the side of a hill, about a kilometer and a half from the beach. Between one trip to the copper mines, the ships were unloaded and stored in these rooms. In many rooms were found pieces of rope, the remains of the vessel's rope, and even some small pieces of wood with drawings in red ink on them instructing how the ships should be reassembled.

The excavators uncovered an even more impressive find at the site: records written by Merer on papyrus approximately 4,500 years ago, in one of the last years of Khufu's reign. Taleh labored for years to preserve and reassemble the pieces of papyri, but these papyri fragments contain arguably the best records we have of the day-to-day activities of laborers in ancient Egypt. After transporting the limestone from Torah to Giza, Merrer and his crew continued north to build a port on the Mediterranean coast. When this task was completed, Merr and his men were sent to Wadi al-Jarf, to transport copper from there at the end of Khufu's reign, in 2525 BC. The first task assigned to Merrer and his crew in Wadi al-Jarf was to open the rooms where the parts of the dismantled ships were stored, carry them to the shore and reassemble the vessels, which were about 24 meters long, according to the instructions written on each part in red ink. In the months that followed, Merer and his men sailed back and forth between Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula, transporting food from Egypt to the copper miners on the peninsula and loading the newly mined copper to bring it to Wadi al-Jarf.

Judging by the papyri, almost all of Merer's and his team's activities were intended to serve the construction of the Great Pyramid at Giza. And since the theory of slavery has been ruled out, the question arises: what motivated these people to invest their energy and skills in this particular project and not in some other venture? A clue to the answer can be found in the history of the Egyptian government. From its beginning, in 2950 BC, Egypt was different from other countries that existed at that time. The first pharaonic king, Nermar, achieved with his military power control over all of Egypt, from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea south to the granite quarries of Aswan. At the time Mesopotamia was ruled by dozens of small city-states, each of which was headed by its own king who shared his powers with other clerics and with wealthy families, says Pascal Botterlin of Pantheon-Sorbonne University in France. Egypt was probably the largest country in the world at that time ruled by a single ruler, Pharaoh, who had sole authority over all affairs of the kingdom.

Since all the religious and political powers were in the hands of the pharaonic king, Egyptian society was conducted in a different way from the other kingdoms of those days, the city-states of Mesopotamia, for example. And while the kings of Mesopotamia claimed a special closeness to their gods, the pharaohs in Egypt saw themselves as gods. Bob Breyer, an Egyptologist at Long Island University, believes that the divine kingship of the pharaohs allowed them to rule over their subjects in a way that the rulers of other countries could not. Egyptian writings confirm this hypothesis, says Henry Wright of the University of Michigan, who specializes in the formation of the first states in antiquity. From these writings it appears that the workers who built the pyramids were motivated by religious belief, and apparently came to work out of a deep ideological commitment, and not only due to the need to fulfill their duty to the state and meet the work quota imposed on them by virtue of Egyptian law. "They didn't build a burial hall for just any man, they built a burial hall for God," says Wright. This diagnosis is probably what made the construction of the pyramids possible.

Turning Point
The pyramids and the infrastructure that was required to establish them, and that developed alongside them, in turn enabled other achievements. Although the port city of Wadi al-Jarf was abandoned only 50 years after it was established, after fulfilling its purpose, it paved the way for the establishment of another port, north of there, which was even more successful. The port, located near the town today called Ain Sokhna, was closer to Memphis, the capital of ancient Egypt, and other places where there was a demand for copper, including Giza, and later, also the burial complex at Abu Sir, about 13 km south of the Great Pyramid of Giza. fleece The Port of Ain Sokhna was to play a continuing role in building Egypt's wealth, when for about 1,000 years it served as the home port for cargo ships that crossed the Red Sea on their way from it and back to it.

The port of Hitt al-Ghorab continued to serve as a central junction for maritime trade throughout the period of the Fourth Dynasty, when Khufu's successors on the throne, Pharaoh Khafro and after him Pharaoh Mankaure, built their own pyramids. But after Pharaoh Menchaure was laid to rest, the age of the pyramids of Giza came to an end. The burial buildings that were built starting in 2450 BC, when the first kings of the fifth dynasty came to power in Egypt, were much more modest, and the city of Hitt al-Ghorab was abandoned. At first glance, it seems that these changes were meant to herald the downfall of Egypt. Massive construction projects, such as the pyramid projects, are often seen as reflecting the wealth of a society. Indeed, a popular explanation among Egyptologists for decades was that the pharaohs stopped building great monuments for themselves because the Egyptian nation became poorer.

At the Wadi al-Jarf site, among other things, crumbling remains of papyri were found. Lehner makes a different argument. In his opinion, at the beginning of the Fifth Dynasty, Egypt's national priorities changed, and the trade and employment infrastructure developed by the pharaohs, who preceded them, to build the pyramids was used for construction projects and development in its provinces, which contributed to the prosperity of the Egyptian nation during the following centuries. This infrastructure was a powerful tool, with coordinated supply chains that stretched for hundreds of kilometers beyond the borders of Egypt and concentrated the activities of all those doing the craft, more than a million people, in the hands of one authority. "The network has become more important than the reason it was built in the first place," claims Lehner. "And this was a turning point towards the transition to modernity."

Modernity, in Lehner's opinion, is reflected in the development of a more complex bureaucratic system, with a decentralized organizational structure that encourages and promotes local control over work and resources, instead of direct control by the Pharaonic royal house. Evidence of the existence of such a complex bureaucratic system is provided by the Palermo Stone which was discovered sometime before 1877: a carved stone documenting the achievements of the pharaohs from the First Dynasty to the beginning of the Fifth Dynasty. Records from the reign of Userkhaf, the first Pharaonic king of the Fifth Dynasty, show his activity to increase the number of plantations and his generous land donations for the worship of the evil sun god, whose purpose was to encourage the development of rural areas. In order to oversee this extensive activity that was expanding, it was necessary to recruit more and more government officials, and these sought to demonstrate their high status through luxury goods and large tombs. At the same time, the demand for basic consumer products, which were required by the new populations in these rural areas, increased. The result was a feedback loop of supply and demand that economizes itself, which led to the prosperity of Egypt, and at the same time contributed to the economic development of its trading partners beyond its borders.

Wright basically agrees with Lehner, but disagrees with him on a certain matter: "It was undoubtedly a turning point, it was an organizational revolution," he says, but he takes issue with the word "modernity." Wright believes that during the Fifth Dynasty, Egypt still lacked one of the defining characteristics of a "modern" society: a change in the systems of thought. According to him, modern companies have bodies of technical knowledge that grow rapidly, and systems to confirm and verify the accumulated information. And although the ancient Egyptians undoubtedly had a considerable body of technical knowledge, a considerable part of this knowledge was of a ritual nature and was obtained by mystical means.

Despite the differences of opinion as to what defines an advanced modern society, researchers agree that the sophisticated control system that developed in Egypt was a very important advance. To find out exactly how this development manifested itself in the field and what was its aftermath, additional archaeological excavations will be necessary. Taleh plans to continue scouring Wadi al-Jarf for more evidence of the extent of Egypt's trade network. He also continues to translate Merrer's records describing the tasks his team completed. Taleh speculates that the trade expeditions that went to the land of Punt, which is believed to be in present-day Sudan, sailed from Wadi al-Jarf, but he has yet to verify this hypothesis. In the meantime, Lehner continues the major work of the archaeological excavations in Hitt al-Horab and the analysis of the findings, from which one can learn about life in the city in the past.

However, the most solid evidence of the economic revolution brought about by the pyramids does not necessarily lie in Khit al-Ghorab, Wadi al-Jarf or the Giza plateau. Lehner believes that precisely in remote settlements in the western desert of Egypt and in the estates of Sheikh Said in Middle Egypt it will be possible to find more evidence that it was precisely the small communities far from the urban core of ancient Egypt that benefited most from the wealth that flooded Egypt thanks to its centralized bureaucratic system, in which The sign of an almighty king with the status of a god. In conclusion, Khufu's most significant achievement was not the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza, but the building of a branched network of trading partners and the organization of the labor system of an entire nation. "It was not a technological marvel," Breyer says of the massive monument built by Khufu. "It was a sociological marvel."

Burial hall for God
The Great Pyramid of Pharaoh Khufu was not the only pyramid built in Egypt, but it was the largest of them all. Its establishment, on the outskirts of the Giza plateau, required a national effort. Archaeological excavations in the ancient city of Hitt al-Ghorab, which was located near Giza, and in the ancient port of Wadi al-Jarf, located about 190 km away, on the shores of the Gulf of Suez, reveal how Khufu was able to fulfill his ambitions. The evidence shows that he employed an elite of professionals who were not only engaged in placing the stones, but also sailed on trade missions to distant lands. The project he initiated accelerated the development of a skilled workforce and an extensive trade network (see the map on the left). This infrastructure, combined with a centralized governmental system in which all the powers were in the hands of the pharaonic king, who was considered a god, are the secret of success in the construction of the Great Pyramid and which laid the foundations for the tremendous prosperity of Egypt during the following centuries. (Illustration: Jose Miguel Mayo; Map: Terra Carta; Sources: "On the Water's Edge: Canals and Ports during the Construction of the Pyramids of Giza," Mark Lehner, AERAGRAM, Volume 15, Pages 2-1; Spring/Fall 2014 (Hit al- Ghorab); the illustration by D. Leyzni, taken from the article "Ain Sokhna Wadi al-Jarf: two recently discovered pharaonic ports on the shores of the Gulf of Suez," Pierre Talla, in Researches of the British Museum of Ancient Egypt and the Sudan, vol. 18 August 2012 (Wadi al-Jarf map))