1201 AM · ≈ 2560 BCE · world history
The Egyptian Pyramids
The Great Pyramid rises at Giza, the tallest structure on earth for the next four thousand years.
Old Kingdom Egypt gathers tens of thousands of workers to raise a mountain of some 2.3 million stone blocks for pharaoh Khufu. It remained the tallest structure in the world for the next four thousand years. The pyramid is less a tomb than a machine of eternity—and a demonstration that a state can plan, measure, feed and command on a scale never seen before.
Sources
Documents of the period
- Egyptian royal inscriptions and king lists — the names of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure in work-gang marks and king lists
Scholarship
- archaeology of the Nile valley — the pyramids of Giza themselves, the builders’ settlement, and the Wadi al-Jarf papyri recording stone deliveries
Basis: documents and evidence.