How did they build the pyramids in the olden days?

Answer 1

Shortly after ascending the throne in 2589BC, Pharaoh Khufu commanded his overseer of works to prepare a burial place in keeping with his delusions of grandeur. A site was chosen on the Giza plateau west of the Nile across from his capital at Memphis. The site was surveyed and levelled to provide a foundation for Khufu's Great Pyramid.

As the first stones for the pyramid were being cut from nearby quarries, thousands of slaves began building the causeway, erecting storehouses and digging a canal to link the foot of the plateau to the Nile. Meanwhile scribes dispatched orders for more labour (including masons and slaves) tools, rope, timber, food, cooking utensils and other supplies.

Through the Pharaoh's reign, the construction site teemed with workers of all kinds hard pressed to complete the monument before the king's death. Khufu and his architects did not make it easy for them. The royal planners decided to enlarge the structure several times and relocate the burial chamber from beneath the structure to its inner reaches. Day after day, year after year, the quarries rang with the sound of hammer and chisel on stone. Boats delivered fine limestone from Tura and granite from Aswan over 400 miles upriver. Some of the granite stones from Aswan weighed to 70 tons.

From dawn to dusk, slaves dragged sledges dragged stones each weighing about each to staging areas at the base of the pyramid. There the skilled masons chiselled the blocks to prescribed dimensions, smoothed the sides and squared the corners. Slaves then reloaded the sledge and began hauling them slowly up the clay and rubble ramp that spiralled around the emerging structure. The noise here was one of chanting slaves, the rumble of heavy sledges and the swish of the overseer's lash.

As the working level grew ever higher teams of setters shifted the blocks from the sledges into their designated positions. Toiling below were the tool makers, cooks, porters and guards under the watchful eyes of the scribes, the royal project managers.

At any one time as many as 30,000 workers may have been involved on this massive project. Some of them were professional craftsmen most however were slaves.