How was the great pyramid for khufu built?

Answer 1

The Great Pyramid of Khufu was built around 2550 BC. It was built of limestone with a granite burial chamber adn fine white Turah limestone outer casting. It stands 481 feet high.

Answer 2

Shortly after coming to the throne the Pharaoh would command his overseer of public works and architects to prepare a burial place in keeping with his status as a god-king. The chosen site was usually one on the edge of the cultivated land in an already established pyramid field. The royal survey team set to work marking out the site. Great care was taken in orientating the site to the four points of the compass and in levelling the site to provide a foundation for the pyramid. When the slaves had cleared away the sand and rubble highly skilled masons were called in to level the foundations. This was done by cutting a grid of channels and filling them with water. The rock was then cut back to the water level to make it perfectly flat. Finally the water was drained away and the channels filled with rubble.

As the masons busy themselves levelling the site, quarry slaves cut the first stones for the pyramid from nearby quarries. Thousands more began building the causeway, erecting storehouses and digging a canal to link the foot of the plateau to the Nile.

At any one time as many as 20,000 workers may have been involved on this massive project. Some of them were free men doing particular tasks such as masons, tool makers, carpenters, scribes and overseers. Many of course were unskilled slave labourers. A town was built for the free workers where they were provided with houses, food, clothing and even medical care. Less comfortable accommodation in the form of barracks was provided for the slaves. The slaves could expect to be fed but little else. As for clothes, they had none, too low in status to wear them.

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. The quarries are places of great activity swarming with thousands of men creating great clouds of yellow dust. Some slaves are boring holes using primitive drill bits and sand which acted as an abrasive. After they had drilled cores deep enough to define a block on one side, they packed the holes with pieces of porous wood and then pour water into the holes. The wood expands so fast that the block splits out with a crack. After the stone blocks are extracted from the quarry face they are lowered onto sledges. A mark is made on the stone by a scribe. This aided them to place the blocks in the pyramid just as they came out of the quarry ensuring a better fit without further finishing than random blocks.

From dawn to dusk, gangs of slaves drag the sledges loaded with stones each weighing about 2.5 tons to a staging area at the base of the pyramid. Most of the stone blocks proceed up the ramp without future handling. Only a fraction of the stone blocks needed to be cut to precise dimensions by the masons. The slaves begin hauling the loaded sledges 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 its thong flies through the air. With years of experience in its use the overseer rarely misses as it coils like a snake around the naked body of a slave.

At the working level teams of slaves called setters shifted the blocks from the sledges into their designated positions. Once the stones had been delivered the hauling gang would make their way down the ramp carrying their sledge, in order to make the same back breaking journey up as they would several times a day. Their only substantial respite from this round of toil in the hot sun was when they stopped for a meal of bread and onions.

Other slaves are employed in maintaining and extending the ramps as the pyramid grew. These ramps are made of rubble, bound together with desert tafla (a type of clay) and laid with planks to ease the passage of the ramps. Rows of slave labourers are seen breaking up waste material from the quarries, mixing them with the desert tafla clay and loading the finished mixture into baskets. Individual baskets are loaded onto the shoulders of slaves for delivery to the ramp builders on the pyramid.

Boats made from reeds deliver brilliant white limestone from just across the river. Here the slaves, in light provided by primitive lamps, toil in manmade caves to obtain the best stone. This stone will be used for the outer case of the pyramid. Once put in place and polished the effect will be awe inspiring.

Granite was used to line the burial chambers and galleries. Giant barges made from papyrus reeds brought the granite from Aswan over 400 miles upriver. Some of the granite stones from Aswan weigh to 70 tons. Copper chisels used for quarrying limestone could not be used, a harder material was required. Balls of dolerite, a hard, black igneous rock, are used in the quarries of Aswan to extract the hard granite. These dolerite "pounders" were used to pulverize the stone around the edge of the granite block that needed to be extracted. Teams of slaves would pound out the stone, toiling naked for hours on end in the blazing sun. At the bottom, they ram wooden pegs into slots they have cut, and fill the slots with water. The pegs will expand and split the rock with a resounding crack much more impressive than anything heard with the softer limestone. Slaves then lower the great blocks onto long sledges. Long lines of slaves, sweat pouring from their unclothed bodies, drag them along a causeway to the river where they were loaded onto barges and floated down the river.

Answer 3

Manual labour by the farmers of Egypt as relief work provided by the Pharaoh during the flooding season when they could not work their land. Convicts worked the quarries and the stone was shipped down the Nile, where the workers hauled it on timber rollers to the site and worked the pulleys which lifted the blocks onto the pyramid.

Answer 4

Yes he did. He was the builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza

Answer 5

the great pyramid of khufu was made of limestone blocks