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| Pyramids of Giza. Source Picturesque Egypt by Georg Ebers 1885. |
The answer
according to the current scientific evidence is … YES (no, I'm not shouting)
Because
that is how archaeology works, we collect evidence from as many sources as
possible, and if it all points in one direction we draw conclusions. The pseudo crowd bleating that we all follow
the party line in an elaborate cover up may work for politicians (looking
at world politics consider me sceptical), but in science a whole bunch of
fields rely on accumulating evidence … no evidence = no theory.
… or rather
you can have as many theories as you like at home over a cabernet sauvignon,
but for anybody with half a brain to believe them you have to prove it in writing, with evidence.
And because
archaeology is an organic process of accumulating information and upgrading our
understanding, we continue to study, dig and write. In fact you cannot get a senior qualification in Egyptology
without producing some voluminous dissertation that adds to what we know and/or
disproves an earlier theory.
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| Image via Wiki. |
Early
career academics are therefore always messing with the ‘party line’.
Equally, if you have ever attended an
Egyptology conference you would know getting Egyptologists to agree on anything
that has a low percentage of evidence is an unachievable goal. Getting us all to keep an out of date
conspiracy running for the sake of a bunch of long dead antiquarians is
actually quite a fascinating idea.
I want to
attend that secret meeting.
And that’s
the trick, because pyramids have been believed to be resting places of Egyptian
kings for centuries of archaeological research. If nobody in Egyptology has been able to debunk that idea at any
time in the past 200 years (and trust me they would happily do it), then with
this process of constantly acquiring new evidence that supports the early assumption,
one has to assume very big tombs for dead rich guys is the solution.
Notwithstanding,
by the way, that if you take tomb out of the equation, then I really want to
know where all these kings were buried? Kings
in a culture that for about 3000 years really liked to bury their royalty with gi-normous
style … if they are not tombs then that is incidentally a hell of a lot of
kings and queens with missing tombs.
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| Tombs of the Napatan kings from the north cemetery at Meroe in Sudan. Image via Wikipedia. |
Context:
Pyramids
Contrary to
the rather one-eyed approach of the internet and media, there are not 3 pyramids in Egypt,
rather there are actually over 100.
However, this number depends on the definition you use, like say size: about
130 + for the monumental ones, about 30 if you only include pyramids of kings, and
ignore queens, princesses and high officials.
If you include the pyramids of the Napatan kings who ruled Egypt
in the 1st millennium, there were a whole lot more than this, and if any basic
pyramid is taken into account regardless of scale or cost we are into the thousands.
The rest of
the pyramids in Egypt and Sudan appear
to get much less press or interest from the public than the 3 quite big
ones… I guess size really does matter …. This is not unlike the assumption that there are only a few actors
in Hollywood
based on the media reporting of same, when rather there are thousands of
actors.
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| Roman geographer and historian, Strabo, 64 BCE-24 CE. Source Howard-Vyse 1840.II. |
But modern humans,
when they can’t obsess over monarchs or dictators, replace them with celebrities
and that applies to ancient Egypt
as well. Therefore many people today have
maybe heard of 3 famous (now) Egyptian kings - like Cleopatra, Tutankhamen,
Ramesses II, and 3 famous pyramids (but not just now, I mean 2 are
ENORMOUS, they’ve been famous for thousands of years).
The 3
really big pyramids everybody talks about are the Giza pyramids of
Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure and date to the Old Kingdom, specifically to the 4th
Dynasty (2520-2390 BCE).
They are near Cairo in Egypt on the west bank of the Nile
on the desert plateau of the river’s old flood plain, originally quite close to
the Nile itself in antiquity (it has moved a lot in 4500+ years). Where they
stand is the middle of an ancient cemetery that runs north south
along the west bank.
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| Ibn Abd el Hakim, muslim historian 803 CE- 871 CE. Source Howard-Vyse 1840.II. |
“there was nothing found in any pyramid to prove they were tombs”
I see this
statement around the traps and the level of ignorance entailed in it is
actually mind boggling, try reading some lightweight archaeology books, kids, or
watch a few pro docos, and I simply would not have to write this… full stop… However, as there is actually too much
evidence to list here, I will be using a discrete selection of evidence that I
find interesting.
Sarcophagi
In fact, quite
a lot of pyramids have had all sorts of interesting tat in them, not least
being big stone sarcophagi in their main chambers. Sarcophagi are btw enormous coffins of carved
stone with an equally whopping lid in which the king’s mummy was preserved for
eternity (if treasure hunters over the past 4500 years haven’t messed about with
it).
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| Granite sarcophagus of Khufu. Image via Wikipedia. |
Cheops/Khufu:
In the pyramid of Khufu (who died ca 2447 BCE) for example the sarcophagus
chamber has sported this title since 1646 CE when an English mathematician and
astronomer, John Greaves, entered the chamber and documented a porphyry (it is
actually granite) sarcophagus that was only lacking the lid.
Greaves recorded that
it was 7 ft 3″ long with enough room to contain a mummy, but no mummy, because
the main pyramid had been the destination of preference for looters for
millennia.
Particularly
due to the ancient legends that treasure was hidden in it.
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| Source Howard-Vyse 1840.II. |
So more
than 470 years ago an academic described the pyramids as tombs on the basis of the
sources available to him: he also cited classical Greek, Roman and Arab
authors who had rummaged about in them and written their impressions down, and
he too claimed the pyramids were king’s tombs, more importantly he cited the evidence
he found on entering the pyramid: a big granite coffin in the main chamber.
Chephren/Khafre:
The pyramid of Khafre, son of Khufu (died ca 2439 BCE) on the other hand
was first opened in 1818 by the resourceful Italian circus performer and engineer
Giovanni Belzoni and he too found that the main pyramid chamber contained a stone
sarcophagus. Again granite and set into the floor this time, but still
retaining the lid, which was broken. Within
this giant coffin he found no human remains, but rather cattle bones.
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| Basalt sarcophagus of Menkaure. Image from Howard-Vyse 1840.II. |
Mycerinus/Menkaure:
The smaller pyramid of Menkaure, son of Khafre (ca 2396) was gleefully
dynamited and then explored in 1837 by plucky yet unscrupulous Englishmen Richard
Vyse and John Perring, and they found that the main chamber too
had a large basalt sarcophagus with the remains of a lid.
The sarcophagus is
now lost, having sunk with the ship it was carried on in 1838 while being moved
to the British Museum, because they thought it would be
safer there (!!!). Remains of a wooden
anthropoid coffin were also found near the chamber in the passage along with
human bones, but this is now believed to be a later burial, regardless that it actually
names Menkaure.
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| Wooden coffin naming Menkaure. Image Howard-Vyse 1840.II. |
The smaller
pyramids
There are
also smaller ‘satellite’ pyramids around the 3 larger ones. Khafre has only one largely destroyed pyramid G
IIa that is originally thought to have housed the ka statues of this king, due
to a wooden box with damaged pieces of a shrine on a sled designed to hold a
funerary statue found within it.
The smaller
pyramids beside Khufu’s pyramid were built for 3 of his queens, whose
identities are still debated, but these were probably Hetepheres I (his mum G Ia),
whose almost complete burial, with alabaster sarcophagus, but no mummified
queen, was discovered in a separate shaft there, and the queens Meritetes I (G Ib) and
Henutsen (G Ic).
Another 3 smaller pyramids beside Menkaure’s were again most likely his queens,
with one (G IIIa) having a granite sarcophagus in the main chamber when Vyse
and co entered it. Pyramid G IIIb on the other hand contained a granite
sarcophagus and female human remains. The name of Menkaure was also chiselled
on a slab on this ceiling. The occupants of these pyramids are unknown, however
G IIIa may have been for queen Khamerenebty II.
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| Giza pyramids. Source Howard-Vyse 1840.II. |
And that is
just 7 smaller and 3 larger pyramids with traces of funerary occupation.
I simply cannot go on listing the rest.
Therefore
one of the main arguments of the pseudo crowd is false; that there was
nothing in any pyramid to indicate that they were tombs … wrong … pyramids did
have coffins that were presumably used to inter dead royalty, and a smattering
of body parts or mummies.
Considering
the amount of tourists that have gone through over the last 2500 years, it is surprising
some still had objects with dedications to these dead people, or the odd royal
statue, piece of a shrine or administrative seals. The Saqqara
pyramids on the other hand contained lots of stone funerary vessels naming their
dead kings.
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| Pyramid texts within the pyramid of Unis, Saqqara. Image via Wikipedia. |
Written
evidence:
Funerary
texts
There are
further pyramids to the south at Saqqara, which like Giza
was the necropolis for the capital of Egypt, Memphis,
east of the plateau. These, like the
pyramids of Pepi I and II, Teti and Unis, have extensive funerary texts chiselled
into the inner walls that were designed to resurrect the dead king or
queen in the afterlife and naming them so repeatedly you might think the gods
had short attention spans in the late 3rd millennium.
In the 6th
Dynasty it was de rigueur for kings and queens to cover their pyramid’s inner
walls with these texts that much later would be streamlined onto Middle Kingdom
coffins (Coffin Texts) and then written on papyri and called the Book of the Dead. They are the oldest examples of ancient
Egyptian literature and constitute offering and rebirth rituals that
were intended to unite the dead royal’s ka and ba souls, so that they may be become akh ‘spirits’ and dwell among the gods for eternity.
Currently 11 Egyptian pyramids are known to contain pyramid texts on the walls of the
passages and chambers, and these texts have been translated and published
extensively since the late 1800s. They
all repeatedly name the dead king or queen
And they also contain a invocation
demanding that the gods guarantee that their pyramid tomb will last for eternity
(Utterance 599).
The
pyramids had on topic names (this is my fave)
So the way
to write pyramid in ancient Egyptian is mr (or mn-nfr) and unsurprisingly it is
written with an upright pointy triangle hieroglyph that looks like a pyramid… rebus signs
have their uses. This sign is used as a
symbol to indicate the context is a pyramid in
inscriptions on architecture, like say at a pyramid sanctuary for worshipping a
dead king, and it is also used in texts.
And for
clarity, which btw was a thing the ancient Egyptians were quite good
at, the pyramids and the vast temple complexes around them all had names that
were recorded on the structures so that it was clear who they were for and how
they should be referred to: for example the name netjery-menkaure ‘Menkaure is
divine’ is carved within the Menkaure temple complex to name his pyramid.
A
smattering of names of various pyramids in the cemeteries west of Memphis are:
4th Dynasty to 6th Dynasty
Khufu - achet-khu-fu
- ‘horizon of Khufu’ or 'pyramid tomb of Khufu'
Djedefre - sehedu-djed-ef-re - ‘starry canopy of Djedefre’ or ‘Djedefre is a star’
Khafre - wer-kha-ef-re - ‘the pyramid of Khafre is great’
Khafre - wer-kha-ef-re - ‘the pyramid of Khafre is great’
Userkaf - wab-sut-user-ka-ef
- ‘the pyramid sanctuaries of Userkaf
are sanctified’
Sahure - kha-ba-sahu-re
- ‘the pyramid ba of Sahure is manifest’
Neferirkare
- ba-nefer-ir-ka-re - ‘the pyramid ba of Neferirkare is perfect’
Niuserre
- men-sut-ni-user-re - ‘the pyramid sanctuaries of Niuserre exist’
Unis - nefer-sut-unis
- ‘the pyramid sanctuaries of Unis are perfect’
Teti I - djed-sut-teti
- ‘the pyramid sanctuaries of Teti are lasting’
Pepi I -
men-nefer-pepi - ‘pyramid of Pepi’ or ‘is established and
perfect’
Merenre - kha-nefer-mer-en-re - ‘the pyramid of Merenre is perfect in appearance’, or appears in splendour'
Overkill? … But these are only highlights, and not the name of every
pyramid from Egypt.
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| 'Horizon of Khufu' ...'akhet' - 'horizon' is another way of writing 'tomb'. My drawing. |
As is
relatively clear, the names illustrate the function of these funerary
complexes which was to guarantee the rebirth of the dead king – allowing his ka
and ba soul to unite so that he is reborn as a god, like the sun god Re was believed
by the ancient Egyptians to be reborn every day at dawn ('kha') and then over the day travels
through the heavens for eternity, hence the horizon reference for Khufu’s
pyramid.
Pretty
standard Egyptian funerary symbolism actually.
Every name of a pyramid above was written with the hieroglyphic sign to indicate exactly what
they were referring to … a pyramid … as
I said, clarity was a thing in Egypt. Whether a modern translator chooses to insert the word or not, the subject is clear.
That
pyramids each had names is yet another tedious indicator that the complexes were
designed to guarantee a dead king eternal life … call me crazy, but all the
signs appear to read ‘tomb’ built by ancient Egyptians … not little green men
from Sirius or some mysterious Atlantean civilisation.
But wait …
there’s more
Archaeology
It is not
all just about dead rich guys these days and excavations in the last 20 years
at Giza have focussed
on the nitty gritty of pyramids and their sanctuary complexes. Archaeologists there have excavated and
studied the worker’s village of the people who built the pyramids in the middle
of the 3rd millennium, from the reigns of Khafre to Menkaure.
This town
housed about 20,000 people, with long dormitory-like buildings built to accommodate
a large temporary workforce (the latter only worked during the off season of
the agricultural year), and this workforce would have consisted of full time
specialists, plus that larger rotating Egyptian worker population.
The
excavators have also found evidence for cooking enormous quantities of food for
these people; beef and fish bones, vessels for bread and beer, kitchens and
ovens, and large mud brick silos that were used for storing grains for making beer
and bread. There is also a workers cemetery at the site containing bodies with
abundant evidence of very heavy physical labour in their lifetimes.
What were
all these people doing there in 2500 BCE if they weren’t building the things? Admiring the laser show (while pulling iron)?
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Pyramid
from the tomb chapel of Sennedjem at Deir el Medina, western
Thebes. Early 19th Dynasty, New Kingdom. Image via Wikipedia
|
The most
recent discovery (2013) that has added to our understanding of pyramid building is
a group of damaged documents from Wadi el Garf on the
Red Sea in Egypt. These papyri document the provision of food
supplies and the transportation of limestone to Giza from Tura related to the building of
Khufu’s pyramid.
They
name a brother of Khufu, Ankhkaf, as in charge of the work at Giza and another official who worked under
him. They also specify that the work was for the ‘horizon of Khufu’, his
pyramid.
So what has
standard boots in the dirt trench archaeology found out about the building of
pyramids at Giza?
… that there is evidence for the housing and feeding of very large numbers of
Egyptian workers and that officials were travelling Egypt transporting the various hard
and soft stones that were used for the structure, casings and for architectural features.
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| Alan Gardiner, from Papyrus Leiden I 344, dating to the late Middle Kingdom. |
Conclusion: Egyptian pyramids were tombs for dead people
The 3 pyramids of Giza
were neither the first pyramids (the earliest true pyramid is Djoser’s, 3rd Dynasty,
2584-2565 BCE), nor were they the last. The
ancient Egyptians built pyramids of varying sophistication to commemorate their
dead for the duration of the pharaonic period.
The only thing that noticeably changed about these was scale and
proportions.
Unsurprisingly it turned
out that building ENORMOUS stone pyramids was a massive drain on the economy.
Who would
have thought?
So they
started building more sensible scale mausoleums and by the Middle Kingdom from
ca 2100 BCE) kings were still building pyramids, but less imposing ones (50-61
metres in height is small, right?). By
the New Kingdom (ca 1500 BCE) your average
pyramid was smallish and used as a landmark for the memorial chapel where the
funerary offerings and rites were performed for those families in the 18th
Dynasty who could afford a posh burial.
Egyptian kings
and queens however had by that time learned the hard way and had stopped
putting enormous stone ‘come and loot this for fabulous treasure’ inverted arrowheads
on their resting places for eternity … go figure.
And it only
took them about 1000 years to work that one out.
Andrea
Sinclair
2019
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| Source Howard-Vyse 1840.II. |
References and further reading
Allen, J.P. 2005.
The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts.
Gardiner, A. 1969. The Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage from a Hieratic Papyrus in Leiden.
Greaves, J. 1752. Pyramidographia, or, a Description of the Pyramids in Egypt.
Howard-Vyse, R.W. 1840. Operations carried on at
the Pyramids of Gizeh in 1837: with an account of a voyage into upper Egypt, Volume II.
Lehner, L. 1997. The Complete Pyramids.
Murray, M-A. 2005. ‘Provisions for the Pyramid Builders: New evidence from the ancient site of Giza’. Archaeology International.
Murray, M-A. 2005. ‘Provisions for the Pyramid Builders: New evidence from the ancient site of Giza’. Archaeology International.
Strudwick, N.C. 2005. Texts from the Pyramid Age.
Tydesley, J. 2006. Egypt. How a Lost Civilization was Rediscovered.
On the net
Halmhofer, S. 2021, ‘Did Aliens Build the Pyramids: And Other Racist Theories’: Sapiens.org - https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/pseudoarchaeology-racism/
AFP Faktencheck 2023, ‘Die ägyptischen Pyramiden sind eine unerschöpliche Quelle für Verschwörungserzählungen’: https://faktencheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.33EX2Z2
Aera Website viewed 2022, ‘The Lost City of the Pyramids’: https://aeraweb.org/projects/lost-city/
The Eloquent Peasant Blog 2014, ‘Oldest papyri ever discovered document pyramid building, or more reasons why the aliens did not build the pyramids’: http://www.eloquentpeasant.com/2014/11/19/the-oldest-papyri-ever-discovered/
Pearse, R. 2017, ‘The log book of Inspector Merer from Wadi al Jarf and the pyramid of Cheops / Khufu’: https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2017/09/27/the-log-book-of-inspector-merer-from-wadi-al-jarf-and-the-pyramid-of-cheops-khufu/
National Geographic 2016, ‘The Pyramid Builders’ Village in Egypt’: https://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/history/the-pyramid-builders-village-in-egypt.aspx
Smithsonian 2015, ‘The World’s Oldest Papyrus and What It Can Tell Us about the Great Pyramids’: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ancient-egypt-shipping-mining-farming-economy-pyramids-180956619/
Live Science 2014, ‘Photos: Amazing Discoveries at Egypt's Giza Pyramids’:
https://www.livescience.com/42688-photos-giza-pyramid-discoveries.html
Pearse, R. 2017, ‘The log book of Inspector Merer from Wadi al Jarf and the pyramid of Cheops / Khufu’: https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2017/09/27/the-log-book-of-inspector-merer-from-wadi-al-jarf-and-the-pyramid-of-cheops-khufu/
National Geographic 2016, ‘The Pyramid Builders’ Village in Egypt’: https://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/history/the-pyramid-builders-village-in-egypt.aspx
Smithsonian 2015, ‘The World’s Oldest Papyrus and What It Can Tell Us about the Great Pyramids’: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ancient-egypt-shipping-mining-farming-economy-pyramids-180956619/
Live Science 2014, ‘Photos: Amazing Discoveries at Egypt's Giza Pyramids’:
https://www.livescience.com/42688-photos-giza-pyramid-discoveries.html
Live Science 2022, ‘What Did Ancient Egypt's Pharaohs Stash Inside the Pyramids?’: https://www.livescience.com/what-is-inside-egyptian-pyramids
Archaeology 2022, ‘Journeys of the Pyramid Builders’:
https://www.archaeology.org/issues/473-2207/features/10601-egypt-wadi-el-jarf-port-papyri