Summer's winding down as we enter September—or, as they would have called it in ancient Egypt, Akhet, the height of the rainy season that flooded the Nile once a year and made their entire civilization possible. Ken Jennings has a new book out this month on the land of the pharaohs, so all month he'll be sharing his sphinx-like wisdom with us by debunking millennia of misinformation about the ancient Egyptians. Maybe you've been in "de Nile" for a long time, but finally, here are the Ra facts.
The Debunker: Did Slaves Build the Pyramids?
Thousands of years ago, the ancient Egyptians pulled off the most precocious construction feat in human history. At a time when the tallest building on Earth was no higher than an oak tree, the Egyptians used six million tons of masonry—enough to pave a road all the way across the United States—to build colossal pyramid-shaped tombs almost five hundred feet into the air. The Great Pyramid of Khufu, the only surviving landmark from the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was the tallest building on earth for 3,800 years straight!
In an effort to explain how this could have been done by a civilization that never even got around to inventing the wheel, most people have assumed a vast army of slave labor. (For religious audiences, a work force of beleaguered Israelites is usually conjured up, at least until Charlton Heston makes Yul Brynner let them go.) But Egyptologists have known for almost a century that this isn't true. Slavery didn't really take off in Egypt until the later dynasties, when prisoners of war were sometimes roped into service. But at the time the pyramids were built, the Egyptians mostly kept to themselves. They didn't even trade much with their neighbors, much less battle or enslave them.
So who did build the pyramids? Archeologists have uncovered ruins of the city near Giza where the pyramid workers lived. The first clue they found: mass quantities of cattle bones, proving that the laborers ate beef, a high-end item in ancient Egypt and not slave food at all. Workers' graffiti on the pyramids reveals that the labor gangs were organized into groups who took pride in their efforts, competed with other teams, and even signed their work with goofy team names like "Friends of Khufu." Most likely, these were skilled workers who were assigned work by the pharaoh during the non-flood months of the year, when there was nothing to do in the fields. They may have considered it an important community-building project, almost like an Amish barn-raising—at a much bigger scale.
Of course, there's also a sizable percentage of the population that thinks that aliens from outer space helped build the pyramids. This belief, obviously, is impossible to debunk. Because it's 100 percent true.
Quick Quiz: The world's largest pyramid is not in Giza, however. The Great Pyramid of Cholula is shorter but holds more volume. In what country would you find the Pyramid of Cholula?
Ken Jennings is the author of six books, most recently his Junior Genius Guides, Because I Said So!, and Maphead. He's also the proud owner of an underwhelming Bag o' Crap. Follow him at ken-jennings.com or on Twitter as @KenJennings.