Egypt – Displayed on Monday newly discovered tombs more than 4,000 years old and said they belonged to people who worked on the Great Pyramids of Giza, presenting the discovery as more evidence that slaves did not build the ancient monuments.
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The series of modest nine-foot-deep shafts held a dozen skeletons of pyramid builders, perfectly preserved by dry desert sand along with jars that once contained beer and bread meant for the workers’ afterlife.
The mud-brick tombs were uncovered last week in the backyard of the Giza pyramids, stretching beyond a burial site first discovered in the 1990s and dating to the 4th Dynasty (2575 B.C.E. to 2467 B.C.E.), when the great pyramids were built on the fringes of present-day Cairo.
The ancient Greek historian Herodotus once described the pyramid builders as slaves, creating what Egyptologists say is a myth later propagated by Hollywood films.
Graves of the pyramid builders were first discovered in the area in 1990 when a tourist on horseback stumbled over a wall that later proved to be a tomb. Egypt’s archaeology chief Zahi Hawass said that discovery and the latest finds last week show that the workers were paid laborers, rather than the slaves of popular imagination.
Hawass told reporters at the site that the find, first announced on Sunday, sheds more light on the lifestyle and origins of the pyramid builders. Most importantly, he said the workers were not recruited from slaves commonly found across Egypt during pharaonic times.
One popular myth that Egyptologists say was perpetrated in part by Hollywood movies held that ancient Israelite slaves — ancestors of the Jewish people — built the pyramids.
Amihai Mazar, professor at the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, says that myth stemmed from an erroneous claim by former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, on a visit to Egypt in 1977, that Jews built the pyramids.
”No Jews built the pyramids because Jews didn’t exist at the period when the pyramids were built,” Mazar said.
Dorothy Resig, an editor of Biblical Archaeology Review in Washington D.C., said the idea probably arose from the Old Testament Book of Exodus, which says: ”So the Egyptians enslaved the children of Israel with backbreaking labor” and the Pharaoh put them to work to build buildings.
”If the Hebrews built anything, then it was the city of Ramses as mentioned in Exodus,” said Mazar.
Dieter Wildung, a former director of Berlin’s Egyptian Museum, said it is ”common knowledge in serious Egyptology” that the pyramid builders were not slaves and that the construction of the pyramids and the story of the Israelites in Egypt were separated by hundreds of years.
”The myth of the slaves building pyramids is only the stuff of tabloids and Hollywood,” Wildung told The Associated Press by telephone. ”The world simply could not believe the pyramids were build without oppression and forced labor, but out of loyalty to the pharaohs.”
Hawass said the builders came from poor Egyptian families from the north and the south, and were respected for their work — so much so that those who died during construction were bestowed the honor of being buried in the tombs near the sacred pyramids of their pharaohs.
Their proximity to the pyramids and the manner of burial in preparation for the afterlife backs this theory, Hawass said.
”No way would they have been buried so honorably if they were slaves,” he said.
The tombs contained no gold or valuables, which safeguarded them from tomb-raiders throughout antiquity, and the bodies were not mummified. The skeletons were found buried in a fetal position — the head pointing to the West and the feet to the East according to ancient Egyptian beliefs, surrounded by the jars once filled with supplies for afterlife.
The men who built the last remaining wonder of the ancient world ate meat regularly and worked in three months shifts, said Hawass. It took 10,000 workers more than 30 years to build a single pyramid, Hawass said — a tenth of the work force of 100,000 that Herodotus wrote of after visiting Egypt around 450 B.C.E.
Hawass said evidence from the site indicates that the approximately 10,000 laborers working on the pyramids ate 21 cattle and 23 sheep sent to them daily from farms.
Though they were not slaves, the pyramid builders led a life of hard labor, said Adel Okasha, supervisor of the excavation. Their skeletons have signs of arthritis, and their lower vertebrae point to a life passed in difficulty, he said.
”Their bones tell us the story of how hard they worked,” Okasha said.
Wildung said the find reinforces the notion that the pyramid builders were free men, ordinary citizens
”But let’s not exaggerate here, they lived a short life and tomography skeletal studies show they suffered from bad health, very much likely because of how hard their work was.”
Any One Can Learn rashi and ramban And Learn Exactlly What The Jews Built, It Was NOT The Pyramids Rather areie misim. . . tax. . Look It Up.
I’m on my way to check it out
baloney
Whatever the Torah states, that is the truth. Just as #1 posted, they were other cities, not the pyramids. We never have to prove the Torah; it is Truth eternal.
Um, who said we built it. The Midrash clearly teaches the Pharoah made us build buildings on such landd that it will be destroyed over and over because wanted to cause us a lot of pain. Even if slave is forced to build something he is still happy because physcolgical his work went for something. however the egyptians wanted to completly destroy us even mentaly by forcing to build unstable buildings…..
so from the word of Chazal we did not build the ancienct Pyrmaids..
!
i am still trying to figure out how in the world do they know what we built
He says that the latest finds last week show that the workers were paid laborers, rather than the slaves of popular imagination, but he doesn’t bring any proof for it. Who says that those people found buried near the pyramids were the builders of it? From where does he know what they ate? Did he find some meat leftovers? According to him Herodotus knew nothing, but he does know. What arrogance?
I think we should get reparation for all the hard work we did in Mitzrayim. We should make a class action . Any good lawyers out there.
The Torah says they built the “storage cities” of Pithom and Ramses, not the tombs of the Pharoahs.
What is the big chiddush? The Torah is very clear about what we built (Shemos 1:11):
” וישימו עליו שרי מיסים למען ענותו בסבלותם וייבן ערי מסכנות לפרעה את פיתום ואת רעמסס “
“Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh store-cities, Pithom and Raamses.”
Furthermore archaeological evidence testifies to this fact as the Leiden Papyrus (an Egyptian document from that era) reports that an official for the construction of Raamases ordered to “distribute grain rations to the soldiers and to the Habiru (i.e. the עברים – Hebrews ) who transport stones to the great pylon of Raamases.”
The Pyramids were old when our Father Avraham visited Egypt, let alone the generations that slaved there. There was however, plenty of other work for us to do!
Why does this story get recycled all the time?? Doesn’t anyone know that the Torah doesn’t mention the pyramids at all? Besides, did they find any employment contracts confirming the workers weren’t slaves? What’s 10,000? There were millions of Jews in Egypt. But it has nothing to do with the Torah. It is the Zionists who are always blabbing about the Jews building the pyramids. The pyramids were probably built even before Avraham Avinu came to Egypt.
The Torah says b’chomer ubilvainim. Thay built with bricks and mortar. The pyramids were constructed of stone
My second grade rabbi told me that the Jews built the pyramids, so the Jews built the pyramids. I don’t care what some “Egyptologist” says.
Even if this proves that yiddin were not slaves constructing major public works projects in Mitzraim, it does not invalidate most of the rest of what we learn in Berashis about what happened
Hawass said evidence from the site indicates that the approximately 10,000 laborers working on the pyramids ate 21 cattle and 23 sheep sent to them daily from farms.
The Egyptians didn’t eat meat they worshiped cattle, only the Israelites woud eat meat in Egypt.
This is all theory & baseless opinion there are no documents to support it.
It concerns me not who the builder was, but rather what were the mortgage rates in those days. And were they fixed or variable?
Of course the Israelites didn’t build the pyramids – It was the Palesentians who did it, And we have been celebrating Peasch for centuries only because of Hollywood! And the Holocaust didn’t happen either. It was all a publicity spin
Even nonesense should have semblence of reality.
And who said that those skeletons found are not from the jewish slaves our forefathers? No proof
I thought they worshiped only sheep, not all cattle. Am I wrong?
There was no such thing as lower class or working class 4000 years ago. You were royalty or you were a slave. The Egyptians are going to try to produce a 4000 year old copy of the workman’s bill of rights, when it didn’t exist 100 years ago and it surely didn’t exist 4000 years ago. BTW did the DNA the skeltons to see if matched egyptian DNA or Canaanite DNA?
What’s the question here? The Haggadah specifically says that the Jews built cities for the Mitzriyyim, Pisom and Raamses. Nothing about pyramids. And the above poster is correct – Rashi says that Paroh made sure that whatever the Jews built was done so on swampy land so that it would fall down and have to be built again and again, to rob them of the satisfaction of building something that would last. This is nothing more than a tempest in a teapot.
No proof , no contrdiction.
It is quote possible that the bodies found were those of managers and there were also thosands more laboreros of much lower status. This is not a contrdiction at all. The period of these workers only confirms that there were also pyramids earlier, otherwise the we should have already known that the pyramids themseleves and the mummies inside preceded Jewish slavery.
Either way this does not disprove that the Jewsih nation was born out of slavery in Egypt as many have already said.
No one but Menachem Begin said they did…
It is just a myth that our forefathers, the ancient Hebrews built the pyramids. So this is not a big deal.
The real chiddush is was it built by Union Labor???
A lol it says no wher that we built the pyramidsH
So wait, so how much money do the Egyptians owe us in reparations?
Also–how could 10,000 workers eat only 21 cattle and 23 sheep daily?