Great Pyramid: large-scale ashlar engineering
Gran Pirámide: ingeniería de sillería a gran escala
- Date
- c. 2560 BCE · confidence high
- Place
- Giza (Great Pyramid of Khufu), Egypt
- Credited to
- Egyptian Old Kingdom, 4th Dynasty (architect Hemiunu)
- Field
- Tools
What it is
2.3 million blocks (6 million tonnes) laid over 20 years with a north orientation accurate to 3 arcminutes and a base deviation of 2 cm, using ramps, sledges, levers and rotating work gangs documented in the diaries of Merer. It was the tallest building in the world for 3,800 years.
The diaries of Merer (Wadi al-Jarf, 2013) have settled most debates on logistics; the exact method of the upper ramps remains under discussion.
What it led to
- Logistical organisation of tens of thousands of workers with rations, shifts and accounting, the prototype of the great public work
- Canals, harbours and exploitation of the Tura and Aswan quarries hundreds of kilometres away
- Astronomy and geometry applied to orientation and slope (seked)
- Economic integration of the whole of Egypt around a royal project
Built on
Made possible
- Precision masonry
- Construction ramp
- Wadi al-Jarf harbour
- Stone temple