The Great Pyramid was not built by slaves.
Archaeologists think tens of thousands of skilled workers built it for pay or in lieu of taxes; shift workers received ten loaves of bread and a jug of beer a day.
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More amazing facts
- 2560 BC · 2000 BC When the Great Pyramid of Giza was built, woolly mammoths still lived on Wrangel Island — the last of them died out only around 2000 BC.
- 2560 BC · 31 BC · 1969 Cleopatra (born 69 BC) lived closer in time to the Moon landing (about 2,040 years) than to the building of the Great Pyramid (about 2,490 years).
- 2560 BC The oldest inscribed papyrus is a logbook of stone deliveries for the Great Pyramid.
- 2560 BC · 1323 BC · 30 BC Tutankhamun lived almost exactly halfway between the Great Pyramid and Cleopatra: he died about 1,240 years after the pyramid was built and about 1,290 years before Cleopatra.
- 2560 BC · 196 BC The Rosetta Stone is closer in time to us than to the Great Pyramid.
- 2560 BC · 1798 "Soldiers, forty centuries look down upon you" — Napoleon actually undersold it. In 1798 the Great Pyramid was already about 4,360 years old: nearly 44 centuries.