Egypt did have slaves, at the bottom of its social ladder, but the pyramids and other monuments were built by Egyptian laborers. At Giza, archaeologists found bakeries and a workers' cemetery, and excavations have found no evidence of forced labor on the pyramids. Archaeologists at Giza found not one workers' town but two, side by side. The first grew slowly, and Mark Lehner suspects it was the settlement of permanent workers. Near it were bakeries, where bread was baked in big bell-shaped clay pots; many of the builders were young men from farming villages who worked in rotating crews, and some crews had team names such as "Friends of Khufu" and "Drunkards of Menkaure." Workers ate well: bread, lentils, honey, fish and meat.

The workers were hired and paid. Egypt had no money then, so pay came in food such as grain. Papyri found in 2013 at the ancient port of Wadi al-Jarf back this up. They include a diary kept by an inspector named Merer, who led a crew of about 40 men on boats that carried limestone from the Tura quarries to the Great Pyramid. The papyri show that at least some workers in Khufu's time were skilled and well rewarded for their work.

The stone itself came from several places. The smooth white outer stone was limestone from a quarry at Tura, about 8 miles away. Granite beams for the inner chambers were quarried at Aswan, hundreds of miles south along the Nile; the cut blocks were likely placed on sledges and pulled by teams of men or cattle; about a dozen men pulled a sledge carrying a 2-ton block. No mortar was used to hold the blocks in place. Most researchers agree that ramps of some kind were used. Hemiunu, Khufu's vizier and nephew, is credited with the design and building of the Great Pyramid, whose white limestone covering fell away long ago and was reused as building material for the city of Cairo.

Later kings built their tombs in a different place, the Valley of the Kings, near Luxor. The entrances were well hidden, but nearly all of the valley's known royal tombs were likely robbed. The craftsmen who built and decorated those royal tombs lived with their families in a village called Deir el-Medina; it was a planned village founded by Amenhotep I. Its walled part held 68 houses on 1.4 acres, and it had no central well, so water was brought in daily. The workers worked in ten-day stretches and then had two days off.

Villagers traded with each other. One worker might build a roof addition for a house in exchange for a sack of grain or a jug of beer, as notes on pottery shards called ostraca show. But pay could fail. In the reign of Ramesses III, the tomb workers went on strike when their pay was 18 days late. It is called the first recorded strike in history. During the strike the workers shouted "We are hungry!", sat in near the temple of Thutmose III, and later blocked all access to the Valley of the Kings. The back pay was finally handed over after negotiations. The record of the strike comes from a papyrus scroll found at Deir el-Medina.

Words to know

• laborers: hired workers
• quarry: stone pit
• granite: hard rock
• ostraca: pottery notes
• papyri: paper scrolls