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The Great Pyramid of Giza was built for the pharaoh Khufu around 2600 BC. When the Greek historian Herodotus wrote about it, around 450 BC, it was already more than 2,000 years old.

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The pyramid was the tomb of Khufu, whom the Greeks called Cheops, a king of Egypt's Fourth Dynasty. Herodotus, who visited Egypt around 450 BC, was told that 100,000 men had worked on it in three-month shifts: ten years to build the causeway for hauling the stone, and twenty for the pyramid itself. He even reports an inscription recording what was spent on radishes, onions and garlic for the workers. Modern digs tell a different story. Workers' settlements at Giza, and a workers' cemetery found there in 1990, point to thousands of conscripted labourers rather than slaves. In 2013, at Wadi al-Jarf on the Red Sea coast, archaeologists found the Diary of Merer, the logbook of an inspector whose crew of about 40 men shipped limestone from the Tura quarries to Giza. It is the oldest known papyrus with writing on it.

Türkçe oku
Gize'deki Büyük Piramit, MÖ 2600 dolaylarında firavun Keops için yapıldı. Yunan tarihçi Herodot MÖ 450 civarında piramidi anlattığında, yapılışının üzerinden 2.000 yıldan fazla geçmişti.

Piramit, Mısır'ın Dördüncü Hanedanı'ndan firavun Hufu'nun, Yunanların deyişiyle Keops'un mezarıdır. MÖ 450 dolaylarında Mısır'ı gezen Herodot'a anlatılanlara göre piramitte 100.000 kişi, üçer aylık dönemlerle sırayla çalışmıştı: Taşların taşınacağı yol on yılda, piramidin kendisi de yirmi yılda tamamlanmıştı. Herodot, işçilerin yediği turp, soğan ve sarımsağa ne kadar harcandığını gösteren bir yazıttan bile söz eder. Bugünkü kazılar başka bir tablo çiziyor. Gize'de bulunan işçi yerleşimleri ve 1990'da ortaya çıkarılan işçi mezarlığı, yapının kölelerle değil, çalışmaya zorunlu tutulan binlerce işçiyle yükseldiğini gösteriyor. 2013'te ise Kızıldeniz kıyısındaki Wadi el-Jarf'ta Merer'in Günlüğü bulundu. Merer, yaklaşık 40 kişilik ekibiyle Tura taş ocaklarından Gize'ye kireç taşı taşıyan bir denetçiydi. Tuttuğu kayıtlar, üzerinde yazı bulunan bilinen en eski papirüslerdir.

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In AD 476 the Germanic general Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustulus, the last emperor in the West. The Eastern Roman Empire, ruled from Constantinople, lasted almost a thousand years longer, until the Ottomans took the city in 1453.

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