Friday March 29th, 2024
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Archaeological Discovery Finally Reveals How Khufu's Great Pyramid was Built

A team of archaeologists discovered a 4,500 year old ramp at an ancient quarry in Egypt's Eastern Desert.

Staff Writer

A team of archaeologists have discovered the remains of a 4,500 year old ramp at Hatnhub, the ancient quarry in the Eastern Desert.

The ramp was found by the archaeologists from the French Institute for Oriental Archaeology in Cairo and University of Liverpool in England.

Image: Yannis Gourdon/IFAO.

At the Eastern Desert, they found two adjacent staircases with a steep slope between them, and post holes along the side, where the archaeologists presume the alabaster blocks would have been placed. There would be wooden poles fixed into the postholes, and the massive block would be tied to a rope and pulled by the workers.

"Using a sled which carried a stone block and was attached with the ropes to the wooden posts, ancient Egyptians were able to pull up the alabaster blocks out of the quarry on a very steep slope of 20 percent or more," Yannis Gourdon, co-director of the mission reportedly said.

The evidence that it was Khufu's pyramid comes from inscriptions on the ramp. "[This] led us to the conclusion that this system dates back to Khufu's reign, the builder of the Great Pyramid in Giza," Gourdon said.

Main image from Mikhail Nekrasov/Shutterstock.