A Great Pyramid Mystery Solved

Archaeologists may have finally solved one of the most enduring mysteries of how the Great Pyramid of Giza was built. And spoiler alert, it's not aliens. Sorry, History Channel!

According to an ancient papyrus scroll that was recently translated, the Egyptians used specially designed boats and a network of canals connecting the Nile and the Giza plateau to transport the gigantic stones used in the pyramid's construction. So it's not anti-gravity space flotation, just regular flotation, that allowed the blocks to be moved such long distances.

A group of archaeologists working at the Giza pyramid complex - an archaeological site - have unearthed an ancient papyrus scroll, remains of a boat and a network of waterways at the site of the pyramid, providing new evidence that points to how the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World was built.

Pierre Tale, who spent four years painstakingly deciphering the papyrus written by an overseer working on the pyramid’s construction, told Channel 4 in the new documentary Egypt’s Great Pyramid: The New Evidence: “Since the very day of the discovery it was quite evident that we have the oldest papyrus ever found in the world.”

The document was apparently written by a man called Merer who was in charge of 40 elite sailors. Archaeologists discovered that thousands of trained workers used boats to navigate canals dug along the River Nile for the purposes of transporting limestone.

The boats were held together by thick, twisted ropes, some of which have survived and were found in good condition. After collecting the materials, workers would bring them to an inland port a few metres from the base of the pyramid. In total, some 2.3 million blocks of stone were shipped across the land over the course of two decades.

I have previously mentioned that there's a lot of evidence that the Egyptians used to flood the Giza plateau. A pyramid itself is a representation of the primordial mountain that rose out of the ocean according to one of the Egyptian creation myths, so surrounding it with water makes perfect sense. That water would logically come from the Nile through some sort of a canal.


Also, fringe archaeologists who claim that the Sphinx is far older than the pyramids based on water runoff patterns near the base and the average rainfall in Giza my find their whole method compromised by the flooding and draining of the Giza plateau over many centuries. It's not that we can say for sure that the sphinx isn't that old, but it does mean that rainfall is not the only water that would have affected it.

The boats were the missing piece, along with this new narrative. The remains of several of those boats have recently been discovered, and the narrative from the papyrus pulls the whole thing together. The blocks were transported by boat to Giza, some from about five hundred miles away, where they were then assembled into pyramids.

We still aren't sure exactly how the blocks were moved into position, especially as the pyramids grew higher. But odds are that secret alien anti-gravity technology was probably not involved. The Egyptians were brilliant at making use of the resources they had, such as water and sand, to accomplish some pretty amazing technical feats. My guess is that this will prove to be another of those.