Dig Days: Egypt's top 10 archaeological discoveries By Zahi Hawass I am not the one who put this discovery in the number two spot on the list of the top 10 archaeological discoveries in Egypt. This was done by Atlantic Productions when they compiled their list for their Discovery Channel. I feel privileged, however, to have been a part of the discovery of the cemetery of the pyramid builders, which has shown the world for the first time that the Pyramids were not built by slaves but by the ancient Egyptians themselves. I am honoured my name is connected with its discovery. The story began when I wrote in my doctoral dissertation for the University of Pennsylvania that the workmen's area logically should be located behind a certain limestone wall with a gate built into it. I said that this wall, known as Heit Al-Ghorab (wall of the crow), was built to separate the royal Pyramids from the workmen who built them. I gave evidence in my dissertation to support my theory. In 1987, I talked with my friend Mark Lehner, and we decided to cooperate and work together in the area to the south of the wall. The excavation was very strange, because we found skeletons and also grain. Work on the excavation stopped, and Mark left to teach in Chicago, staying away from Giza for a few years. I was sitting in my office at Giza one hot day in August 1989 thinking about our work. I could not believe that the workmen who built the Pyramids would simply have disappeared; there had to be some evidence of them at the site. Mohamed Abdel-Razeq, the chief of our workmen, came to tell me that an American lady had been riding a horse on the southeast plateau when the horse had stumbled in a hole, and its foot had hit a brick wall. I immediately headed to the site. When I saw the piece of mud brick, I knew right away that this was the evidence that I had known was buried somewhere. We had found the tombs of the pyramid builders. This was one of the few times that a discovery was associated with previous research -- most others have occurred completely unexpectedly. The discovery came at the perfect time. People around the world were talking about lost civilisations, suggesting that the Pyramids and the Sphinx were built by an even earlier civilisation 10,000 years ago. The tombs of the workmen put those theories to rest in the minds of the public, proving that the ancient Egyptians were truly responsible for these amazing feats of construction. We found a lower cemetery for the workmen who moved the pyramid blocks; and an upper cemetery where technicians such as draftsmen and builders were buried. Also in the upper cemetery, we found the tombs of officials with titles such as "overseer of the workmen who drag the stones", "overseer of the side of the pyramid", and "overseer of the harbour". All of these titles tell us about the lives of the pyramid builders. The skeletons found in the cemetery were very interesting. All of the workmen's backs showed signs of stress from moving the heavy stones. One individual had a brain tumor; his skull showed that surgeons had performed an operation to remove it, and that he had lived for two years afterward. One workman had lived for 14 years after the amputation of his leg. To the east of the tombs, Mark Lehner found the workmen's installation, which included sites for making bread and salted fish. He found evidence of barracks for the workmen, and we learned that about 11 cows and 33 goats were slaughtered each day to feed them. This could have fed a workforce of about 10,000. Pyramids were the national projects of ancient Egypt. Every household in both the Delta and Upper Egypt participated in building them by sending labourers or food because they believed that by doing so, they could help their king become a god. Their work or contributions of food took the place of taxes. The discovery of the tombs of the pyramid builders has helped us to reconstruct history, and we are very lucky that this cemetery did not contain gold. If it had, it would have been destroyed by robbers. Instead, it was left intact to reveal secrets about the workmen who were involved in the construction of the Pyramids.
