What Ancient Texts Tell Us About the Pyramids
The pyramids of Egypt, particularly the iconic trio at Giza, have captivated humanity for millennia. These towering monuments, built over 4,500 years ago, stand as testaments to ancient ingenuity, yet they remain shrouded in mystery. While their stones have endured, the voices of those who built them have largely faded. Fortunately, a handful of ancient texts—some from Egypt itself, others from foreign observers—offer glimpses into how these wonders were perceived in antiquity. From Greek historians to sacred Egyptian inscriptions, here’s what these writings reveal about the pyramids.
Herodotus: The Greek Lens on Egyptian Marvels
One of the earliest and most detailed accounts comes from Herodotus, a Greek historian who visited Egypt around 450 BCE, roughly 2,000 years after the Great Pyramid’s construction. In his Histories (Book II), Herodotus describes the Great Pyramid, built under Pharaoh Khufu (whom he calls Cheops), as a colossal undertaking. He claims it took 20 years and 100,000 workers—a figure modern scholars debate, suggesting a smaller, more skilled workforce instead. Herodotus paints a vivid picture of construction, mentioning levers and ramps to hoist stones, and portrays the pyramid as a tomb born of royal ambition. His narrative, however, blends fact with folklore, drawn from Egyptian priests and local tales. For him, the pyramids were both engineering feats and symbols of a distant, almost mythical past.
The Pyramid Texts: A Spiritual Blueprint
Closer to the pyramids’ own time, the Pyramid Texts offer an Egyptian perspective, though not about Giza specifically. Carved into the walls of later Old Kingdom pyramids, like that of Pharaoh Unas at Saqqara (c. 2400–2300 BCE), these hieroglyphic spells are among the world’s oldest religious writings. They don’t detail construction but reveal the pyramids’ purpose: to launch a pharaoh’s soul into the afterlife. Filled with incantations to navigate cosmic realms, these texts suggest that the Giza pyramids, built centuries earlier in the 4th Dynasty, shared this sacred role. While no such inscriptions grace the Giza structures—perhaps lost or never made—the Pyramid Texts connect the monuments to a cosmic vision of death and rebirth.
Diodorus Siculus: Echoes of Awe
Another Greek historian, Diodorus Siculus, writing around 60–30 BCE in his Bibliotheca Historica, reinforces Herodotus’s awe. Having seen the pyramids himself, he attributes them to Khufu, Khafre (Chephren), and Menkaure (Mycerinus)—the traditional builders of Giza’s three main pyramids. Like Herodotus, he marvels at their scale and engineering, relying on earlier accounts and Egyptian oral tradition. His descriptions amplify the pyramids’ reputation as wonders, emphasizing their enduring presence in a world that still struggled to comprehend them.
Pliny the Elder: A Roman Critique
By the 1st century CE, Roman author Pliny the Elder offered a different take in his Natural History. He briefly mentions the pyramids as part of a broader survey of human achievements, calling them “idle and foolish ostentation.” Yet even in his skepticism, Pliny acknowledges their grandeur and the labor they demanded. Drawing from Greek sources, he reflects a Roman view: the pyramids were impressive but perplexing, relics of a civilization that prioritized monuments over practicality.
Egyptian Silence and Fragments
Curiously, the Egyptians themselves left little direct commentary from the pyramids’ heyday (c. 2630–2500 BCE). No grand narrative survives from the 4th Dynasty explaining their construction or meaning—perhaps it was too obvious to record, or perhaps it lived in oral tradition. The Westcar Papyrus, a Middle Kingdom text (c. 1800 BCE), hints at Khufu’s era with mythological tales, but it’s more story than history. More practical glimpses come from fragments like worker logs found near Giza, detailing food rations and labor organization. These suggest a well-coordinated effort, but they lack the grandeur of later accounts, focusing on logistics over legacy.
Missteps in Later Traditions
Some have sought pyramid references in other ancient sources, like the Bible’s Exodus, which mentions Hebrew slaves building “store cities” for Pharaoh. Yet this connection is shaky—most scholars place the Exodus (if historical) in the New Kingdom (c. 1200 BCE), long after the pyramids rose. The link likely reflects later reinterpretations rather than contemporary records, showing how the pyramids’ mystique grew over time.
What the Texts Tell Us
Together, these ancient writings paint a multifaceted picture. For Egyptians, the pyramids were sacred machines for immortality, as the Pyramid Texts imply. For Greek and Roman outsiders, they were marvels of human effort—whether admirable (Herodotus, Diodorus) or excessive (Pliny). Yet all agree on their scale and enigma. The lack of detailed Egyptian accounts from the time of construction leaves a gap that later observers filled with wonder and speculation. What emerges is less a blueprint of how the pyramids were built and more a testament to what they inspired: reverence, curiosity, and a sense of timelessness that still echoes today.