Who Really Built the Pyramids? They Left a Logbook #shorts

Movies say slaves built the pyramids. The internet says aliens. The builders left their own answer, in writing. 📜

🚣 In 2013, archaeologists found the "Diary of Merer" at an ancient Red Sea harbor. It is the oldest papyrus with writing ever found, from the last years of Pharaoh Khufu's reign, about 4,500 years ago. 🪨 It is the logbook of an inspector named Merer, whose crew of about 40 boatmen shipped white limestone from the Tura quarries across the Nile to Giza, most likely for the Great Pyramid's shining outer casing. 🍞 Next to the pyramids, archaeologists found the workers' town and cemetery: bakeries, beer jars, bones that had been set by someone, and tombs in the shadow of the king's pyramid. ⚖️ The honest catch: most historians think it was a labor tax. Egyptians owed the state a shift of work, like jury duty. It wasn't chattel slavery, but they couldn't exactly quit.

So, who built them: slaves, workers, or aliens? 👇

Sources: Pierre Tallet's Wadi al-Jarf papyri (Diary of Merer); National Geographic; Zahi Hawass and Mark Lehner's Giza workers' town and cemetery excavations (AP / CBC, 2010); Archaeology Magazine; Discover Magazine. The Great Pyramid's casing was loosened by the 1303 earthquake and later taken for buildings in Cairo.

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