A Guided Tour of Life As a Pyramid Builder
What was on the menu for the builders of the Pyramids of Giza? And who was responsible for providing the supplies?
Spread from Rawi Magazine Issue on Culinary HeritageRAWI Publishing
What was on the menu for the builders of the pyramids? And who was responsible for providing the supplies?
Join Dr Claire Malleson on a journey through the monumental task of building the Giza Pyramids. Dr Malleson is assistant professor of archaeology at the American University in Beirut and member of Ancient Egypt Research Associates (AERA). She was also a contributing author to the Rawi Magazine edition on Egyptian culinary history.
Over the last thirty years, AERA under the direction of Mark Lehner, have been excavating the area around the Giza Pyramids. In 1999, they discovered the ‘Lost City of the Pyramids’, where the workers who built the second and third pyramids (of Khafre and Menkaure respectively) lived.
Their work not only showed what foods the workmen ate, but the massive logistics necessary to provide them with food.
The Pyramid Builders | Rendering of the Pyramid Workers' Barracks II (-2550/-2490) by Wilma WetterstromRAWI Publishing
Here is an artist’s rendering of the workers’ barracks of the Lost City of the Pyramids based on archaeological findings. The galleries housed the workers who served the king for periods of one month at a time. The town’s long-term residents, on the other hand, lived in the eastern part of the Lost City of the Pyramids.
This scene reimagines a three-room house within a mudbrick compound and shows some women weaving and spinning while others bake bread, prepare food, and take care of other chores.
Plant and animal remains show that the bosses and overseers living in the larger houses got the best cuts of meat and a greater variety of food. In comparison, the simple workers had a less diverse diet, with poorer cuts of meat, smaller fish, and far less variety in their vegetables.
Dr Claire Malleson on Feeding the Pyramid Builders (2020)RAWI Publishing
Dr Claire Malleson walks us through her Rawi article on the diet of the pyramid builders.
Author:
Dr Claire Malleson
Story courtesy of:
AERA: Ancient Egypt Research Associates (http://www.aeraweb.org/)
