Understanding the Construction of the Great Pyramid: Mastabas, Back-and-Forth Ramps and Finishing from the Top

We describe and test a complete construction design for the Great Pyramid of Khufu. Each course is finished, casing included, before the next. Thirty-five tiers (mastabas) of dry-laid block stand against the four faces, their heights generally following the quarry beds.

Two back-and-forth ramps at 1:8 climb the east and south faces. The east ramp is 11 m wide to the King's Chamber floor and 9 m to 65.9 m, for the granite beams, and carries two lanes of sledges below 65.9 m. Two short rubble ramps on the north and west faces serve the lowest courses.

The men come down a ramp on the west face and the empty sledges, tethered in threes, down a timber chute. After the pyramidion is set, the tiers are taken down from the top while the face is dressed, and their blocks are reused.We assume the stone is waiting at the foot of the ramps and simulate the construction itself, course by course: the haul up the ramps, the haul across the course, the setting of core and casing, the setting out of each course and the granite beams. A minute-by-minute route model, which reproduces the result of our first paper, feeds a course model built on Petrie's course table.

For each unmeasured value we give an expected case, our best reasoning, and a worst case. With every unmeasured value at its worst, the lift takes 22.1 years and the whole work 24.5, within the 27 years attested by the Diary of Merer. With expected values the ramps and the setting have a capacity of 12.0 years of lift; this theoretical figure gives a scale, not an estimate of the build.

The tiers and ramps hold 268,800 m³ of block, 10.4 per cent of the pyramid. The work is about 47 million man-days whatever the pace, so the reign sets the size of the camp: about 5,800 men on average for a build of 27 years and 6,900 for 23 years. The result depends most on the time a turn and a loading take at the ramps.