The pyramids at Giza were built by professional artisans and seasonal peasant laborers, not slaves, who worked in teams, drank beer three times a day, ate meat regularly, and gave themselves playful team names.

50:41just six or seven years into his reign, and the pyramid was abandoned. Another king, Khaba, also died after six years, before his stepped pyramid could be completed. To build each pyramid, the Egyptians would require enormous amounts of laborers, as many as 100,000 per pyramid, with about 10,000 laboring at any one time. There's a widespread misconception that these monuments were built by armies of slaves, but most historians now believe this not to be true. Slavery was an aspect of Egyptian

51:19society, as it was across the ancient world, and slaves were mostly taken from prisoners of war, and also from those who fell into debt or committed serious crimes. But slaves were mostly used as domestic servants, or if they were unlucky, toiled in extraction industries like mining and quarrying. These were considered an underclass, and would not have been trusted with the construction of such important and sacred buildings. In fact, evidence shows that the pyramid builders were a mixture of

51:52professional artisans and laboring peasants who worked seasonally in exchange for rations. The life of an Egyptian farmer was dictated by the coming and going of the annual floods, and there were only a few times of year when they could be meaningfully employed in the fields. For the rest of the time, they would have leased out their services to construction projects, the digging of canals and other public works,

52:19and construction of pyramids. While they labored for the king, these workers drank beer three times a day, and ate meat regularly. They toiled in three-month shifts, and were divided into teams of twenty men. The discovery of their graffiti, hidden on the inward-facing sides of some stone blocks in the pyramids, shows that they gave themselves playful and boisterous team names, some of which have been recorded. The Friends of Khufu . The Vigorous Gang . The Followers of the

53:00Powerful White Crown of Khufu . Those Who Know the Pharaoh . The Drunkards of Menkaure . It seems their supervisors fostered a sense of team pride and healthy competition, perhaps giving honors and extra beer rations for those who shifted the most blocks. Doubtless the work was backbreaking, but over the following millennium, millions of Egyptians would take this deal. Perhaps they also felt a sense of pride at the great constructions they were taking part in, which if all went