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Fascinating Biblical and Biblical Era Archaeology

Khalid Elhassan May 4, 2025 17 min

Archaeology - Ashurbanipal in a chariot, inspecting booty and prisoners from Babylon — Ashurbanipal in a chariot, inspecting booty and prisoners from Babylon. Wikimedia

16. Debunking a Myth

Archaeology - Tombs of the Great Pyramids' builders at Giza — Tombs of the Great Pyramids’ builders at Giza. Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities

Inside the Great Pyramids there is graffiti by the workers who built the monuments that has long suggested the builders were not slaves. Still, the idea that the pyramids were built by slaves remained widespread until Egyptologists discovered the city of the Great Pyramids’ builders in 1977. Excavations at the site further demonstrated that the builders were not slaves.

Then, in 2010, archaeologists unearthed the tombs of the Great Pyramids’ builders. Their contents finally and conclusively debunked the notion that the edifices had been built by slave labor. The modest tombs, which held the perfectly preserved skeletons of about a dozen pyramid workers, showed that their occupants were paid laborers, not slaves.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.