How Did They Actually Build the Great Pyramid?

In 2013, archaeologists found the only eyewitness record of the Great Pyramid being built: the logbook of an inspector named Merer. It doesn't explain how the blocks were lifted. It does show how the project was organised: boats, bread, bureaucrats. In this video: Merer's diary and what it actually says, the size of the job (about 2.3 million blocks), how the stone was cut and aligned, who the builders were and what they ate, how many workers there really were (the estimates range from about 3,300 to 100,000), a rough guide to the cost, and every ramp theory ranked by the strength of its evidence: proven, strongly supported, hypothesis, unknown. Some numbers in this video are my own estimates and are marked as such. SOURCES Diary of Merer (overview): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diary_o... Ankhhaf: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankhhaf Feeding the workers (Richard Redding, NBC News): https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna51643726 Base measurements (Dash, Lehner): https://www.archaeology.wiki/blog/201... Hatnub quarry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatnub Integrated edge-ramp model (Rosell Roig, npj Heritage Science, 2026): https://www.nature.com/articles/s4049... Ahramat branch of the Nile (Ghoneim et al., 2024): https://www.nature.com/articles/s4324... Worker rations at Deir el-Medina: https://beer-studies.com/en/world-his...