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Giza and the Pyramids: The Definitive History
The pyramids of Giza have stood for more than four thousand years, fascinating generations around the world. We think of the pyramids as mysteries, but the stones, hieroglyphs, landscape, and even layers of sand and debris around them hold stories. In Giza and the Pyramids : The Definitive History , two of the world’s most eminent Egyptologists, Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass, provide their unique insights based on more than four decades of excavating and studying the site.
The celebrated Great Pyramid of Khufu, or Cheops, is the only one of the seven wonders of the ancient world still standing, but there is much more to Giza. Though we imagine the pyramids of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure and the Sphinx rising from the desert, isolated and enigmatic, they were once surrounded by temples, noble tombs, vast cemeteries, and even harbors and teeming towns. This unparalleled account describes that past life in vibrant detail, along with the history of exploration, the religious and social function of the pyramids, how the pyramids were built, and the story of Giza before and after the Old Kingdom. Hundreds of illustrations, including vivid photographs of the monuments, excavations, and objects, as well as plans, reconstructions, and images from remote-controlled cameras and laser scans, help bring these monuments to life.
Through the ages, Giza and the pyramids have inspired extraordinary speculations and wild theories, but here, in this definitive account, is the in-depth story as told by the evidence on the ground and by the leading authorities on the site.
The celebrated Great Pyramid of Khufu, or Cheops, is the only one of the seven wonders of the ancient world still standing, but there is much more to Giza. Though we imagine the pyramids of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure and the Sphinx rising from the desert, isolated and enigmatic, they were once surrounded by temples, noble tombs, vast cemeteries, and even harbors and teeming towns. This unparalleled account describes that past life in vibrant detail, along with the history of exploration, the religious and social function of the pyramids, how the pyramids were built, and the story of Giza before and after the Old Kingdom. Hundreds of illustrations, including vivid photographs of the monuments, excavations, and objects, as well as plans, reconstructions, and images from remote-controlled cameras and laser scans, help bring these monuments to life.
Through the ages, Giza and the pyramids have inspired extraordinary speculations and wild theories, but here, in this definitive account, is the in-depth story as told by the evidence on the ground and by the leading authorities on the site.
560 pages, Hardcover
Published October 29, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 29, 2018
So. Much. Sand. It's a book for specialists, but the rest of us can have fun skimming.
January 1, 2026
Zahi Hawass seems to claim accomplishments he did not find.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
reading-canceled
January 4, 2025Bin sozusaen an der Monumentalität des Buchs gescheitert. Das große Fachwissen der Autoren und wie es vermittelt wurde hat meine Neugier überstiegen. Nun musste ich es in die Landesbibliothek zurückgeben, da ich die Leihfrist nicht mehr verlängern konnte.
May 15, 2025
Unfortunately my copy did not contain the images, I was told would be in there???
Can someone let Mr Hawas know? I have an email he can send them to.
Can someone let Mr Hawas know? I have an email he can send them to.
December 26, 2025
Lehner and Hawass have been working together on the Giza Plateau for more than 40 years, and they worked on this book for 30. For much of that time they've also been rebutting the fringe ideas about the site that came into vogue in the early 1990s (and thus making enemies of the fringe-history crowd). This massive book truly is the definitive collection of information about Giza, and it will probably stay that way for a very long time.
The book starts with the geographical and historical context of Giza, followed by an oddly arranged set of chapters on the evolution of pyramid building, the modern study of Giza, and the pyramid temple complex and its associated rituals. Each of the three major pyramids receives a chapter, as do the Great Sphinx, the huge and enigmatic tomb of Queen Khentkawes, the cemeteries of high officials that are arrayed around the pyramids, the cemetery of the pyramid workers, and the villages in which those workers lived. After more than 50 pages on the pyramid construction process and the evidence about it on the ground, the last few chapters describe the history of the site after major construction ceased there, down to the end of the Late Period in the fourth century BC.
Most of the major reference works on the pyramids are at least 20 years old, so this one has the advantage of incorporating recent discoveries such as the Late Period tomb known as the "Osiris Shaft", the 2011 exploration of the Great Pyramid's "air shafts", and the papyri from Wadi el-Jarf that document shipments of stone to that pyramid during Khufu's reign. There's also even more detail about each stage of the pyramid construction process than in Lehner's previous book on the subject, The Complete Pyramids, a lot of it based on firsthand attempts to replicate the process. The results of such experiments are hard to extrapolate; nobody alive knows how to work with the type of tools the Old Kingdom Egyptians had because iron is so ubiquitous today. But the authors point out that the work crews for these experiments grew better at the job as they went along, and they conclude that "where we could not match the ancient results with simple tools and techniques, it was owing to the lack of several lifetimes of practice". Their estimates for the total number of workers for the Great Pyramid are necessarily speculative. But they take into account the vastly greater manpower required when working with such primitive technology and arrive at numbers that, while huge, still fit into the quarries and the construction site.
But the book's greatest strength is that it goes beyond the fixation on the Great Pyramid to lesser-known monuments, such as Khentkawes' tomb, and to lesser-known eras in the history of the plateau, such as the New Kingdom's revival of interest in the Sphinx, the apparent reburial of Menkaure in the Late Period, and the legend that the local Temple of Isis created about its own origins. Particularly interesting is that the earliest rock-cut tombs—a type that would be used in Egypt for millennia, most famously in the Valley of the Kings—seem to be those that were cut into the quarries at Giza soon after pyramid construction stopped. The authors suggest that the officials who were buried in those tombs at the end of the dynasty "chose to return there in old age, with limited time for tomb building, because Giza had been the place of the most dramatic work and experience of their lives." The plateau is not simply the home of some pyramids but of generations of people who lived in their shadows. From the evidence Lehner and Hawass collect, we can catch tantalizing glimpses of those people's lives and how they saw the enormous monuments around them.
The book starts with the geographical and historical context of Giza, followed by an oddly arranged set of chapters on the evolution of pyramid building, the modern study of Giza, and the pyramid temple complex and its associated rituals. Each of the three major pyramids receives a chapter, as do the Great Sphinx, the huge and enigmatic tomb of Queen Khentkawes, the cemeteries of high officials that are arrayed around the pyramids, the cemetery of the pyramid workers, and the villages in which those workers lived. After more than 50 pages on the pyramid construction process and the evidence about it on the ground, the last few chapters describe the history of the site after major construction ceased there, down to the end of the Late Period in the fourth century BC.
Most of the major reference works on the pyramids are at least 20 years old, so this one has the advantage of incorporating recent discoveries such as the Late Period tomb known as the "Osiris Shaft", the 2011 exploration of the Great Pyramid's "air shafts", and the papyri from Wadi el-Jarf that document shipments of stone to that pyramid during Khufu's reign. There's also even more detail about each stage of the pyramid construction process than in Lehner's previous book on the subject, The Complete Pyramids, a lot of it based on firsthand attempts to replicate the process. The results of such experiments are hard to extrapolate; nobody alive knows how to work with the type of tools the Old Kingdom Egyptians had because iron is so ubiquitous today. But the authors point out that the work crews for these experiments grew better at the job as they went along, and they conclude that "where we could not match the ancient results with simple tools and techniques, it was owing to the lack of several lifetimes of practice". Their estimates for the total number of workers for the Great Pyramid are necessarily speculative. But they take into account the vastly greater manpower required when working with such primitive technology and arrive at numbers that, while huge, still fit into the quarries and the construction site.
But the book's greatest strength is that it goes beyond the fixation on the Great Pyramid to lesser-known monuments, such as Khentkawes' tomb, and to lesser-known eras in the history of the plateau, such as the New Kingdom's revival of interest in the Sphinx, the apparent reburial of Menkaure in the Late Period, and the legend that the local Temple of Isis created about its own origins. Particularly interesting is that the earliest rock-cut tombs—a type that would be used in Egypt for millennia, most famously in the Valley of the Kings—seem to be those that were cut into the quarries at Giza soon after pyramid construction stopped. The authors suggest that the officials who were buried in those tombs at the end of the dynasty "chose to return there in old age, with limited time for tomb building, because Giza had been the place of the most dramatic work and experience of their lives." The plateau is not simply the home of some pyramids but of generations of people who lived in their shadows. From the evidence Lehner and Hawass collect, we can catch tantalizing glimpses of those people's lives and how they saw the enormous monuments around them.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews