how did ancient egyptians build the pyramids?

Jim the Fee, here.

There is considerable conflicting answers to this one.

one of your answerers pointed you to an extensive discussion to be found on Wikipedia. Another one,

"one brick at a time", is a joke response to a question

that he/she thought was a joke question.

I am going to approach this question with a theory that does have some supporters but a lot of detractors. It hinges on how old the pyramids you are talking about happen to be.

There are several different ancient age groups of Egyptian

pyramids. If you are concentrating on the valley-of-the-kings

group -- then you have the theory that slave labor was the way the pyramids were built. ramps were built up the sides and the great blocks of stone were pulled up those ramps and another level of the pyramid was completed. This was

repeated over and over until the "capstone piece" was placed and the ramps of soil were removed by the workers

leaving the pyramids in place.

There are older pyramids that are not so ambitious but just as exciting to speculate about. But that is another story.

Finally, here is a theory that might have been possible.

Thousands of years before the flowering of the dynastic

Egyptian civilization; the survivor of the sinking of Atlantis,

far to the west of the African continent, came into the land of

the forerunners of the high culture of later egyptians. The technology that was brought with them enabled them to help the very early peoples do some rudimentary building of some extremely sophisticated pyramids. These survivors

left after a time and after waring with the outpost of the Greeks, and disappeared to the north. Much of the technology was lost and/or discarded by the early peoples

but some simple plans were etched in the folkways of the

early peoples as stories, myths, and legends. As the great dynasties began to flower in Egypt, the intelligent leaders

rediscovered some aspects of the technology so that slave labor could be harnassed to the task of building the great

pyramid of Giza among others. This one is very hard to prove and probably never will be - but it is there as a possibility.

Cheers,

Jim the Fee

There were probably not many slaves who helped build the pyramids, because slaves were not educated and would not have skill in its precise structure. Mostly free, experienced artisans did the work in return for some retribution. Only the greatly unifying pharaoh could achieve such loyalty, as he was believed to be part divine and part human.

As for the methods for moving the stones, those are disputed. The large stones could've been dragged by a sled, but this wouldn't be very effective. A type of machine that has been excavated could've rolled the stones.

As for the method of construction, there is no definite evidence that completely resolves the question. There are hypotheses for various kinds of ramps used, including an internal ramp, as well as the possibility that Egyptians used wind power to move the stones, and finally a hypothesis that states they used limestone "concrete" that was carried wet and dried later. So this is an issue to keep checking up on for new information, as no method is absolutely certain.

When the season was right the water level would be okay to travel across, that was when the slaves would cut large stones out of the quarry and drag it to the building site. They started to build the pyramid layer by layer and used a sort of scaffold to reach the highest points.

As mentioned above but hebrews did NOT build the pyramids. They were built by off season farmers who were paid by the Pharaoh in grain. In the Bible, the Hebrews are never mentioned as building pyramids. Merely a temple. If they actually were enslaved.

They had A LOT of slaves to do all the work.

Im not quite sure how exactly and maybe thats why the Pyramids of Giza is one of the severn wonders of the ancient world

No one knows. There are a number of "theories" but none that is definitive. The fact that they could not be duplicated today even with the largest cranes might tell you something.

I would say some of them were built by Isrealite slaves. :)

check this out :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_pyramids

one brick at a time ?