Were slaves involved in the building of the Pyramids of Giza?

Question

The claim: Paid, skilled workers built the pyramids without the use of slave labor.

Relevant links: Hawass: ‘The Great Pyramids were not built by slaves’

“Linking building the Great Pyramids to slavery is a comical thing to say,” replied Zahi Hawass to some English newspaper commentary.

Hawass asserted that if the pyramids were built by forced labor, their tombs would not be built next to the pyramids.

Hawass further indicated that forced labor can build huge buildings, but they cannot be creative, and building pyramids is creative. Slaves cannot perform this engineering and scientific miracle.

Egypt: New Find Shows Slaves Didn't Build Pyramids

More Evidence Slaves Didn't Build Pyramids

From Wikipedia, Slavery in Ancient Egypt:

There were three types of enslavement in Ancient Egypt: chattel slavery, bonded labor, and forced labor. But even these types of slavery are susceptible to individual interpretation based on evidence and research. Egypt's labor culture is represented by many men and women, and it is difficult to claim their social status into one category. [...] Forms of forced labor and servitude are seen throughout all of ancient Egypt even though it wasn’t specifically declared as the well known term we have today, slavery.

Personally, I’m skeptical about the idea that these recent discoveries provide enough evidence to suggest that slaves were not involved at all or didn’t account for a significant portion of the labor. Does evidence of paid workers indicate evidence that slaves weren’t used? Does Egypt have an incentive to promote the idea that slave labor was not involved at all and potentially exaggerate the significance of this evidence?

What I’m curious about:

• How conclusive is the evidence we have in demonstrating that a large majority of workers involved were not slaves?

• How conclusive is it in demonstrating that no slaves were involved in its construction?

• In the (hypothetical) absence of more evidence suggesting many workers involved in other aspects of the pyramids’ construction (quarrying and transporting the stone, for instance) were paid laborers, does it make sense in the historical context of slavery in Egypt that no slaves would have been involved?

Answer 1

Overall, I would say that we still don't know for sure, but the general consensus of the experts seems to be that the labor force that built the pyramids were not free wage workers in the modern sense, but there is no evidence to suggest they were chattel slaves to any significant extent.

Here is a nice short article, "Who built the pyramids" from Harvard Magazine, highlighting the work of Egyptologist Mark Lehner who excavated the facilities where pyramid-building laborers lived.

It describes various bits of evidence that workers were probably not slaves, such as the fact that they seemed to have been eating large quantities of meat. But I think the most significant point might be this:

Lehner’s friend Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, who has been excavating a “workers’ cemetery” just above Lehner’s city on the plateau, sees forensic evidence in the remains of those buried there that pyramid building was hazardous business. Why would anyone choose to perform such hard labor? The answer, says Lehner, lies in understanding obligatory labor in the premodern world. “People were not atomized, separate, individuals with the political and economic freedom that we take for granted. Obligatory labor ranges from slavery all the way to, say, the Amish, where you have elders and a strong sense of community obligations, and a barn raising is a religious event and a feasting event. If you are a young man in a traditional setting like that, you may not have a choice.” Plug that into the pyramid context, says Lehner, “and you have to say, ‘This is a hell of a barn!’”

Lehner currently thinks Egyptian society was organized somewhat like a feudal system, in which almost everyone owed service to a lord. The Egyptians called this “bak.” Everybody owed bak of some kind to people above them in the social hierarchy. “But it doesn’t really work as a word for slavery,” he says. “Even the highest officials owed bak.”

The article concludes with the disclaimer that this hypothesis is still subject to peer review and further research. That said, I can find no solid reason to doubt the following, reported in US News and World Report:

Dieter Wildung, a former director of Berlin's Egyptian Museum, said it is "common knowledge in serious Egyptology" that the pyramid builders were not slaves and that the construction of the pyramids and the story of the Israelites in Egypt were separated by hundreds of years.

"The myth of the slaves building pyramids is only the stuff of tabloids and Hollywood," Wildung told The Associated Press by telephone. "The world simply could not believe the pyramids were build without oppression and forced labor, but out of loyalty to the pharaohs."