The moment I realized the Great Pyramid had 2.3 million stone blocks

I was reading a book on Egyptian engineering last week and it hit me how huge that number really is. 2.3 million blocks, each weighing between 2 and 80 tons. That means they had to place one block every 3 minutes for 20 years straight, no breaks. I never stopped to do the math before and it blew my mind. How did they even manage the logistics without modern tools, let alone the workforce? Has anyone else run across a number in archaeology that just didn't seem possible?

3 comments

3 Comments

abby_fisher4d ago

Yeah I had basically the same moment a few years back when I was reading about the Colosseum. I work with logistics for events and when I saw they built that thing in like 8 years with tens of thousands of workers I had to stop and think. The way I got my head around it was realizing they had a ton of people working in shifts with simple but smart systems like ramps and levers. Once you start looking at how they broke down the work into small repeatable tasks it makes a little more sense even if the overall number still feels crazy.

ray_burns4d ago

Is that really one every three minutes? I never did the math either, that's wild.

the_cameron4d ago

Wait, does that count include every single new account or just active ones? Hard to believe bots and people just signing up don't skew that number.