What the Great Pyramid Inscriptions Reveal

Welcome to History for Granite. Join me to explore Ancient Egypt. Please subscribe, and together we'll uncover secrets from the past written in stone. For thousands of years, travelers have trekked to the Giza necropolis to see Egypt's largest pyramids for themselves. So impressive was Khufu's pyramid that the ancient Greek historian Herodotus named it one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. But long before Herodotus bestowed this notoriety, the Great Pyramid was a destination for travelers. Visitors made inscriptions upon the now-missing casing stones of the pyramid as testimonials to their presence. Herodotus remarked upon only one inscription, writing, quote, On the pyramid it is declared, in Egyptian writing, how much was spent on radishes and onions and garlic for the workmen, and, if I rightly remember that which the interpreter said in reading to me this inscription, a sum of 1,600 talents of silver was spent. End quote. This testimony is often dismissed as Herodotus receiving bad information, because we are confident the pyramid builders did not inscribe the cost of making the pyramids on the monuments themselves. In fact, the casing stones that remain on pyramids are entirely devoid of writing of any kind. The few hieroglyphs that survive at the pyramids of Menkaure and Unas are understood to come from later Egyptian dynasties restoring or commemorating them. However, authors in the Middle Ages give an entirely contradictory account from what we see today. In about 1197 AD, Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi writes of the Giza pyramids, quote, These stones are covered with writing in this ancient character, the value of which is unknown today. I did not meet in all Egypt anyone who could say to know, even by hearsay, someone who was aware of this character. These inscriptions are in so great a number that if one wanted to copy on paper only those which one sees on the surface of these two pyramids, one would fill more than 10,000 pages. End quote. Like Herodotus, the testimony of Abd al-Latif has been portrayed as exaggerated because we have no reference to what he was describing. Egyptologists Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass write of Abd al-Latif's testimony, quote, No writing exists on the intact casing at the top of the Khafre pyramid, so it is unlikely that the entire pyramid surfaces were inscribed. End quote. However, inscriptions or graffiti at ancient sites was not evenly distributed. Some monuments received vastly more attention than others, and this phenomenon continues into the modern day. In fact, this pattern will reveal something truly remarkable about the Great Pyramid itself. In making this video on what ancient graffiti can teach us about the pyramids, I have collaborated with YouTube channel Told in Stone, which is focused on Greek and Roman history. Told in Stone has made his own video on graffiti at ancient Egyptian sites, which we are releasing in tandem. Furthermore, there was a Roman poem inscribed upon the Great Pyramid, recorded by a German traveler named Ludolf von Sudheim in 1336. It's a beautiful lament, and Told in Stone will explain its context in Roman history. We will return to Ludolf von Sudheim, who is also known as Ludolf von Suchen, later in this video. A great travesty occurred during the late 14th century when the casing stones of the Great Pyramid were stripped away. This was not from the 1303 earthquake in Crete, as is commonly cited, but the damage to Cairo may have incentivized using the Great Pyramid as a quarry. It would still take many decades for this to occur, because Ludolf sees the casing stones intact in 1336, and it's not until 1395 that a French nobleman from Anglour witnessed the Great Pyramid with half its casing stones removed. Even though we can no longer scrutinize ancient inscriptions on the Great Pyramid today, there is a vast amount of recent graffiti that gives insight about what also occurred in the ancient past. I have finally obtained a copy of a book studying this modern graffiti This book is so rarely cited that I hadn't known of its existence when I made a video about the missing summit of the Great Pyramid. I erroneously said the graffiti at the top hadn't been properly studied, but Goyan's book did an excellent job of documenting it in the 1940s. For this effort alone, Goyan deserves a bump up Notably, this study was not funded or produced by the institutions of Egyptology. Rather, it was King Farouk I who personally commissioned the research. As a young prince in 1935, Farouk climbed the Great Pyramid and realized, quote, These inscriptions contained historical material previously disdained that was urgent not to let perish, end quote. Goyan does an admirable job of recording every legible name written on the pyramid, indexed to their location, and even includes diagrams and photos of the most prominent locations. This large dataset may prove particularly valuable as AI technology gains the ability to cross-reference the names with all written history. A mistake that Goyan repeatedly makes, however, is to presume that inscriptions are inherently more reliable than other well-documented history. He finds an inscription by Nathaniel Davison from 1764 and claims this must be the year he discovered the first relieving chamber above the king's chamber. In fact, Davison's published letters clearly indicate the discovery occurred on July 8, 1765. Goyan also claims that Edouard Montoul didn't actually climb and inscribe his name at the summit of the Great Pyramid in the 19th century because he could not find it on the stones. However, Montoul gives other testimony that proves he was climbing the pyramids, including the much more difficult pyramid of Khafre. So while the graffiti is a useful batch of data, it's not suitable for rewriting history that is better documented elsewhere. Goyan noticed that the summit of the Great Pyramid lacked inscriptions dated earlier than the year 1799 and rightly concluded that upper courses had been destroyed shortly before this time. Many earlier travelers claimed to have inscribed their names at the top, but Goyan could not find those inscriptions. See my video on the missing summit of the Great Pyramid for how and when it was destroyed. The earliest names Goyan could find near the summit were Jaumat from 1799 and Berthier from 1633. Both names were located below the top platform of the damaged pyramid. It was Edmé Jaumat himself who, on January 5, 1799, noticed stones had recently been removed from the top of the Great Pyramid. Jaumat would have found plenty of fresh canvas at the very top, but instead carved his name about five courses down on the southwest corner. No doubt he suspected stones would continue to be thrown off the summit, and thus placing his name farther down would ensure its survival. As it turns out, no more stones have come off the pyramid since Jaumat's visit. Inscriptions at the summit, however, are more trampled and carved over, so Jaumat's decision was still a prudent one. The strategy employed by explorer Dow Covington a century later was to carve his name in three separate places, including the most substantial inscription at the summit. Covington made questionable claims about his explorations at the Great Pyramid to the British newspaper The Sphere in 1911. This included taking credit for work done by Howard Weiss and Giovanni Caviglia in the early 1800s. Some of these claims were taken at face value in later Egyptology publications, but are probably not true. Covington may deserve a demotion in the Pyramid Explorer tier rankings. It seems personal glory was his guiding principle. Prior to the 20th century, visiting the Great Pyramid was much more of an accomplishment when the Giza Plateau was a wild west of bandits and danger. In that context, the older graffiti can be viewed less as vandalism and more of a sentimental gesture of achievement. This is also expressed in the writings of travelers who commented on the graffiti. Conte de Marcellus, in the mid-19th century, writes of the Great Pyramid summit, I read on the stones that border it a thousand names engraved or sketched, to which, to obey the ancient custom, I had to add my own. Another traveler named François-René de Chateaubriand sailed past Giza in the year 1806, but could not visit the pyramids on foot. He writes, I therefore had to resign myself to my fate, return to Alexandria, and be content with having seen the pyramids with my own eyes, without having touched them with my own hands. I instructed Mr. Café to inscribe my name on those great tombs, as is customary, at the first opportunity. One must fulfill all the small duties of a pious traveler. Do we not love to read, on the ruins of the statue of Memnon, the names of the Romans who heard him sigh at the breaking of dawn? These Romans were, like us, strangers in the land of Egypt, and we too shall pass away. Amazingly, another traveler named George Fitzclarence observes Chateaubriand's name carved into the summit when he visits in 1818, thus proving his wish was fulfilled. Even more remarkable is that under his name was written the epitaph, He was not here, a simple statement of fact that might be misinterpreted without knowing its context. But prior to the removal of the Great Pyramid Summit, the graffiti was so dense that some less scrupulous travelers would cleave off blocks to make a fresh canvas for themselves. Corneille Le Brogne observes this in 1692, writing, Some of these stones are a little broke, and the chief of all, on which was most of the names of those that had been there, had been thrown down to the bottom by some French travelers, so that there were but a few names remaining. I wrote also mine on one of those stones. This observation by Le Brogne is a good explanation for the small bits of damage to Pyramid Course 206 that occurred in the 17th and 18th centuries. The real tragedy was when the uppermost five courses of the Great Pyramid were destroyed, thus erasing almost every inscription made at the summit between about 1395 and 1798. The last traveler to witness the intact summit was Jacques Robert, who writes in 1798, One need only look down at the numerous inscriptions covering the uppermost courses. German, English, Italian, and Dane all pondered this ancient summit. Gothic script suggests a visit centuries ago, while other inscriptions tell us that people were moved here by the memory of a beloved son or wife. All of those inscriptions and memories are now lost to time, but they can help teach us something about the ancient past. The Great Pyramid summit and entrance are where European travelers most frequently chose to make their inscriptions. By comparison, the interior was relatively sparse, and the neighboring pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure almost completely devoid of recent graffiti. Furthermore, as Goyan explains in his book, there was very little Arabic graffiti at the Great Pyramid by comparison. Goyan writes, This is understandable. The Egyptian, with the pyramids always within reach, did not consider visiting the monument an achievement worthy of note. Furthermore, the absence among Muslims of a patronymic name, or name common to all the descendants of a person, makes the mention of names unnecessary. The Great Pyramid, being uniquely climbable and open with the grandest interior, made it a logical destination of choice for European visitors. But what of the more distant past, when the Great Pyramid still had its casing stones? In the Middle Ages, Islamic authors did not distinguish the Great Pyramid as more notable or grand than the Pyramid of Khafre. The three pyramids at Giza were simply known as the East Pyramid, the West Pyramid, and the Colored Pyramid. As mentioned earlier, Abd al-Latif in 1197 AD spoke of the Khufu and Khafre Pyramids together when testifying about 10,000 pages worth of inscriptions on the casing stones. However, Ludolf von Sudheim in 1336 gives a more precise description of the casing stone graffiti. He writes, On one of them there are many inscriptions carved, in Latin on one wall, in Greek on another, in Hebrew on the third, and in Chaldean and many unknown tongues on the fourth. The languages unknown to Ludolf in 1336 were also unknown to Abd al-Latif in 1197, and thus were likely to be some form of ancient Egyptian writing. But notably, Ludolf distinguishes what must be the Great Pyramid as having ancient inscriptions in contrast to the Pyramid of Khafre. Corroborating this notion is explorer John Greaves, who writes in 1646 that he searched for inscriptions at Khafre's Pyramid when the casing stones were still intact at the bottom. Greaves writes, On the north side I observed a line, and only one, engraven with sacred and Egyptian characters such as are mentioned by Herodotus and Diodorus to have been used by the priests. End quote. These testimonies reveal the Great Pyramid was uniquely a destination of choice for travelers spanning all the way back to ancient Egypt. Ludolf's description of a different language on each side of the pyramid might seem strange at first, but in fact this follows a pattern of human behavior. People tend to write their names and messages next to others from a common culture or language. The natural progression would be for languages to cluster together on the Great Pyramid, and this pattern explains why Ludolf describes each face as having its own language. Each side of the pyramid was likely not exclusive to each language, but Ludolf may have noticed the clustered distribution and interpreted it as intentional. The oversized amount of attention given to the Great Pyramid spanning the ages of history is confounding to Egyptology. According to conventional wisdom, until Al-Mamun entered the king's chamber around 832 AD, there was no strong reason for travelers to distinguish it from the Pyramid of Khafre. Throughout antiquity, when both pyramids were fully cased, how would every traveler know which pyramid was the Great One? They are very similar in size, and in fact even today many people mistake the Pyramid of Khafre on the outside for the Great Pyramid. What the ancient graffiti suggests to me is that the Great Pyramid's upper chambers were fully accessible throughout antiquity. It's the marvel of the Grand Gallery and King's Chamber which would ensure Khufu's pyramid was the destination of choice. The reason one does not find ancient graffiti inside the pyramid is that writing was done quickly with charcoal and only substantial inscriptions were made on the outside where they could be seen. In fact, no Old Kingdom pyramids have surviving graffiti from antiquity inside them. The few remaining casing stones at the Great Pyramid are bare That also explains why the stones survived and were not quarried. Everyone visiting Giza in ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and ancient Rome knew the Great Pyramid was distinguished from the other pyramids. This is why Khafre's pyramid had a negligible number of inscriptions. It simply wasn't as important. Egyptologists Lehner and Hawass claimed the top of Khafre's pyramid meant testimonies of the Great Pyramid graffiti was exaggerated, but this is an ignorant comparison. Even the bottom of Khafre's pyramid was not comparable. There was only ever one Great Pyramid. Even the account of Herodotus might have some truth to it regarding the ledger of food written on the casing stones. It's silly for us in modern times to think of the Great Pyramid in terms of onions and radishes, but that may have been a serious line of inquiry long ago. Interestingly, Herodotus claims the priest reads the inscription which speaks of the food and afterwards informs him of the price in silver. Ancient Egyptians were not paid in silver. This may have been the priest modernizing the information for the Greeks. But the inscription itself regarding being paid in food is realistic for what we know about Old Kingdom Egypt. In antiquity, the method of building the Great Pyramid may not have been as mysterious as how expensive it was to build. Perhaps an ancient researcher unearthed or calculated the cost and inscribed the solution on the pyramid where it would be most viewed by travelers. What Egyptology has dismissed as a tall tale may have been someone's earnest attempt to understand and record the ancient past in their own time. People have always been curious about the Great Pyramid because of its unique role in history, not because it was 15% larger by volume than its neighbor. This is what the inscriptions on the Great Pyramid tell us, even if they are gone and we can no longer read them. Remember to see Toldenstone's video about the graffiti we can still read, and also join me on a complete tour of the pyramids in October with Adept Expeditions. Thanks to everyone who watched this video to the end. Please subscribe to the channel to see more of this content. Give a like or comment as you see fit. And above all, remember to ask your friends if they take their history for granted.