re: Who built the pyramids?

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There is a consensus among Egyptologists that the Great Pyramids were not built by slaves.[15][16][17] According to noted archeologists Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass, the pyramids were not built by slaves; Hawass's archeological discoveries in the 1990s in Cairo show the workers were paid laborers, rather than slaves.[18][16][19][20] Rather, it was farmers who built the pyramids during flooding, when they could not work their lands.[21][22][16][23] The allegation that Israelite slaves built the pyramids was first made by Jewish historian Josephus in Antiquities of the Jews during the first century CE, an account that was subsequently popularized during the Renaissance period.[24] While the idea that the Israelites served as slaves in Egypt features in the Bible, scholars generally agree that the story constitutes an origin myth rather than a historical reality.[25][16] In any case, the construction of the pyramids does not appear in the biblical story.[26] Modern archaeologists consider that the Israelites were indigenous to Canaan and never resided in ancient Egypt in significant numbers.[27]

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