The organization of workmen.

The organization of Egyptian workmen was superb. Without it such huge building projects as the construction of the pyramids would have not succeeded. It has been calculated that the pyramid of King Khufu at Giza, built around 2530 BC, contains some 2,300 000 stone blocks. All these had to be quarried, brought from the quarries to the building site, raised to the required height and placed in position.

At the time of our story, in 1327 BC, pyramids were no longer built (the last pyramid was built some 350 years earlier). King Akhenaten's predecessors were buried in rock-cut tombs in the Valley of the Kings, in southern Egypt, opposite the modern town of Luxor. Akhenaten had a tomb for himself and his family made in a desolate valley in the vicinity of his new capital Akhetaten. It seems that for some time there was uncertainty about where King Tutankhamun was going to be buried. Many important men of his reign, including General Haremhab, had tombs built in the vicinity of Mennufer. But after Tutankhamun's unexpected death at a very young age, a tomb was hastily prepared for him in the Valley of the Kings.

The stonemasons who worked on tombs were usually divided into two groups, "gangs". One of these was called "eastern", the other "western", and this probably corresponded to the walls or parts of the tomb which were assigned to them. There may have been as many as a hundred men in each gang and they were headed by a foreman.

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