THE RED SEA SCROLLS

On March 13 2013, during an expedition to the Red Sea to investigate the world’s oldest harbor, Egyptologist Pierre Tallet received an urgent phone call. His team had discovered a treasure trove of scrolls: the records of work-gangs who transported stone down the Nile to Giza during the reign of Khufu, builder of the Great Pyramid. There, Mark Lehner has discovered the quarries, construction methods and workers’ town of the pyramid-builders, and even the harbor where these ships delivered supplies.

Now, for the first time, the archaeological detectives themselves reveal how they matched the clues from the ancient papyri to the archaeology on the ground at Giza, helping to answer the perennial question: how did the ancient Egyptians build the pyramids?