His first big break came in 1977, when the Stanford Research Institute conducted a remote sensing project at the Sphinx and the pyramids- a search for cavities using non-invasive technologies. Lehner discovered he had a knack for drafting, and got his first lessons in mapping and technical drawing from a German expert. "At the end of these digs, there were lots of maps and drawings left to be done," he adds-steady work once the short dig season was over. Photographs by John BroughtonĪctually, he became, in the words of one employer, an "archaeological bum" who soon found work all over Egypt with German, French, Egyptian, British, and American expeditions. Lehner works fast to document features briefly exposed by modern construction projects. But the more time he spent actually studying the Sphinx, the more he became convinced that the quest was misguided, and he exchanged its fantasies for a life grounded in archaeological study of the Giza plateau and its monuments. Young Lehner, a minister's son from North Dakota, hoped to discover if that was true. "I first went to Egypt as a year-abroad student in 1973," he says, ".and ended up staying for 13 years." His way was paid by a foundation that believed a hall of records would be found beneath the paws of the Sphinx. He has found the city of the pyramid builders.
Now, drawing on diverse strands of evidence, from geological history to analysis of living arrangements, bread-making technology, and animal remains, Egyptologist Mark Lehner, an associate of Harvard's Semitic Museum, is beginning to fashion an answer. Until recently, however, the fabulous art and gold treasures of pharaohs like Tutankhamen have overshadowed the efforts of scientific archaeologists to understand how human forces-perhaps all levels of Egyptian society-were mobilized to enable the construction of the pyramids. But graffiti from inside the Giza monuments themselves have long suggested something very different. De Mille's The Ten Commandments, in which a captive people labor in the scorching sun beneath the whips of pharaoh's overseers. This notion of a vast slave class in Egypt originated in Judeo-Christian tradition and has been popularized by Hollywood productions like Cecil B. Rooted firmly in the popular imagination is the idea that the pyramids were built by slaves serving a merciless pharaoh. The question of who labored to build them, and why, has long been part of their fascination. Lehner maps a site Photographs by John Broughton
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