The Giza pyramid complex, located on the outskirts of modern Cairo, consists of three main pyramids built for pharaohs of the Fourth Dynasty: the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the Pyramid of Khafre, and the smaller Pyramid of Menkaure. Khufu's pyramid, completed around 2560 BCE, is the largest of the three and originally stood about 146.6 meters tall, though erosion and the loss of its outer casing stones have reduced it to roughly 138.8 meters today.
The Great Pyramid was built using an estimated 2.3 million blocks of limestone and granite, with individual blocks weighing on average around 2.5 tons, though some interior granite blocks weigh as much as 80 tons. Historians and archaeologists generally estimate the construction took around 20 years, and while earlier popular accounts assumed slave labor, most modern Egyptologists, based on worker cemeteries discovered near the site in the 1990s, believe the pyramid was built primarily by paid laborers and skilled craftsmen organized into work gangs.
Near the pyramids stands the Great Sphinx of Giza, a limestone statue with the body of a lion and a human head, believed to represent the pharaoh Khafre. It measures about 73 meters long and 20 meters high, making it one of the largest monolithic statues in the world, carved directly from the bedrock of the plateau.
The pyramids demonstrate remarkable precision for their time. The four sides of the Great Pyramid are aligned to the cardinal directions with an average error of only about three sixtieths of a degree, an accuracy that remains impressive even by modern standards. The internal structure includes the King's Chamber, the Queen's Chamber, and the Grand Gallery, a soaring corbelled passage nearly 47 meters long.
The pyramids served as elaborate tombs intended to secure the pharaoh's passage into the afterlife, in keeping with ancient Egyptian religious beliefs about death and resurrection. Surrounding the main pyramids are smaller satellite pyramids built for queens, along with extensive mortuary temples and causeways connecting the structures to the Nile Valley below.
The Great Pyramid of Giza is the only one of the traditional Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still largely standing today. The list was originally compiled by Greek writers, including Antipater of Sidon, around the second century BCE, and by that time the pyramid was already over 2,000 years old.
The site remains one of the most visited archaeological locations on earth and continues to be studied using modern techniques such as muon tomography, a method that uses cosmic ray particles to detect hidden voids within the structure. In 2017, researchers using this technique announced the discovery of a previously unknown large void above the Grand Gallery, prompting ongoing investigation into its purpose.