One of the topics discussed this semester that I found to be very interesting is the pyramid building site at the Giza plateau, Heit el-Ghurab. This was the living area dedicated to the laborers of the great pyramids. Specifically, it dates to the construction of two pyramids, the pyramids of khafre and Menkaure. Heit el-Ghurab was an impressive complex that housed the laborers and the resources needed to support these workers. These workers consisted of both skilled and unskilled laborers. Skilled laborers may have included architects, artisans, and stone masons. Unskilled laborers would have been the peasants who were required to come to the site to contribute their work to the pyramids as a state construction project. One of the important archaeological finds at Heit el-Ghurab is the bakery. A common artifact found at this site is bread moulds, called bedja, which shows the importance of bread in the diet at this time. The bread moulds found at the Heit el-Ghurab bakery were very large, and revealed the industrial nature of the bakery. This leads to the assessment that the bakery was meant to feed a very large amount of people, and shows the incredible workforce that existed at Giza. Tied in with bread making was the production of beer. Beer producing vats were also found on site. The activated dough from bread making was used later as beer mash.

Another interesting element of the Heit el-Ghurab pyramid town is the separation of sacred areas from the mundane. The pyramids were extremely important in Egyptian religion; they housed the remains of the pharaoh, who was deified after death. Only a select few, usually priests for worship, were allowed into the sacred chapel areas of the pyramids. This highly sacred element contrasts with the normality of the daily life of workers living at Heit el-Ghurab. These two areas were separated by the Wall of the Crow. To the north of the wall is the sacred and the land of the dead, while to the south of the wall is the administrative and domestic areas.

The organization of workers at Heit el-Ghurab shows the incredible amount of resources and time dedicated to the building of the pyramids. The entire city came into the existence solely to house workers for the pyramids. An incredible amount of money, time, and labor was put into erecting the city for the workers, not to mention the resources then put into the pyramids. This shows how important the pharaoh and pyramids were, and how efficiently organized and powerful the Egyptian state was.