What presently remains of the Great Pyramids are just the cores of the structures. The outer surfaces of the pyramids, which were apparently a limestone mortar, are completely gone. When in their prime the surfaces of the pyramids were smooth and white as snow. Unlike anything the World has ever seen.
I have been to the pyramids, been inside one of them, and climbed on another.
From memory, it was mostly blocks of stone cut to the same size, and laid in place. I suppose each stone would weighed about 5 tonne. The outside was once finished with a smooth surface of pale stone. A small amount of it still remains on one of the pyramids. The local guides said that during the period of Ottoman rule, the smooth stone was quarried and used for their palaces. In and around Cairo, you can see Ottoman palaces made of pale stone. “Snow white” is an exaggeration.
I also visited an ancient stone quarry, when travelling in Egypt. The guides explained the clever technique for cutting stone out in blocks. There was a giant obelisk there, half cut out, and on its side. I walked on top of it. The guides said it was probably abandoned after it developed a large crack, which was still visible. The quarry was a long way from any archeological site, but (like virtually every archeological site there) was close to the Nile. Obviously they used barges to float the quarried stones to wherever they needed them.
The locals say that any “ramp” used to raise and position blocks into place on the great pyramids would have been a spiral around the pyramid, not the classic ramp shown in movies. Some western “experts” have said that they couldn’t have done it that way, because it would have made surveying the structure and keeping it aligned, too difficult. While it does complicate construction, I suspect such “experts” have never physically built anything themselves, and would probably struggle to assemble an IKEA bookcase.
The locals also say the ancients would have used a lot of sand to support structures as they built them. For example, the giant columns at Luxor would ha e been constructed by rolling a column section into place, surrounding it in sand, and then rolling the next on top, and so forth. It might sound a lot of work in theory, but I have seen it done to assemble freeway overpasses in the Middle East. It is a quick and simple way of building tall structures where you have lots of dry sand available.
In short, the effort that they went to was amazing, but all very explainable.
