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During the Old and Middle Kingdoms, pyramids were built to house the pharaohs’ bodies after death.
Some were 40 stories high, built of stone blocks that weighed three tons or more each. The Egyptians’ main tools were ropes, levers, and wedges. They also had a few stone and copper hand tools. But they had no wheels or hoisting tools. So how did they do it? The hard way—with brute force. For three or four months a year the Nile flooded. That’s when the pharaohs made farmers and laborers work on building projects. The largest was the pyramids.
