The clamor of the city assaulted the ears of the work gang.

Barking dogs, overseers, balling out instructions, breaking pottery, bellowing cattle, squealing

pigs, stones scraping, and the endless banging of hammers and shizzles.

All of them combined to death in the sensitive ears of the newly arrived young men.

They were all in their teens and 20s, conscripted and brought here from their homes, the farming

villages scattered along the black earth, the denial river regularly deposited on the

flood plain, when its waters rose every year.

None had ever heard anything so loud as the worker's settlement at Giza.

None had ever been among so many people packed so closely together, all of them united

by their purpose, building a tomb suitable for a king.

The venues were the funerary rituals that would guarantee his final transformation in death

could be properly carried out.

This was essential work, all agreed, because the king was far beyond any normal human.

He was the one who guaranteed order, who ensured that the Nile would flood, their mediator

with the gods.

The enormous book of the great pyramid loomed over them in the distance, rising above the

roofs of storehouses, workshops, bakeries and barracks.

Leaving behind the reed boats that had carried them up or down River to Giza, they passed

through the grid of streets.

Sculptors, draftsmen, copper smelters, and other specialized laborers packed the avenues.

None of them spared the new work gang, naked but for the plain linen skirts belted around

their waist, a second glance.

...