What would it cost to build the Great Pyramid Today?
When the National Geographic Society asked to interview me for a new documentary they were making on the pyramids of Egypt, I was delighted to take part. There is one catch, the producer told me. Besides hearing your thoughts on how the pyramids were built 4,500 years ago, we would like to know what it would cost to build the pyramid today. Actually, Ive been asked this question many times before, and on occasion had started to think about it, but had not taken the time to make a detailed analysis. The query from National Geographic provided an impetus to try to answer this question. I decided to first prepare a base case for comparison with other approaches. The base case I selected was to assume that the pyramid was constructed from precast concrete blocks, as this technology is well established. I made several simplifications for the base case. First, I assumed that all of the blocks were the same size. This is definitely not true for the Great Pyramid as we know that the lowest cou
