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While there are still uncertainties about how exactly the three gigantic pyramids on Egypt’s Giza Plateau were built, no one doubts that the work involved was intensive and difficult. But as revealed by a new study of the local environment at the time of the pyramids’ construction, this work was also, quite literally, toxic. It seems the laborers who built these astonishing structures were exposed to dangerous concentrations of poisonous heavy metals, primarily copper and arsenic, on a daily basis.
This unexpected discovery resulted from excavations that started in the urban streets of Cairo. It was necessary to dig there to reach the bottom of the now-dry floor of Khufu Harbor, which several thousand years ago was a thriving and active port located on a long-dead branch of the Nile very near where the Giza pyramids were erected.
