Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-203.14.52.144-20150518014116/@comment-24891101-20150531020219

Whatever the precise number of people, it's certainly not Herodotus' 100,000 per three month shift. Lehner (The Complete Pyramids) cites a consensus of 20,000 using various forms of ramps. Lower numbers are possible using other methods, such as proposed by Edwards. As the project progressed, few people would be needed, according to Romer (The Great Pyramid: Ancient Egypt revisited). Hawass also believes that the builders were not slaves. As does the BBC. Look at the names of those work gangs. Hardly the names of slave teams. The form of their burial suggests they're not slaves.

I'm not an Egyptologist. Neither are you. But I've been looking into the literature on this I can find for the past few hours, and no modern source suggests it was mostly slaves. Some might have been used, true, but every source I'm seeing says farmers or conscripted peasants.