Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
60 free Great Pyramid of Giza trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Great Pyramid of Giza trivia quiz covers the oldest and only surviving Wonder of the Ancient World from the reign of Khufu around 2600 BC to the muon scans of the 21st century. It takes in the numbers (2.3 million blocks, 146.6 metres, 280 royal cubits, a seked of five and a half palms), the materials from Tura and Aswan, the workforce and the Diary of Merer, and the astonishing precision of the base and its alignment to the cardinal directions. Inside, it explores the Descending Passage, the Subterranean Chamber, the Queen's and King's Chambers, the Grand Gallery, the relieving chambers where Khufu's name was found in 1837, Gantenbrink's robot and the ScanPyramids Big Void. Outside, it covers the lost casing and pyramidion, the queens' pyramids and the Khufu ship, the Sphinx next door, and the long parade of visitors and diggers: Herodotus and his onion inscription, Pliny, Caliph al-Ma'mun's tunnel, Vyse's gunpowder, Petrie's survey and David Gill's mast. Some questions any tourist will know; others are for real pyramidologists. Every answer has been checked against primary sources, chiefly the Wikipedia articles on the pyramid, Khufu, the Giza complex and the Seven Wonders, and each explanation adds one further detail. For the wider civilization, try our Ancient Egypt quiz.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Great Pyramid was built as the tomb of which pharaoh?
Khufu
The Greeks called him Cheops; he ruled during the Fourth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom.
Q 02Roughly how long did the Great Pyramid take to build?
About 26 years
It was built around 2600 BC; Herodotus later claimed 100,000 labourers in three-month shifts for 20 years.
Q 03What was the Great Pyramid's original height?
146.6 metres
Loss of the casing and the tip has lowered it to 138.5 metres today.
Q 04For how long was the Great Pyramid the tallest human-made structure on Earth?
More than 3,700 years
That record ran from about 2600 BC into the Middle Ages.
Q 05How long is each side of the Great Pyramid's base?
About 230 metres
That is 440 royal cubits; the volume is roughly 2.6 million cubic metres including an internal hillock.
Q 06How tall was the pyramid in royal cubits, by design?
280
The base was 440 cubits, and the perimeter-to-height ratio of 1760/280 comes within 0.05 percent of 2π.
Q 07Roughly how many large blocks were quarried to build the Great Pyramid?
2.3 million
Together they weigh about 6 million tonnes.
Q 08The white limestone for the pyramid's casing came from which quarries?
Tura
They lie about 10 km south-east of the plateau, and the stone was ferried across the Nile by boat.
Q 09The granite for the King's Chamber came from Aswan, roughly how far south?
More than 900 km
The largest granite beams weigh 25 to 80 tonnes.
Q 10How many chambers are known inside the Great Pyramid?
Three
The lowest was cut into bedrock and left unfinished; the Queen's and King's Chambers sit above ground.
Q 11Which vizier of Khufu is believed by some to have been the architect of the Great Pyramid?
Hemiunu
He was buried in the West Field cemetery beside the pyramid.
Q 12How many smaller pyramids for Khufu's wives stand in the funerary complex?
Three
There is also an even smaller satellite pyramid and five buried solar barques.
Q 13Which son and successor of Khufu carried out his burial, as shown by cartouches on the boat-pit blocks?
Djedefre
His name appears eleven times on the second boat pit's stones, Khufu's four times.
Q 14In 1837, four relieving chambers found above the King's Chamber bore red-paint graffiti naming whom?
Q 21Worker graffiti show haulers were organized in groups of 40 men called what?
Zau
Each za had four sub-units led by an 'Overseer of Ten'.
Q 22Stonemason Franck Burgos found that cutting a 2.5-tonne block sped up six times when what was done?
The stone was wetted with water
He extrapolated that 3,500 quarrymen could have produced the needed 250 blocks a day.
Q 23Who made the first precise measurements of the pyramid in 1880-82?
Flinders Petrie
He found casing joints averaging only 0.5 mm wide.
Khufu, in the names of the work gangs
One gang called itself 'The white crown of Khnum-Khufu is powerful'; the names appear over a dozen times.
Q 15The Diary of Merer, found in 2013 at Wadi al-Jarf, documents what?
Transport of Tura limestone to the pyramid
It refers to the pyramid dozens of times by its original name, Akhet Khufu, 'Horizon of Khufu'.
Q 16What was the Great Pyramid's original name?
Akhet Khufu
It means 'Horizon of Khufu'.
Q 17Radiocarbon dating of the pyramid's mortar was possible because the builders added what to it?
Ashes from fires
Forty-six samples taken in 1984 and 1995 calibrated to 2871-2604 BC.
Q 18A cedar plank found in a shaft in 1872 and refound in a museum in 2020 was radiocarbon dated to when?
3341–3094 BC, over 500 years before Khufu
Waynman Dixon opened the Queen's Chamber air shafts; the plank was misfiled in Aberdeen for decades.
Q 19Herodotus claimed how many labourers worked on the pyramid in three-month shifts?
100,000
He also described an inscription recording the radishes, garlic and onions the workers ate.
Q 20A 1999 construction management study estimated the average workforce at about how many people?
13,200
The peak was roughly 40,000; modern finds show conscript labourers, not slaves.
Q 24How wide, on average, are the joints between the pyramid's casing stones?
0.5 millimetres
Core blocks, by contrast, were roughly shaped with rubble in the gaps.
Q 25What was the Egyptian unit describing slope, of which the pyramid had five and a half palms?
Seked
It measures how much horizontal run per cubit of rise, giving 51°50'40".
Q 26The pyramid's sides are aligned to the cardinal directions with an average error of about how much?
A tenth of a degree
That is 3 minutes 38 seconds of arc, aligned to true rather than magnetic north.
Q 27Which star was the polar star during the Old Kingdom, proposed for aligning the pyramid?
Thuban
Another theory uses the simultaneous transit of Mizar and Kochab.
Q 28How many courses of stone remain on the Great Pyramid?
203
The first layer is the tallest at 1.49 metres; upper courses are barely half a metre.
Q 29Which Bahri sultan is said to have carted off casing stones in 1356 to build Cairo?
An-Nasir Nasir-ad-Din al-Hasan
Earthquakes had already loosened many of the outer stones.
Q 30What is a pyramidion?
The capstone at the top of a pyramid
The Great Pyramid's was lost by classical antiquity; all known 4th-dynasty examples are plain white limestone.