Person
Herodotus
The Greek historian who visited Egypt around 450 BCE and wrote, in Book II, that the Great Pyramid took 100,000 men twenty years, with ten more for the causeway.
Emőke Dénes, “The Great Pyramid of Giza”, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
He names Cheops, the Greek form of Khufu, on the word of Egyptian priests two thousand years after the fact. His labour figure is not trusted; the workers’ town suggests a few thousand on site at a time. He is the oldest surviving outside account, and he already describes the pyramid as a king’s tomb and a public work, not as a temple of initiation. The later readings start after him.