Quantifying Antiquity Veritas in Numeris
Stacked cedar logs on a riverbank with a wooden ship moored behind them.
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Finding 01 Exceeds historical record

How Much Timber Did the Great Pyramid Need?

1,204 shiploads of timber

The construction program does not need the timber once. Structural members and ramp planking must be supplied, worn out, and replaced across the project life cycle.

ship equivalents of timber over the build
1,203.8
the Palermo Stone’s 40-ship delivery
30.09×
felled timber every year
4,130.5 m³

What the audit found

The structural and IER ramp-planking streams require 4,130.5 cubic meters of felled timber each year, excluding timber for the granite barges. Across a 20-year build, the requirement reaches 82,609.5 cubic meters.

The Palermo Stone records a 40-ship timber delivery under Snefru. Expressed in the volume represented by that delivery, the project requires 60.19 ship equivalents every year. That is 1.50 times the entire recorded delivery annually and 30.09 times that delivery across the build. This comparison includes both native and imported timber and measures total throughput, not literal imported shiploads.

The imported requirement is reported separately. Under the model’s favorable assumption that half of the timber is supplied domestically, imported cedar still requires 30.09 shiploads per year. That is 0.75 times the recorded delivery every year and 601.9 shiploads across the build, or 15.05 times the record.

Doubling the modeled plank service life can bring annual throughput below the 40-ship comparison. It does not eliminate the cumulative delivery burden, which remains 17.48 times the recorded delivery across the build.

How the timber figure is built

  1. Felled timber each year

    Structural members and IER ramp planking need 4,130.5 m³ of felled timber a year. Timber for the granite barges is left out.

  2. Across the build

    Over a 20-year build that is 82,609.5 m³.

  3. The recorded delivery

    The Palermo Stone records 40 ships. At 68.625 m³ a ship, an assumption set high, the delivery is 2,745 m³.

  4. The comparison

    82,609.5 m³ is 1,203.8 of those shiploads: 60.19 a year, and 30.09 times the whole recorded delivery over the build.

Detailed results

MeasureValue
Felled timber, each year4,130.5 m³
Felled timber, 20-year build82,609.5 m³
Recorded delivery (40 ships)2,745 m³
Ship equivalents, each year60.19 (1.50× the delivery)
Ship equivalents, whole build1,203.8 (30.09× the delivery)
Literal imported cedar at 50% domestic supply601.9 shiploads (15.05×)
Whole build with plank service life doubled17.48×

What would reverse it

A sourced reduction in demand, longer defensible service life, use-class supply, or delivery system at the required cumulative scale.

Sources and Assumptions

Where each input behind the timber supply finding comes from, how much weight it carries, and where the full argument is published.

Inputs and how they are treated

InputValueTreatment
Ships in the Snefru delivery40Sourced: the Palermo Stone (Wilkinson 2000, pp. 141-145).
Volume per ship68.625 m³Assumption, set high to favor the conventional scenario. A larger comparator shrinks every ratio on this page.
Domestic share of timber50%Assumption, a concession. Used only for the literal imported-cedar figure.
Ramp traffic and plank wearIER studyThe block-placement schedule and total loaded hauling distance come from the Integrated Edge-Ramp study and its open dataset; surface wear and plank replacement are calculated from them.
Annual and build-long timber4,130.5 / 82,609.5 m³Derived from the structural and ramp-planking streams.

Limits of the finding

The Palermo entry is a scale comparison rather than a formal capacity ceiling, but no evidence demonstrates sustained timber delivery at the required cumulative scale.

The record supplies the largest documented single delivery used in the analysis. Egypt’s maximum timber-import capacity remains undetermined.

The granite barges’ hull timber is excluded from this comparison, so including it can only strengthen the finding.

References

  • Wilkinson, Toby A. H. 2000. Royal Annals of Ancient Egypt: The Palermo Stone and Its Associated Fragments. London: Kegan Paul. See pp. 141-145.
  • Rosell Roig, Vicente Luis. 2026. “A Computational Framework for Evaluating an Edge-Integrated, Multi-Ramp Construction Model of the Great Pyramid of Giza.” npj Heritage Science 14:142. https://doi.org/10.1038/s40494-026-02405-x
  • viroroi-pub and viroroi. 2026. viroroi-pub/Egypt: Integrated Edge-Ramp 1.0.14. Version v1.0.14. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20615955

Where this is documented

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