The myth that the pyramids were built by slaves, popularised by Herodotus and kept alive by Hollywood, was definitively refuted when archaeologists Zahi Hawass and Mark Lehner excavated a workers' settlement south of the pyramids in the 1990s. The village shows organized barracks that housed an estimated 20,000 workers at a time, along with bakeries capable of producing thousands of loaves a day, breweries, fish-drying facilities, and a field hospital with evidence of bone-setting and even brain surgery.
The workers were Egyptian subjects performing rotating national service — a rotating labour force, not enslaved people. The cemeteries nearby contain the bodies of workers who were buried with care and some grave goods, and the skeletons show evidence of healed broken bones and amputations: people who were injured, treated, and continued working. The workers' village area is included in the Giza ticket and gives the whole complex a more human dimension than the monuments alone.