Building the Great Pyramid on AllMovie

For 4,400 years after its completion as a monument to the "Pharoah du Jour," the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt was the tallest structure in the world, dwarfed only when the Eiffel Tower went up in 1889. This ambitious, computer-generated cable documentary special meticulously recreated the conception and construction of the Pyramid, as seen through the eyes of Nakht, a young man from a tiny village along the Nile who, along with thousands of others in the region, was "conscripted" to work on the project. In addition to showing the remarkably sophisticated methods by which the workers built the monument from millions of tons of stone, the special also offered irresistible "humanizing" details, such as Nakh's amazement that the workers were considerately clothed, fed, and sheltered by the overseers. The computerized special effects were created by the same team responsible for "rebuilding" Rome in the 2000 theatrical feature Gladiator. Based on a book by Jonathan Stamp and Kevin Jackson, Building the Great Pyramid was seen in the U.S. courtesy of the Discovery Channel.