Great Pyramid Construction & Gilgamesh

The great Egyptian Pyramids of Giza, and others were built during Egypts 4th Dynasty which reigned 2613 BCE to 2494 BCE. Pryamid design was based on mastabas, and earlier Neolithic mounds over deep vertical pits. Gilgamesh was said to be a ruler of Uruk immediately before this period, around 2900 BCE to 2700 BCE.

Gilgamesh was notable, not merely for his 'hero's journey', his personal development from cruel hubris to humble service to his people. He was also, and perhaps most importantly for neolithic history, mythologized for representing the transition away from independent council-run collaboration of city-states to build and maintain region-wide waterworks that served all their region. He represented the transition to self important kings, refusing to obey the words of the city's great councils, plundering nearby regions kingdoms.   He did this all by partnering with the growing population of uncouth bronze-wielding nomadic horseman in the mountains outside the city, and by tearing down the institution of the priestesses who managing public works through the temple system. He refused to acknowledge, and vilified their patron goddess and redefined these temple leaders as prostitutes.   Gilgamesh's mythos was unrelenting plunder and monument building, in hopes of living forever as a prince of Uruk. He sought in all the records for the oldest magic, and the oldest wisest people's known were the ones who came out of the sea after the great floods. He travelled over sea, through tunnels, and desert to visit them, and came away with the only advice they would give him, a healing herb. But even this one thing was lost on his journey home. So he realized his mortality and decided to be a kinder ruler, but he did not reinstate the temple powers and sovereignty of the city councils. And he did not re-establish collaborations for independent and voluntary mutual aid across the region, for waterworks. Instead he is remembered as a first 'great king' a monarch like the later Sargon who brutally established the first known empire.