Building the pyramids meant moving stone at a scale Egypt never repeated, and the clearest record of how comes from a diary, not a monument.
The logbook of Merer
In 2013 papyrus fragments were found at Wadi al-Jarf, a Red Sea harbour, recording the work of a mid-ranking official named Merer in about the twenty-seventh year of Khufu's reign. His team hauled fine white limestone by boat from the quarries at Tura, across the river and up a canal, to "Akhet-Khufu", the pyramid under construction. It is the oldest inscribed papyrus known, and the only firsthand account of building the Great Pyramid that exists.
Who did the lifting
Excavation of a workers' settlement south of the plateau, led by Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass, found bakeries, breweries and cattle bones on a scale suggesting rationed provisioning rather than casual labour, alongside a nearby cemetery of workers buried with some care. That evidence has displaced the old picture of slave gangs with one of rotating conscripted crews, fed and housed for the duration of a shift.
What is still guessed at
How the blocks reached height is unresolved. Internal spiral ramps, an external straight ramp, and combinations of both have all been proposed; no ramp survives intact to settle it, and the papyri describe delivery to the site, not the final lift.