The Short Version
The claim is not supported by modern archaeological evidence. Decades of excavations at Giza—including workers' villages with bakeries, breweries, and cemeteries with honorable burials—along with the Wadi el-Jarf papyri documenting skilled, well-rewarded laborers, consistently show the Great Pyramid was built by organized Egyptian citizens under a corvée (seasonal civic labor) system, not by enslaved people. The "slave-built" narrative traces to Herodotus and popular culture, not to primary evidence.