The archaeologists are the grave robbers.

Google it.

And the Baroque Cycle is a fun fictional treatment of it all

I'd say to sum up, it was from being an agrarian slave state vs a proto-capitalist merchant state with heavy interest in scientific advancement.

I also recommend reading something by Václav Smil. He devotes a lot of effort to show that civilization is energy and vice versa.

He is not as fun to read like Bret Devereaux is, though. Much drier style.

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I am not an expert in Egyptology, but here's my take: For the big, old ones, I'm not sure we'd find much new. There were several purposes for the older, very large pyramids: they were a monument to the pharaohs godly nature and their divine right to rule, they aided pharaoh and others entombed in the passage to the afterlife, and served as propaganda to stand for centuries.

If a pharaoh could not build a lasting tomb, it was a sign of weakness and posed a risk to the pharaohs afterlife. This wasn't a problem in the early period because Egypt was wholly dominant in it's area. Nubia and the surrounding deserts rendered gold, jewels, and stones in untold quantities and the early pharaohs enjoyed this easy abundance of wealth.

The pyramid itself was big on account of it needing to be imposing and monumental, not really for any other purpose. I don't imagine we'd find much additional that we couldnt already with penetrating radar and metal detectors. Grave goods, the sarcophagus, and murals were the most important parts of the entombment. Grave goods, such as figurines, gold, food, clothes, weapons, scepters, were entombed because they were thought to carry over to the afterlife to aid the pharaoh (or whoever was entombed, such as other state officials) on their perilous journey to meet Osiris and spend eternity in the field of reeds. Likewise, the painted murals on the walls of the tomb gave powers and blessings to the pharaoh as well as command of obedience to his ghostly followers. I imagine the wildest find would be evidence of some other variety of these kinds of tomb superstitions.

The newer tombs that had to be built and sealed in secrecy probably would have spent more effort to hide grave goods due to how quickly they might be raided.

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There is always a lot of documentation on what we've found and think we know about the inside of the big pyramids, but if we were actually to deconstruct them brick by brick, what do you think we would find? (hypothetical)

Once the Egyptian kingdom was in it's decline (a hundreds of years period) grave robbery was extremely common and pharaohs and state officials had to find secret places to bury themselves. The on site crews and architects were sometimes killed after completion iirc. In the very early days, pyramid building was a massive public affair because the state had the money to engage in those large structures that could take decades to build. But tombs and pyramids got smaller and smaller as time went on, even settling with burying officials in valley walls rather than constructing whole buildings.

"Hey guys I just watched this funeral yesterday afternoon. There was some really nice stuff in there. Lets go move that 15 ton rock out of the way and take it all!"

That and their civilization was thousands of years old, had mastered so many arts, yet in all their millenia never figured out how to seal a tomb properly.

Except maybe Giza. Im sure there is some crazy stuff buried under it.

Arent these tombs sealed with giant multi-ton stones or something?

Not terribly surprising when many of the grave robbers would have been contemporaries of the burial itself. Combine that with corruption among tomb builders or guards and you end up with a lot of 'lost' tombs that were emptied out long before they're rediscovered again.

Grave robbers already knew where it was…

Grave robbers from thousands of years ago who might have had contemporary sources of info about the locations. As well as state sponsored grave robbery by subsequent pharaohs (some pharaohs didn't really like their predecessors)

Ehh, it's presumed to be that old by a small fringe group, current archeological evidence suggests it was created during the reign of Khafre, who also constructed the second largest pyramid on the Giza plateau. It may be older than that, but if it is it would be by a mere couple of centuries to the early dynastic period, definitely not thousands of years.

Just like 'climbing' everest... with all the sherpas carrying all your crap and holding your hand the whole way.

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Seems like every time we come across a new tomb, robbers have already been there. Took mankind thousands of years to find this, but grave robbers beat em to it every time.

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It's even crazier to realize they were ancient to themselves.

That’s correct, the coffin itself is broken as well

Thank you, that was what I was looking for!