Most of the animals around there at that time were considered too valuable to risk on work like that. Human lives had little worth and could be risked.

Why don't we use animals to build large structures today? Because they don't have opposable thumbs and are quite hard to train into construction workers anyway. And you certainly don't want a frightened ox perching on a precarious narrow platform hundreds of feet in the air next to your workers and fragile materials.

The only part of the process where animals would really make sense is transporting from the quarry to the construction site. In Egypt, that shipment used the Nile. Turns out using a boat is a lot easier than domesticating fish and training them to do the job. You could say animals would be useful from the water's edge to the pyramid, but that was probably too short of a distance to bother introducing such a complication when you already have to have lots of human workers on hand. We still have people transporting many heavy construction loads manually for short distances today where we could be using machines or animals.

Also, from my googling, it looks like donkeys were the only available beasts of burden. But they were used on farms, not sure if they were used for any sort of transportation.

According to https://www.livescience.com/32616-how-were-the-egyptian-pyramids-built-.html they did import animals to the pyramid construction sites... to feed the workers.

"Most of the animals around there at that time were considered too valuable to risk on work like that. Human lives had little worth and could be risked."

I disagree. Old Kingdom Egypt did not know slavery. The workers building the pyramids were well fed and received medical care (check out Mark Lehner's publications if you're interested in the archaeological evidence). Some of them were even literate, as evidenced by them leaving graffiti on the blocks they transported.

As for the value attributed to human life in general, please consider these excepts from Papyrus Westcar:
Then His Majesty said: "Is it true what one says? Can you join a severed head?”.
And Djedi said: “Yes, I can, Sovereign, my Lord”.
Then His Majesty said: “Have a prisoner brought to me from the prisons, so that he may be executed”.
But Djedi said: "Not, pray, with a human being, Sovereign, my Lord! Behold, it cannot be commanded that one does this to the noble cattle”.
And so a goose was brought to him. Its head was cut off...
The magician refuses to use a human, even a criminal, for his magic trick. The "noble cattle" in this translation is literally the "cattle of the gods". Humans are therefore subordinated to the gods directly. And even their king, the absolute monarch, cannot command them to be used for just anything.

And from another episode:
But the fish-shaped turquoise pendant of one of the strokers has fallen into the water and now she has stopped rowing, which has upset her entire gang. When I said to her 'Why is it that you do not row', she said to me 'My fish-shaped turquoise pendant has fallen into the water'. And when I said to her ‘ ow, and behold, I will replace it', she said to me 'I prefer my own possession to a copy of it'.'

Then the chief lector priest Djadjamankh said his magic spell and he placed one side of the water of the lake upon the other and he found the pendant lying on a shard. He took it and gave it back to its owner.
Please consider that this "stroker" is a servant woman, possibly a royal concubine, who was ordered to row the king across a lake.
If human life was of little value, and servants counted for nothing, would not the king have punished the servant for refusing to row?
Instead, the king offers to replace her lost jewelry. But she politely refuses even this. Again, she isn't punished, but her request granted: the magician steps in to get her lost pendant back...



Also, from my googling, it looks like donkeys were the only available beasts of burden.

Correct. This is Old Kingdom Egypt. Early Bronze Age. We're talking mostly Neolithic technology, folks! Using an animal to carry and pull for you was a fairly new idea. They had no wagons at that time, they didn't ride and horses and camels had not yet been introduced in Egypt at all.
Donkeys were loaded with baskets to carry burden, and oxen were used to pull ploughs - that's what we know from depictions in the tombs.
They didn't have very efficient forms of yokes and harnesses yet, so while a pair of oxen could probably pull a light wooden plough, I'm wondering whether the Egyptians could have effectively harnessed them to pull stone blocks up to the construction site.
Not sure if that possibility didn't occur to them, or if they just didn't think it to be effective...

They tried but the animals kept getting smushed under the blocks and gumming up the works.

They tried but the animals kept getting smushed under the blocks and gumming up the works — frank

lol, well, that's a valid explanation for all the bones of cattle that Mark Lehner's expeditions found... the oxen kept getting smushed. And since they didn't want the meat to spoil, they ate them, of course...

Incidentally, this proves that the popular German meat dish, Schnitzel, was actually invented in Egypt.
A proper Schnitzel involves the meat getting pounded until it's all flat and then covered in flour and bread crumbs - clearly an imitation of the stone-smushed oxen covered in desert sand.

A proper Schnitzel involves the meat getting pounded until it's all flat and then covered in flour and bread crumbs - clearly an imitation of the stone-smushed oxen covered in desert sand — WerMaat

But where does sauerkraut come from?

Well, we can only speculate... But:
1. the Egyptians considered a type of lettuce an aphrosidiac. The plant was sacred to Min, who was always depicted with an erect phallus.
2. we know that there were intercontinental trade routes in the Bronze Age connecting Nothern Africa with Europe up to the Baltic Sea
3. If you want to trade lettuce over a long distance, you need to find a way to preserve it. Pickling it might work.

... Just saying...

The plant was sacred to Min, who was always depicted with an erect phallus. — WerMaat

I don't think I'm going to be able to eat bratwurst and sauerkraut anymore.

Oh, who am I kidding? I'll eat it.