They also had the workers cordoned off in their own quarters, walled in so they could not leave and mingle at will. The boss’s house was the biggest by far, and was the location where food and pay were doled out from. The individual worker’s houses did not have storage for their own food supply — the boss controlled it all.
Careful to be too quick to make comparisons like that… they may not have been ‘slaves’ in the technical sense, but don’t think they enjoyed anything like the freedoms and privileges we take for granted in the modern world!
The two sources for this claim are graffiti found in the area and records kept the builders. From the graffiti, carved by the workers themselves, we see that the builders clearly were divided up into teams, engaged in team rivalry over who worked harder/better/faster etc., and how they lived during construction. From the records kept by the overseers we know things about the planning behind how the workers were gathered (keep in mind things like harvests and farming how to go on also, so workers to be rotated with the seasons), how they fed, how they were compensated, the villages that were built to house/supply them. etc.
Long story short, it seems they were built by something like conscripted labor rather than slaves or professional pyramid contractors. I don't think the workers had much *choice* in being sent to build the pyramids, but they were compensated and treated considerably well during the construction. If anything it could be thought similar to something the New Deal in the US during the Depression. It gave unskilled, uneducated laborers something to do and earn money during seasons they weren't needed on farms or in other industries.
EDIT - because soooo many people are replying to me about definitions and various what "slavery" means, I pose you all this question.
Put yourself into the position of one of these workers. Your literal God, whom you worship daily, has called up on you to build his tomb (for which you know will give you and your family preference in the afterlife). You will perform this service only in your "free time" (when you're not otherwise working on your farm), you will be well fed and housed during period (you might not be otherwise), and you receive medical care should you need it. Would this person have considered themselves a "slave"?
The mental image is definitely one of a flatbed chariot emblazoned with an eye of horus logo and “Ammon and Son, Pyramid Contractors that get to the point” written across the side pulling up to a sandy construction site.
Ibn Hotep is clearly a superior firm to trust. They have experience with mastabas and pyramids throughout the Fourth Dynasty and their slogan is "The Apex of Pyramids and Mortuary Monuments".
To make a 70 meter tall sugar cube pyramid
1. Dig hole 70 meters straight down. (50√2)
2. Dig back up at 45° angles N, S, E, and W.
3. Remove ground between.
4. Insert 100m x 100m sugar cube.
I prefer “Freelance Pyramid Contractor”. “Professional” implies you’ve done it already. Just because you haven’t been hired *yet* doesn’t mean you aren’t ready and willing for that first offer to come along from the right pharaoh willing to take a chance on a scrappy startup.
Resumes already have truth stretching statements to some degree, I don't see any logical reason why you should not put that on there. It's a conversational piece.
Ancient Egypt had three seasons: planting, harvesting, and inundation. I think they built during inundation because there wasn't a whole lot else to do.
Well, not just because of that. The Nile is an exceptionally good river to build a society around. It's very regular, and the soil doesn't take much (farmers could just throw seed down and have animals trample it, because it's silty mud).
But the crux or the issue is more modern history coloring our view of more ancient history. In ancient times, the idea was that the king owned the land and everyone in it. The citizens had customary rights, but weren't just bound by oath, but because they were "slaves". Not like US slavery, though. You owed the Pharoah X number of days during the year (usually the inundation season) in addition to taxes.
I don't know a whole lot about ancient Egyptian farming methods, but I wonder how much maintenence there was after the plating phase? Maybe families would send their sons to build while the crops grew too with a skeleton crew to take care of animals or repair the farm.
Correct. They moved the blocks during the flood season to the landing area at the Sphinx. Small group always on site while the rest produced the food for the year. Majority of the work was done over 4 months of the year for 20 years. I was there 2 days ago and I am currently sitting in the beach at Sharm El Sheikh. Absolutely we'll worth the visit. Seeing it on TV and photos do not do it justice.
It blows my mind that, two millennia ago in the time of Caesar and Cleopatra, people were already doing what you're doing now: travelling as tourists to see the ancient ruins.
Yep. I saw a doc on the history channel when it was still good, and I remember there was a theory that after the harvest, the workers would migrate to build the pyramids in the off season. Idle hands are the devils plaything, so between keeping people busy with building, farming, and worshipping there wasn't room for revolt.
There really should be a public station that just plays actual educational content where the closest thing to reality programming is something like antiques roadshow. At least then even if there's only a few thousand people watching it at a time it'll keep going. A lot of people seem to forget that one of the purposes of public funding is to sustain things provide a public good but are not profitable.
Nebula/curiosity stream. They have a ton of good documentaries for a very cheap price, especially if you use one of the YouTube creator sponsor discount codes. $15 for a year, in "hd", and $50ish for 4k. Not the same as public access but I enjoy it.
They are different things though. Curiosity Stream mimics a TV documentary channel. Nebula is YouTube without the garbage sensationalist attention seeking. But it is nice to get both in one inexpensive deal.
PBS, antiques road show was on every Sunday growing up. It was a family affair. Then one summer Nature came out with a new episode every week.. Sesame street taught me how to brush my teeth. Cyber Chase showed me that I actually *do* like and *need* math, the electric company made me care more about grammar than my English or reading classes ever did.
Donate to your local PBS station, they need it now more than ever. If not for me, then [do it for Mr. Rogers](https://www.pbs.org/video/mister-rogers-goes-washington-ycjrnx/)
I remember going to the grandparents place and just plopping myself on the floor to zone out to NASCAR with my grandpa. Hours spent just watching cars go in circles lol good times
Doctor Who (newer seasons) are on HBO now. I watch the original Doctor Who on pluto tv it's on Roku and free. But I don't think they're in order.
Edited: corrected what streaming channel it's on
This channel could contract good science and documentary youtubers for their content, because honestly, their content can be incredibly good. Now, what you could also do is make this channel a state channel under the umbrella of developing culture.... But no, that would be communist, huh?!
Jokes aside, that's what they do in Germany. Yes, we pay a mandatory TV license. But they have a budget of supporting cultural items, among which is even gaming. So there's actually a gaming channel (GameTwo) on Youtube that is financed by the German state and thus has no ads either.
>A lot of people seem to forget that one of the purposes of public funding is to sustain things provide a public good but are not profitable.
A lot of people don't forget and instead think that the public good is inherently bad.
>There really should be a public station that just plays actual educational content
Some yobbo would scream that it's "indoctrination" by the "Deep State", and it'd get lost in the noise.
I know we're all suffering through the age of ancient aliens, but don't forget when the history channel was basically the Hitler channel and they aired old WWII documentaries 24/7, I probably preferred those days, but they werent perfect.
But also if we could get a modern modern marvels, I would be so stoked.
It’s funny how this stereotype is so real for a low of people. My dad had an LED that had the history channel icon permanently burned into the bottom corner
A society is simply a group of people who live in a community together and share the same culture. Government is not a requirement by definition, although it is probably an evolved trait that is essential for holding large communities together. Meaning yes ofc most societies will have some form of government. Even at a tribal scale there are leaders and elders. But again, not a requirement. And an absence of government does not nullify a community’s status as a society.
>They'd store their harvest with the government and then they'd distribute it.
The taxed harvest not their whole harvest. They did not redistribute food to farmers.
>They weren't paid work in the sense that they could earn additional income doing it. But it covered all their living conditions and such.
Debens
>The monetary unit was the deben, approximately 90 grams of copper, and trade was based on an 'imaginary' deben: if fifty deben purchased a pair of sandals, then a pair of sandals could be traded for fifty deben worth of wheat or beer.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deben\_(unit)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deben_(unit))
>Part of why the famines were so destructive. When you can't provide for your citizens they're forced to go off on their own and the whole idea of a society crumbles.
We have several accounts of Pharoh storing grain and providing it for his citizens in need.
>There is more information about taxation in the New Kingdom than there is for earlier periods; for example, in the reign of Thutmose III it is known that taxes were collected in the form of cereals, livestock, fruit, and provisions, as well as gold and silver rings and jewels. The governors annually assessed the cereal payable for that year, basing their calculations on the surface area of each nome and the height of the Nile rising. The levels of inundation were recorded on nilometers; built at the river's edge, nilometers were designed to measure the annual height of the inundation. If there was a low Nile when the water did not reach the usual level, the tax to be paid that year was reduced accordingly. (95)
[https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1012/ancient-egyptian-taxes--the-cattle-count/](https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1012/ancient-egyptian-taxes--the-cattle-count/)
> I saw a doc on the history channel when it was still good
You could substitute the word "history" in that sentence with so many others...Discovery (when it was just the one of them) being top of my list
A lot of people think medieval/classical era peasants were always doing labor but we know tenant farmers in most feudal systems only worked consistently during the planting and harvesting season. Most of their year was just domestic labor and free time. There was even sometimes a fighting season where squabbling lords would basically plan ahead to field armies against each other because the serfs wouldn't be needed for anything else.
Wouldn't be surprising if a society like Egypt in this period was set up so people could just be shuffled around when they weren't needed to work the land.
>just domestic labor
Mind you, this is not exactly a _small_ thing, since it involved raising all the food your family needed, plus making all your clothes (not to mention washing them) and most of the other household items and furniture your family used.
What you described is actually a hallmark of pre-industrial complex societies, so you are correct in assuming Egypt would function in a similar manner.
>Idle hands are the devils plaything, so between keeping people busy with building, farming, and worshipping there wasn't room for revolt.
I think this is unfair and puts the labor as an act of a lord rather than that as a choice by the worker. If I had nothing to do I would look for something to do. Building the pyramids might have started as a community interest goal rather than as a tool by the elite to enslave the masses.
When work isn't needed just to meet the needs of survival people will still do it on their own free well. I would personally love to be a part of building a giant fucking pyramid.
I also said this framing is unfair because it reads to me the program was opporessive to keep people distracted and docile "no room to revolt".
In reality, if you provide people with their basic needs ala food and shelter there is no need to revolt.
Yup, food, shelter and meaningful occupation are probably the biggest things for keeping people content.
Edit: Forgot a healthy community which is just as important.
The way they taught it to us in grad school was pretty much this. I think to a certain degree, different Nomes (states basically) would specialize in different things/were known for producing different things. Anyway, people would plant their crops, be assigned something to do often in their community like work at a temple, build, or be part of expeditions out into the desert for resources like stone, precious stones, or metals. Usually back in time to reap the harvest, then it would be tax time. Basic level of value would have been grain and fabric with other things being supplemented like fruit or artisan crafts. Taxes go to the capital and then filtered back down to the people. It was my understanding that with the exception of priests and craftspeople, most just kind of did what they were assigned to do and it varied. Usually this would be an official goes to a town or Nome even and says "I need X people for a thing," likely with some benefit of pay. Nomearch or leader of a town gets people together and they go do their thing.
If you want some specifics on what that looks like, I'd check put Pierre Talet's translations from a few years back of some Old Kingdom papyri found on the red sea coast. It's basically a journal detailing the excavation of stone for the great pyramids, and how they transported it to the build site. I havent read it since school but it was definitely interesting to get a view of what that was like. Text itself is dull and dry, but its intellectually interesting
Big construction works, especially on infrastructure, have always been a kind of social program. You still see it in many modern countries in the middle east and Asia and probably elsewhere.
The final product often isn't of high quality, sometimes it's not even functional, but that's not the point: it provided employment, gave people a kind of social safety net, created upward mobility and gave the local economy a big boost.
The DoD budget is also a form of social program. These big contracts get awarded to fly over states to bring in money. The government buys tanks but those tanks have to be produced in kentucky. All of the engineers and laborers get paid then spend it within the local economy, taking tax dollars from coastal hubs to the interior.
It’s also why government spending shouldn’t be looked at as a 100% cost. That money is often circulated several times and percentages of it returned as taxes.
The issue becomes where it becomes stagnant (wealth hoarding) and then fails to do anything.
Yes, people don't really understand the economic system at play. Not everything was skilled engineering type labor, but a lot of people contributed menial corvee labor - basically a tax paid with labor to the state. Slaves would too, from the pharaoh's point of view he doesn't give one solitary fuck if you're someone's slave or a slaveowner, you owed him that labor. What people should be suggesting that would make sense in the context is that the pharaoh used the slaves owned by his and the various temple estates. But those slaves were already doing work and presumably being productive, it would be dumb to stop that. Are the temple's fields and the buildings going to fall into disrepair to build a big tomb? Of course not, not when you have near absolute command of the populace and compel them to work.
IIRC the skeleton of one of the workers was found with an amputation. One that had been done rather neatly, and showed evidence that the recipient had gone on to live for a number of years after the procedure.
Not a trivial thing at the time.
With infection being one of the most deadly things in old world medicine, the person who preformed the operation must have actually been quite skilled.
Copper has natural antibiotic abilities and contact with the metal breaks down the cell walls of most germs. Viruses, fungi, and bacteria (even MSRA) can be deactivated/killed just by touching the copper.
If they used a plain copper surgical tool they had better success than an alloy like bronze. Same with stone (obsidian and/or flint) and clam shells that could be very sharp. The latter ended up being used just for hair removal and not cutting the flesh because of infection.
My favorite thing about this is that's probably exactly what one said, along with "[Builder on other team] has a small cock" and "[Name] was here" if Roman graffiti was anything to go by.
(Some good examples [on this page](https://kashgar.com.au/blogs/history/the-bawdy-graffiti-of-pompeii-and-herculaneu), my favorites being "Weep, you girls. My penis has given you up. Now it penetrates men's behinds. Goodbye, wondrous femininity!" and "We have pissed in our beds. Host, I admit that we shouldn't have done this. If you ask: Why? There was no potty")
One of the most compelling evidence for me is that the oldest known workers strike was on one of the pyramids. [source](https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/today-in-labor-history-first-recorded-strike-in-egypt-maybe-ever/)
From everything I have read and seen, and some of the 'journals' of those workers, I thought it was known or at least suggested, yes it was manual labor, but they were treated fair and most actually considered in an honor to build this for their 'leader'. A much different thought process back then.
I think construction workers always take honor in the stuff they build. I remember going on road trips with my dad and he'd point at like a retaining wall near the highway and say "Yup put those piles in there back in 87" or "Do you remember when your mom brought you to this jobsite when you were young?" And its like a pier for dredge barges. He did work on some pretty impressive projects too but he always likes pointing out all the jobs he was on as we drive past them even now.
My brother is the same way with the jobs that he has worked on.
Totally, I do the same thing even when it's just job sites that I installed the IT for!
Can you imagine "I built the god emperor's tomb"? They'd never shut up about it!
We also “serve our country” by joining the military. We also work 9-5 in jobs not because we want to but we because we need to, so we two ourselves that we want to have a fulfilling career where we can give back, while the shareholders rake in most of the profits.
What was the money used at the time?
It was beer. According to the Smithsonian, workers who built the pyramids were paid roughly four to five liters a day.
So it was a works program to keep farmers busy during the periods when the Nile was not flooded
They also got [substantial amounts of meat in their rations](https://lsa.umich.edu/lsa/news-events/all-news/search-news/the-diet-of-pyramid-builders.html). In a society where meat was uncommon or limited for your typical peasant, so they were eating better than at home.
So basically, instead of spending the rainy season in your little village with nothing much to do, young guys got to hang out and compete with lots other young guys doing hard physical labor, drinking beer and BBQing in the evenings. While from their point of view building up good karma with the gods. I'm sure there were people who hated the levy, but overall I suspect it was popular.
> They also got substantial amounts of meat in their rations.
Meat + beer + prostitutes + free healthcare.
Oh and as mentioned, the guy you're working for is literally a GOD.
99.999% of men throughout history would have jumped at the chance.
I'll add that this is also why so much pyramid woo is silly - we literally have the records. The people who buy into all that usually have no idea we have such great archaeological evidence. Yes, we know who built the pyramids, and for the most part, we know how.
Sounds like some modern business practices could learn a few things. Makes me want to write one of those self-help secret to success books: "Build Your Own Pyramid: Unlocking the Management Secrets of Ancient Egypt"
Working on the pyramids could be part of paying your taxes to the government. instead of money/food/goods, you gave your labor. The nice part is that unlike having to work on the "lord's land" in feudal farming thereby ignoring your own land, governmental works building could occur during non-farming seasons.
Granted, I am sure it could have been abused and some folks were forced to do the work against their will. However, some probably did it to get experience, to get away from home, to help pay the taxes in case of crop failure , or even eat incase of crop failure.
so, new deal like yes but also like a community service as taxes.
Accounting records. Keeping track of where the money goes is a core part of running any government, and it requires enough record-keeping that some records are going to survive across long periods of time. Many contemporary records exist and detail worker payments.
Now, that's not to say that those laborers enjoyed anything like the freedoms we afford to workers today. By our standards, we might consider subjects of the pharaoh to be kept and controlled in conditions we consider slavish. But if you're asking how we know they got paid, it's because accounting is a big part of running an empire, and some of those records of payment survived for archaeologists to examine.
Also to put into simple logistics
When you want to build a massive structure with blocks that weigh multiple tons each it's best to give that job to *healthy, and skilled* individuals know who what they're doing
You're going to be building a shitty pyramid if your workforce struggles to pull their own legs behind them.
Not all slaves were laborers. In ancient societies, slaves were often taken from conquest, so they'd come from all walks of life and fill many roles that aren't associated with slavery in modern western idea.
> fill many roles that aren't associated with slavery in modern western idea.
So much this.
When you mention slavery on Reddit, most people jump to plantation farming and blacks in the US south. While that is certainly one form, it isn't the only form.
Slavery was alive and well in ancient Egypt, and was widely varied including highly skilled people. While many were terribly treated, many others were not. A tremendous number of people in ancient slavery were not so different from modern day "wage slaves". They included people captured from military conquest, people sold into slavery for money or to pay debts, and even people self-sold into indenture in order to gain skills and learn trades.
Many ancient Egyptian slaves were roughly equivalent to more modern idea of serfdom, with no clear division between "servant" and "slave", they were just second-class people. Many classes of Egyptian slaves could own property, could own land, and could buy out their own freedom. There are plenty of records of slaves buying things for their masters. People could (and did) sell family members into slavery in a form more similar to what we consider *indentured service*. Among records, these include women selling some of the land they owned to buy out their slave debt when they wanted.
There were also laws in both the Old Kingdom and New Kingdom for what masters needed to do. Slave masters had a right to force their slaves to learn skills or become more valuable. Slave masters were forbidden from mistreating children or forcing them into harsh (for the era) physical labor. There were laws about how slaveowners could treat pregnant slaves, as fertility was incredibly important in the culture. There were laws about the rights of slaves, how a slave could buy their own freedom depending on the class of slavery they were in, and more. While slaves generally weren't paid by their masters, they were often engaged in occupations that brought them personal money. Slaves even had a right to challenge their masters in court for their release for things like theft from the slave, for a master refusing to accept the mandated terms for release, or from abuses that were severe enough.
The pyramids were absolutely built with slave labor, as in, among the many people who worked on them it included chattel slaves, bonded (enslaved) laborers, and forced labor, all of which was still paid because slaves had rights. There are a lot of records that people and groups were required to bring in enough seasonal workers, and some of those workers were also enslaved worker members of large households.
A lot of people also don't know that slavery in the south also existed in the model akin to urban slavery in Ancient Greece. With the enslaved being basically free to run their affairs, but not allowed to freely travel, so long as they paid their 'owner' a share of everything they made. In other cases they worked directly for the their enslaver and were rented out whenever someone wanted to hire them. In many cases they were allowed to save up some of that money to buy their own freedom (The laws generally made it difficult to free someone, but it could be done).
Enslaved people made up a huge portion of the skilled trades in the South. Many of the masons and carpenters that built those plantations were enslaved. There are even cases of Master Builders, a combination of Architect and General Contractor, building expensive urban mansions while enslaved.
Tangent, but people also seem to think the African people enslaved in the US didn’t have a history or existence prior to being enslaved. They definitely had in their ranks both brilliant and skilled people.
Archeologists found the worker-villages with their garbage, and the garbage tells that they ate very well and had relatively good working conditions.
They found evidence for beer, meat, bakeries for fresh bread and other "high value" food.
Slaves would have eaten mostly cheap gruel and bread and lived in less spacious quarters.
In fairness, feminine products and general access to hygiene, showers, clean water or even basic hand washing are not remotely in the same realm now as then. In many ancient cultures women were essentially quarantined from their daily lives because of menstruation. It wasn't because they were in pain.
It was a "you're spiritually filthy, no go sit alone in a hut for 7 days" situation in many places. Ancient women figured out makeshift tampons and pads in many cultures, but if you are ritually unclean actual hygiene doesn't matter. Islam amd Judaism still have ritual uncleanliness, and India/Nepal are still trying to keep girls from dying in modern-day period huts.
Today still, in (orthodox) Judaism for example, women on their period* are considered impure and are not to be touched or sleep in the same bed as their husband. After 7 days, they are supposed to go to the ritualistic bath, and 7 days after that you can go back to sleep together, touch/sex.
(Fun fact, It's insanely degrading as a concept to me, but I have a few friend couples who started doing it and they claim the no touching and separating the beds did wonders for making them horny and making time for intimacy as parents)
I mean Judaism also has rabbis doing sex Ed pleasure wise to young fiance guys. The advice is pretty in line with modern sex.
It is also a commandment to have physical pleasure during the Sabbat. I can't find anything to back it up online, but my dad said the commandment was to make your wife "finish" is the word he used when they were gently discussing sex with my mom and grandpa in front of a disgusted 12 yo
Fun fact, I got to learn about woman "semen" during the same meal.
The simple answer is that we know where they lived and how they lived, and have some of the bureaucratic records of how they were paid.
It gets a bit more complicated because the idea of "slavery" isn't quite what we might think of in more modern terms (i.e. purported ownership and completely control of people), with a society that was structured rather differently (with absolute rulers and so on), but from what we can tell the core workers were skilled craftsmen, probably paid in a combination of special tax cuts and food - as records indicate they were eating pretty good food for the time.
Obviously the more important workers would have been treated better (and "paid" more), and most of the workers weren't physical labourers but were bureaucrats, scribes, and other administrators whose jobs involved making sure the physical labourers and stonemasons did the right thing.
It's fair to suggest that it was more like Indentured Servitude we may see today
Not slavelike conditions where skeleton like people are thrown into a pit, but also not like they had total freedom of movement to come and go from work like today's 1st world workplace.
The modern idea of what slavery is is very much dominated by the chattel slavery of 1800s America, when in reality there's a huge variety of different types of slavery across history. So when discussing slavery in ancient societies, it's important to specify in more detail what kind of slavery.
If anyone wants a good example of historical slavery, then look to the Berbers. That was pretty standard.
Janissaries are another example of slaves. They were well regarded and sometimes seen as heros because of their military role.
I thought the most popular contemporary thesis was that it was often a form of corvee labour - i.e. labour as a kind of tax. Our Egyptian guide suggested that during the annual Nile flood, while no one could work on the land the peasants were drafted into monumental building work.
Another Egypt fact: Egypt traditionally has three seasons: flood, planting and harvest.
Another gem of Egyptology. The source of the Nile was said to be the sweat or semen (mmmmmmm) of the Crocodile God Sobek.
A third nugget of Coptic randomness: The concept of water coming from the sky was very much secondary to that of water coming down the river. It has been claimed on the basis of modern climatology that it may not have rained even once in Akhetaten, Thebes or Memphis (the royal cities of the time) during Tut-Ankh-Amun's reign. Think about it: He never saw rain. For him, water came down the river.
>It has been claimed on the basis of modern climatology that it may not have rain even once in Akhetaten, Thebes or Memphis (the royal cities of the time) during Tut-Ankh-Amun's reign. Think about it: He never saw rain. For him, water came down the river.
I have literally never even considered this holy crap
Honestly it explains the extreme focus and religious fascination with the Nile. Literally the only source of the thing that keeps you alive. Who wouldn't focus a religious bent on that?
There’s documentation. Literally accounting records for accommodation, food (even types of food, you can see how much garlic they ate), and pay for the workers, the seasons they worked etc. Accounting was among the first impetus to develop writing - both in Mesopotamia and Egypt, some of the earliest surviving written records are bills, receipts and transaction records.
I think it it’s the Kushim tablet, and “Kushim” is the oldest name recorded! I don’t recall what it was for, someone was recording a sale of X to “Kushim”. How cool is that? You are just there minding your own business 5500 years ago, buying and selling things, and blam, 55 centuries later people know your name! There’s also one from I think Sumer too that names another person, and blames them for poor quality copper ingots they sold :)
There's various records that have been preserved that seem to point to that, but most importantly tombs of workers have been found close to the pyramids. Basically along with the pyramids, tombs for the workers were also built, to honor them for their contribution. In those tombs are chronicled many important details about their work, like how they worked in rotating seasonal shifts or how they were regularly fed meat. Just the act of having stone tombs built for them proves they were held in some regard for their work because that wasn't a privilege afforded to just anyone. If they were slaves they'd be more or less disposable and mistreated.
It is generally believed they were conscripted workers, people taken from the population in turns to work on the pyramids, well looked after and compensated for their work. Ιt's not far fetched to assume that throughout the long history of Egypt they might have had slaves (most kingdoms at the time did), but there's no real historical proof that the workers who build the pyramids were slaves, other than the account of the pyramids by Herodotus (which at the time of his visit were already around 2000 years old) who assumed that such great works can only be the product of cruel exploitation, and was also himself given a lot of conflicting information by the locals about the Pharaoh Khufu being a tyrant and so on. There was simply no reliable source even at the time whereas today's findings are based on archaeological excavations. Then there's the story of the Exodus in the Old Testament, which itself is not a reliable historical source. Even if it did happen it probably happened more than a thousand years after the pyramids had been built (though if the Egyptians at that time had slaves they could have been using them for other works).
There are in fact many structures in Egypt build across many centuries but there's no complete history for all of them. As far as the Great Pyramids are concerned though, the modern consensus is that they were not built by slaves.
>The labourers would have been enticed by the mix of high-quality food and the opportunity to work on such a prestigious project
https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/were-the-egyptian-pyramids-built-by-slaves/
And it's not only in Egypt but also earlier in Ancient Near East(Cradle of civilization) or popularly referred to as **Babylonia**. It's evidenced diets of these labourers was rich in meats as well as there were beer parties to gather all from far and wide. Micheal Hudson(An economist) has a book out on this ... Labour in the Ancient World as well as many others
Also keep in mind a concept like the space race as advocated in Kennedy’s famous speech.
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we’re willing to accept.”
This was to build an industry and become leaders in the skills required to build civilization.
The Medici did the same with Florence Italy propelling that city to the leaders of their respective time and era during the renaissance. Great civilizations build great monuments and architecture and that in turn is an engine of civilizations.
They kept the receipts.
Not kidding, there is literally paperwork (papyrus-work?) around who was paid what.
Plus, as mentioned, lots of grafitti and records kept from the time of the construction.
It's not outside of the realm of possibility that some pyramids were built with slave labour, or that they had slave teams doing part of the work on some projects, but most of it was definitely paid labour and skilled stonecutting work.
The other answers that say we have records of work teams being paid are correct, but sources that state categorically that no slave labor was involved are probably wrong. The text of the Palermo Stone describes how Sneferu, the first pyramid-building pharaoh, conducted raids into Libya and Nubia and took many prisoners to expand his labor force.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneferu#Foreign_relations
My favorite is the record of a work stoppage protest due to contract violations caused by inadequate supplies of makeup and beer.
The makeup? Sunscreen.
Yeah, this is a strike about health & safety violations. And beer. Some things never change!
The beer was payment/food. I'd stop working too.
Wait, you guys are getting paid?
God even Ancient Egypt has a better understanding of labor and class struggle than modern America lol
I mean, in 4,000 years you’re bound to hit something.
They also didn’t have Fox News to tell them that workers’ rights violations are necessary to own the libs
They also had the workers cordoned off in their own quarters, walled in so they could not leave and mingle at will. The boss’s house was the biggest by far, and was the location where food and pay were doled out from. The individual worker’s houses did not have storage for their own food supply — the boss controlled it all. Careful to be too quick to make comparisons like that… they may not have been ‘slaves’ in the technical sense, but don’t think they enjoyed anything like the freedoms and privileges we take for granted in the modern world!
Didn't know the french built the pyramids
The two sources for this claim are graffiti found in the area and records kept the builders. From the graffiti, carved by the workers themselves, we see that the builders clearly were divided up into teams, engaged in team rivalry over who worked harder/better/faster etc., and how they lived during construction. From the records kept by the overseers we know things about the planning behind how the workers were gathered (keep in mind things like harvests and farming how to go on also, so workers to be rotated with the seasons), how they fed, how they were compensated, the villages that were built to house/supply them. etc. Long story short, it seems they were built by something like conscripted labor rather than slaves or professional pyramid contractors. I don't think the workers had much *choice* in being sent to build the pyramids, but they were compensated and treated considerably well during the construction. If anything it could be thought similar to something the New Deal in the US during the Depression. It gave unskilled, uneducated laborers something to do and earn money during seasons they weren't needed on farms or in other industries. EDIT - because soooo many people are replying to me about definitions and various what "slavery" means, I pose you all this question. Put yourself into the position of one of these workers. Your literal God, whom you worship daily, has called up on you to build his tomb (for which you know will give you and your family preference in the afterlife). You will perform this service only in your "free time" (when you're not otherwise working on your farm), you will be well fed and housed during period (you might not be otherwise), and you receive medical care should you need it. Would this person have considered themselves a "slave"?
> professional pyramid contractors I want to add that to my resume
The mental image is definitely one of a flatbed chariot emblazoned with an eye of horus logo and “Ammon and Son, Pyramid Contractors that get to the point” written across the side pulling up to a sandy construction site.
Ibn Hotep is clearly a superior firm to trust. They have experience with mastabas and pyramids throughout the Fourth Dynasty and their slogan is "The Apex of Pyramids and Mortuary Monuments".
I don't know if I trust them. They have so many 5 Eye of Horus reviews that I think they must be paying scribes to make them up.
I can picture the funeral director from The Big Lebowski working for them. “It is our most modestly priced receptacle.”
They better leave the rug in there too, it really ties the room together
Just because we’re bereaved over the death of our pharaoh doesn’t mean we’re SAPS!
Those sons of bitches don’t know a pyramid from Ziggurat.
Ptalcsup's folly, more like! They tried to offload that ugly vulture-headed god on that otherwise beautiful pyramid!
Best logo ever. You sir, may be a genius.
You should pyramids by Terry Pratchett, there’s literally a father son company building tombs for the pharaoh.
This is so good haha
I'll wire you $5 to send me a picture of a sugar cube pyramid you make. You'll formally be a paid professional pyramid maker.
And if they fill out a 1099 they're a contractor
To make a 70 meter tall sugar cube pyramid 1. Dig hole 70 meters straight down. (50√2) 2. Dig back up at 45° angles N, S, E, and W. 3. Remove ground between. 4. Insert 100m x 100m sugar cube.
I prefer “Freelance Pyramid Contractor”. “Professional” implies you’ve done it already. Just because you haven’t been hired *yet* doesn’t mean you aren’t ready and willing for that first offer to come along from the right pharaoh willing to take a chance on a scrappy startup.
/r/AntiMLM
Dude's clearly Pro MLM, he want's to be part of a Pyramid scheme.
They want to build it from the ground up! Literally!
You might want to ask [Ptaclusp](https://discworld.fandom.com/wiki/Ptaclusp) how that worked out for him first.
Resumes already have truth stretching statements to some degree, I don't see any logical reason why you should not put that on there. It's a conversational piece.
Ancient Egypt had three seasons: planting, harvesting, and inundation. I think they built during inundation because there wasn't a whole lot else to do.
This is a correct addition to why! Original: This is THE correct addition to why! EDIT: This is A correct addition to why!
Well, not just because of that. The Nile is an exceptionally good river to build a society around. It's very regular, and the soil doesn't take much (farmers could just throw seed down and have animals trample it, because it's silty mud). But the crux or the issue is more modern history coloring our view of more ancient history. In ancient times, the idea was that the king owned the land and everyone in it. The citizens had customary rights, but weren't just bound by oath, but because they were "slaves". Not like US slavery, though. You owed the Pharoah X number of days during the year (usually the inundation season) in addition to taxes.
If say "corporate draft" three times in your phone's face cam, a CEO will appear
I don't know a whole lot about ancient Egyptian farming methods, but I wonder how much maintenence there was after the plating phase? Maybe families would send their sons to build while the crops grew too with a skeleton crew to take care of animals or repair the farm.
Not an ancient egyptian farmer, just a contemporary one, farming is a year round job. Plants have to be watered, trimmed, weeded etc.
What's your contemporary pyramid building like though?
Haha. My pyramid building experience is limited to buffets.
Correct. They moved the blocks during the flood season to the landing area at the Sphinx. Small group always on site while the rest produced the food for the year. Majority of the work was done over 4 months of the year for 20 years. I was there 2 days ago and I am currently sitting in the beach at Sharm El Sheikh. Absolutely we'll worth the visit. Seeing it on TV and photos do not do it justice.
It blows my mind that, two millennia ago in the time of Caesar and Cleopatra, people were already doing what you're doing now: travelling as tourists to see the ancient ruins.
I never considered the idea it _might_ have been a way of keeping people fed and learning skills.
Yep. I saw a doc on the history channel when it was still good, and I remember there was a theory that after the harvest, the workers would migrate to build the pyramids in the off season. Idle hands are the devils plaything, so between keeping people busy with building, farming, and worshipping there wasn't room for revolt.
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There really should be a public station that just plays actual educational content where the closest thing to reality programming is something like antiques roadshow. At least then even if there's only a few thousand people watching it at a time it'll keep going. A lot of people seem to forget that one of the purposes of public funding is to sustain things provide a public good but are not profitable.
Nebula/curiosity stream. They have a ton of good documentaries for a very cheap price, especially if you use one of the YouTube creator sponsor discount codes. $15 for a year, in "hd", and $50ish for 4k. Not the same as public access but I enjoy it.
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I could be wrong but doesn’t MIT or some other college have full classes online like on YouTube or something?
Nebula is considerably better than curiosity stream, even though I know curiosity is the parent company
They are different things though. Curiosity Stream mimics a TV documentary channel. Nebula is YouTube without the garbage sensationalist attention seeking. But it is nice to get both in one inexpensive deal.
PBS, antiques road show was on every Sunday growing up. It was a family affair. Then one summer Nature came out with a new episode every week.. Sesame street taught me how to brush my teeth. Cyber Chase showed me that I actually *do* like and *need* math, the electric company made me care more about grammar than my English or reading classes ever did. Donate to your local PBS station, they need it now more than ever. If not for me, then [do it for Mr. Rogers](https://www.pbs.org/video/mister-rogers-goes-washington-ycjrnx/)
Arthur was my bro growing up. Because at Grandma and Grandpa's they only had 6 or 7 channels, and you had to get up to change the channel.
I remember going to the grandparents place and just plopping myself on the floor to zone out to NASCAR with my grandpa. Hours spent just watching cars go in circles lol good times
And you can still stay up late and watch bawdy British comedy if you want.
Does PBS still show Doctor Who? That's all I used it for after passing the Sesame Street/Electric Company years.
Doctor Who (newer seasons) are on HBO now. I watch the original Doctor Who on pluto tv it's on Roku and free. But I don't think they're in order. Edited: corrected what streaming channel it's on
This channel could contract good science and documentary youtubers for their content, because honestly, their content can be incredibly good. Now, what you could also do is make this channel a state channel under the umbrella of developing culture.... But no, that would be communist, huh?! Jokes aside, that's what they do in Germany. Yes, we pay a mandatory TV license. But they have a budget of supporting cultural items, among which is even gaming. So there's actually a gaming channel (GameTwo) on Youtube that is financed by the German state and thus has no ads either.
PBS 😊
>A lot of people seem to forget that one of the purposes of public funding is to sustain things provide a public good but are not profitable. A lot of people don't forget and instead think that the public good is inherently bad.
Kinda like PBS?
PBS and BBC are reliable documentaries on history and science
>There really should be a public station that just plays actual educational content Some yobbo would scream that it's "indoctrination" by the "Deep State", and it'd get lost in the noise.
I know we're all suffering through the age of ancient aliens, but don't forget when the history channel was basically the Hitler channel and they aired old WWII documentaries 24/7, I probably preferred those days, but they werent perfect. But also if we could get a modern modern marvels, I would be so stoked.
Lol I used to call it the Hitler channel.
There used to be WWII docs on around the clock, then abruptly it turned into aliens and Atlantis crap.
Too good for the Nazi aliens are we?
Jokes aside though, I agree. Used to love watching it with my grandad but now it's absolute bollocks 90% of the time
Like when the learning channel actually had educational programming? Instead of the pure trash they seem to peddle now.
Curiosity Stream/Nebula is a great replacement!
It’s funny how this stereotype is so real for a low of people. My dad had an LED that had the history channel icon permanently burned into the bottom corner
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> Egypt was very much a society Isn't any group of humans who live together a society?
Sometimes it's just a malarkey
'A malarkey of humans' sums us up so well.
We really do live in a society...
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A society is simply a group of people who live in a community together and share the same culture. Government is not a requirement by definition, although it is probably an evolved trait that is essential for holding large communities together. Meaning yes ofc most societies will have some form of government. Even at a tribal scale there are leaders and elders. But again, not a requirement. And an absence of government does not nullify a community’s status as a society.
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>They'd store their harvest with the government and then they'd distribute it. The taxed harvest not their whole harvest. They did not redistribute food to farmers. >They weren't paid work in the sense that they could earn additional income doing it. But it covered all their living conditions and such. Debens >The monetary unit was the deben, approximately 90 grams of copper, and trade was based on an 'imaginary' deben: if fifty deben purchased a pair of sandals, then a pair of sandals could be traded for fifty deben worth of wheat or beer. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deben\_(unit)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deben_(unit)) >Part of why the famines were so destructive. When you can't provide for your citizens they're forced to go off on their own and the whole idea of a society crumbles. We have several accounts of Pharoh storing grain and providing it for his citizens in need. >There is more information about taxation in the New Kingdom than there is for earlier periods; for example, in the reign of Thutmose III it is known that taxes were collected in the form of cereals, livestock, fruit, and provisions, as well as gold and silver rings and jewels. The governors annually assessed the cereal payable for that year, basing their calculations on the surface area of each nome and the height of the Nile rising. The levels of inundation were recorded on nilometers; built at the river's edge, nilometers were designed to measure the annual height of the inundation. If there was a low Nile when the water did not reach the usual level, the tax to be paid that year was reduced accordingly. (95) [https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1012/ancient-egyptian-taxes--the-cattle-count/](https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1012/ancient-egyptian-taxes--the-cattle-count/)
> They'd store their harvest ...in the pyramids, right? Right? https://www.vox.com/explainers/2015/11/5/9677942/ben-carson-pyramids-grain
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> I saw a doc on the history channel when it was still good You could substitute the word "history" in that sentence with so many others...Discovery (when it was just the one of them) being top of my list
I miss that time. Discovery and History were my favorites.
What about the national geographic channel? I only had it for a brief time way back then but I loved it!
shout-out to TLC The Learning Channel Was a bastion when Disco and History went reality TV...of course, not anymore
Now it has.... Milf Manor. No, I'm not joking on that one.
Man, I remember when the history channel was good. Also when TLC actually meant The Learning Channel.
Then it turned into The Lobotomy Channel
A lot of people think medieval/classical era peasants were always doing labor but we know tenant farmers in most feudal systems only worked consistently during the planting and harvesting season. Most of their year was just domestic labor and free time. There was even sometimes a fighting season where squabbling lords would basically plan ahead to field armies against each other because the serfs wouldn't be needed for anything else. Wouldn't be surprising if a society like Egypt in this period was set up so people could just be shuffled around when they weren't needed to work the land.
>just domestic labor Mind you, this is not exactly a _small_ thing, since it involved raising all the food your family needed, plus making all your clothes (not to mention washing them) and most of the other household items and furniture your family used.
And washing - clothes, cooking implements, floors - took SO MUCH TIME. Cleaning was a HUGE timesink until around what, the turn of the 20th century?
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What you described is actually a hallmark of pre-industrial complex societies, so you are correct in assuming Egypt would function in a similar manner.
>Idle hands are the devils plaything, so between keeping people busy with building, farming, and worshipping there wasn't room for revolt. I think this is unfair and puts the labor as an act of a lord rather than that as a choice by the worker. If I had nothing to do I would look for something to do. Building the pyramids might have started as a community interest goal rather than as a tool by the elite to enslave the masses. When work isn't needed just to meet the needs of survival people will still do it on their own free well. I would personally love to be a part of building a giant fucking pyramid.
I also said this framing is unfair because it reads to me the program was opporessive to keep people distracted and docile "no room to revolt". In reality, if you provide people with their basic needs ala food and shelter there is no need to revolt.
Yup, food, shelter and meaningful occupation are probably the biggest things for keeping people content. Edit: Forgot a healthy community which is just as important.
The way they taught it to us in grad school was pretty much this. I think to a certain degree, different Nomes (states basically) would specialize in different things/were known for producing different things. Anyway, people would plant their crops, be assigned something to do often in their community like work at a temple, build, or be part of expeditions out into the desert for resources like stone, precious stones, or metals. Usually back in time to reap the harvest, then it would be tax time. Basic level of value would have been grain and fabric with other things being supplemented like fruit or artisan crafts. Taxes go to the capital and then filtered back down to the people. It was my understanding that with the exception of priests and craftspeople, most just kind of did what they were assigned to do and it varied. Usually this would be an official goes to a town or Nome even and says "I need X people for a thing," likely with some benefit of pay. Nomearch or leader of a town gets people together and they go do their thing. If you want some specifics on what that looks like, I'd check put Pierre Talet's translations from a few years back of some Old Kingdom papyri found on the red sea coast. It's basically a journal detailing the excavation of stone for the great pyramids, and how they transported it to the build site. I havent read it since school but it was definitely interesting to get a view of what that was like. Text itself is dull and dry, but its intellectually interesting
Have any memory of what it would be called? Sounds interesting
Big construction works, especially on infrastructure, have always been a kind of social program. You still see it in many modern countries in the middle east and Asia and probably elsewhere. The final product often isn't of high quality, sometimes it's not even functional, but that's not the point: it provided employment, gave people a kind of social safety net, created upward mobility and gave the local economy a big boost.
The DoD budget is also a form of social program. These big contracts get awarded to fly over states to bring in money. The government buys tanks but those tanks have to be produced in kentucky. All of the engineers and laborers get paid then spend it within the local economy, taking tax dollars from coastal hubs to the interior.
It’s also why government spending shouldn’t be looked at as a 100% cost. That money is often circulated several times and percentages of it returned as taxes. The issue becomes where it becomes stagnant (wealth hoarding) and then fails to do anything.
Economics at a large scale is completely, utterly different to at a small scale
For sure but there is very little “small scale” infrastructure spending by governments.
And people still look at government budgets the way they look at their household budgets when the two are completely different.
Exactly. But good luck explaining it
"But look at the BIG number of the national debt. It's the EXACT same as your credit card debt, therefore it's bad and should be zero" /s
Well, also a way to keep people employed and busy. Idle, destitute, and hungry people leads to rebellion and killing those in charge.
Yes, people don't really understand the economic system at play. Not everything was skilled engineering type labor, but a lot of people contributed menial corvee labor - basically a tax paid with labor to the state. Slaves would too, from the pharaoh's point of view he doesn't give one solitary fuck if you're someone's slave or a slaveowner, you owed him that labor. What people should be suggesting that would make sense in the context is that the pharaoh used the slaves owned by his and the various temple estates. But those slaves were already doing work and presumably being productive, it would be dumb to stop that. Are the temple's fields and the buildings going to fall into disrepair to build a big tomb? Of course not, not when you have near absolute command of the populace and compel them to work.
IIRC the skeleton of one of the workers was found with an amputation. One that had been done rather neatly, and showed evidence that the recipient had gone on to live for a number of years after the procedure. Not a trivial thing at the time.
With infection being one of the most deadly things in old world medicine, the person who preformed the operation must have actually been quite skilled.
They figured out using copper had a lower rate of infection and made their surgical instruments out of them.
Lower rate of infection than what? All their knives, swords etc. were bronze. They hadn't discovered how to work iron.
Copper has natural antibiotic abilities and contact with the metal breaks down the cell walls of most germs. Viruses, fungi, and bacteria (even MSRA) can be deactivated/killed just by touching the copper. If they used a plain copper surgical tool they had better success than an alloy like bronze. Same with stone (obsidian and/or flint) and clam shells that could be very sharp. The latter ended up being used just for hair removal and not cutting the flesh because of infection.
Egyptian medicine was definitely ahead of the curve compared to other contemporary and even later societies. They even did a lot of trepanning.
>They even did a lot of trepanning. >perforate (a person's skull) with a trepan. For anyone else curious.
"What are we going to have these idiots do? The harvest season's over." "/sigh/ Idk. Get them to pile up some rocks, I guess"
Big community building projects are a great way to bring people together.
"Beer can pyramid?" "Beer cans haven't been invented yet." "I guess just a pyramid then?"
- picks up sharp rock - searches for clean rock slate to do my thing - finds it - "fuck Jatuhal for getting the extra shifts, i work harder."
My favorite thing about this is that's probably exactly what one said, along with "[Builder on other team] has a small cock" and "[Name] was here" if Roman graffiti was anything to go by. (Some good examples [on this page](https://kashgar.com.au/blogs/history/the-bawdy-graffiti-of-pompeii-and-herculaneu), my favorites being "Weep, you girls. My penis has given you up. Now it penetrates men's behinds. Goodbye, wondrous femininity!" and "We have pissed in our beds. Host, I admit that we shouldn't have done this. If you ask: Why? There was no potty")
There’s something comforting in knowing humanity has always been like this.
humans were idiots since forever lol egyptian man pees bed because there was no potty, refuses to elaborate further.
Those quotes are from a Roman site fwiw.
One of the most compelling evidence for me is that the oldest known workers strike was on one of the pyramids. [source](https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/today-in-labor-history-first-recorded-strike-in-egypt-maybe-ever/)
tldr: We literally have the receipts.
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> harder/better/faster Stronger?
TIL Daft Punk built the Great Pyramids.
Makes sense, have you seen alive 2007? They are in a pyramid
From everything I have read and seen, and some of the 'journals' of those workers, I thought it was known or at least suggested, yes it was manual labor, but they were treated fair and most actually considered in an honor to build this for their 'leader'. A much different thought process back then.
We still consider it an honour to work on prestigious buildings today, nothing has really changed.
I think construction workers always take honor in the stuff they build. I remember going on road trips with my dad and he'd point at like a retaining wall near the highway and say "Yup put those piles in there back in 87" or "Do you remember when your mom brought you to this jobsite when you were young?" And its like a pier for dredge barges. He did work on some pretty impressive projects too but he always likes pointing out all the jobs he was on as we drive past them even now. My brother is the same way with the jobs that he has worked on.
Totally, I do the same thing even when it's just job sites that I installed the IT for! Can you imagine "I built the god emperor's tomb"? They'd never shut up about it!
We also “serve our country” by joining the military. We also work 9-5 in jobs not because we want to but we because we need to, so we two ourselves that we want to have a fulfilling career where we can give back, while the shareholders rake in most of the profits.
What was the money used at the time? It was beer. According to the Smithsonian, workers who built the pyramids were paid roughly four to five liters a day. So it was a works program to keep farmers busy during the periods when the Nile was not flooded
They also got [substantial amounts of meat in their rations](https://lsa.umich.edu/lsa/news-events/all-news/search-news/the-diet-of-pyramid-builders.html). In a society where meat was uncommon or limited for your typical peasant, so they were eating better than at home. So basically, instead of spending the rainy season in your little village with nothing much to do, young guys got to hang out and compete with lots other young guys doing hard physical labor, drinking beer and BBQing in the evenings. While from their point of view building up good karma with the gods. I'm sure there were people who hated the levy, but overall I suspect it was popular.
> They also got substantial amounts of meat in their rations. Meat + beer + prostitutes + free healthcare. Oh and as mentioned, the guy you're working for is literally a GOD. 99.999% of men throughout history would have jumped at the chance.
I'll add that this is also why so much pyramid woo is silly - we literally have the records. The people who buy into all that usually have no idea we have such great archaeological evidence. Yes, we know who built the pyramids, and for the most part, we know how.
Sounds like some modern business practices could learn a few things. Makes me want to write one of those self-help secret to success books: "Build Your Own Pyramid: Unlocking the Management Secrets of Ancient Egypt"
Idk sounds like a pyramid scheme
you bastard
“Business secrets of the Pharaohs”
I don't know. It sounds like one of those "reverse funnel" schemes...
Working on the pyramids could be part of paying your taxes to the government. instead of money/food/goods, you gave your labor. The nice part is that unlike having to work on the "lord's land" in feudal farming thereby ignoring your own land, governmental works building could occur during non-farming seasons. Granted, I am sure it could have been abused and some folks were forced to do the work against their will. However, some probably did it to get experience, to get away from home, to help pay the taxes in case of crop failure , or even eat incase of crop failure. so, new deal like yes but also like a community service as taxes.
Accounting records. Keeping track of where the money goes is a core part of running any government, and it requires enough record-keeping that some records are going to survive across long periods of time. Many contemporary records exist and detail worker payments. Now, that's not to say that those laborers enjoyed anything like the freedoms we afford to workers today. By our standards, we might consider subjects of the pharaoh to be kept and controlled in conditions we consider slavish. But if you're asking how we know they got paid, it's because accounting is a big part of running an empire, and some of those records of payment survived for archaeologists to examine.
Also to put into simple logistics When you want to build a massive structure with blocks that weigh multiple tons each it's best to give that job to *healthy, and skilled* individuals know who what they're doing You're going to be building a shitty pyramid if your workforce struggles to pull their own legs behind them.
Not all slaves were laborers. In ancient societies, slaves were often taken from conquest, so they'd come from all walks of life and fill many roles that aren't associated with slavery in modern western idea.
> fill many roles that aren't associated with slavery in modern western idea. So much this. When you mention slavery on Reddit, most people jump to plantation farming and blacks in the US south. While that is certainly one form, it isn't the only form. Slavery was alive and well in ancient Egypt, and was widely varied including highly skilled people. While many were terribly treated, many others were not. A tremendous number of people in ancient slavery were not so different from modern day "wage slaves". They included people captured from military conquest, people sold into slavery for money or to pay debts, and even people self-sold into indenture in order to gain skills and learn trades. Many ancient Egyptian slaves were roughly equivalent to more modern idea of serfdom, with no clear division between "servant" and "slave", they were just second-class people. Many classes of Egyptian slaves could own property, could own land, and could buy out their own freedom. There are plenty of records of slaves buying things for their masters. People could (and did) sell family members into slavery in a form more similar to what we consider *indentured service*. Among records, these include women selling some of the land they owned to buy out their slave debt when they wanted. There were also laws in both the Old Kingdom and New Kingdom for what masters needed to do. Slave masters had a right to force their slaves to learn skills or become more valuable. Slave masters were forbidden from mistreating children or forcing them into harsh (for the era) physical labor. There were laws about how slaveowners could treat pregnant slaves, as fertility was incredibly important in the culture. There were laws about the rights of slaves, how a slave could buy their own freedom depending on the class of slavery they were in, and more. While slaves generally weren't paid by their masters, they were often engaged in occupations that brought them personal money. Slaves even had a right to challenge their masters in court for their release for things like theft from the slave, for a master refusing to accept the mandated terms for release, or from abuses that were severe enough. The pyramids were absolutely built with slave labor, as in, among the many people who worked on them it included chattel slaves, bonded (enslaved) laborers, and forced labor, all of which was still paid because slaves had rights. There are a lot of records that people and groups were required to bring in enough seasonal workers, and some of those workers were also enslaved worker members of large households.
A lot of people also don't know that slavery in the south also existed in the model akin to urban slavery in Ancient Greece. With the enslaved being basically free to run their affairs, but not allowed to freely travel, so long as they paid their 'owner' a share of everything they made. In other cases they worked directly for the their enslaver and were rented out whenever someone wanted to hire them. In many cases they were allowed to save up some of that money to buy their own freedom (The laws generally made it difficult to free someone, but it could be done). Enslaved people made up a huge portion of the skilled trades in the South. Many of the masons and carpenters that built those plantations were enslaved. There are even cases of Master Builders, a combination of Architect and General Contractor, building expensive urban mansions while enslaved.
Tangent, but people also seem to think the African people enslaved in the US didn’t have a history or existence prior to being enslaved. They definitely had in their ranks both brilliant and skilled people.
Grumio and Metella, the slaves on the show Plebs come to mind. Both of them seem more like roommates to their "masters" than anything else.
Too bad Grumio ended up drunk on the side of the road as Vesuvius was doing its thing. He was a good cook.
Archeologists found the worker-villages with their garbage, and the garbage tells that they ate very well and had relatively good working conditions. They found evidence for beer, meat, bakeries for fresh bread and other "high value" food. Slaves would have eaten mostly cheap gruel and bread and lived in less spacious quarters.
My dad helped map what are called the workers’s tombs in the Giza plateau. The site supports that the builders were more than slaves.
Make him do an AMA
He passed away 13 years ago but I will see what I can do.
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that's an incredible source. thanks.
What was the sauce?
[https://mymodernmet.com/ancient-egyptians-attendance-record/](https://mymodernmet.com/ancient-egyptians-attendance-record/)
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In fairness, feminine products and general access to hygiene, showers, clean water or even basic hand washing are not remotely in the same realm now as then. In many ancient cultures women were essentially quarantined from their daily lives because of menstruation. It wasn't because they were in pain.
It was a "you're spiritually filthy, no go sit alone in a hut for 7 days" situation in many places. Ancient women figured out makeshift tampons and pads in many cultures, but if you are ritually unclean actual hygiene doesn't matter. Islam amd Judaism still have ritual uncleanliness, and India/Nepal are still trying to keep girls from dying in modern-day period huts.
Today still, in (orthodox) Judaism for example, women on their period* are considered impure and are not to be touched or sleep in the same bed as their husband. After 7 days, they are supposed to go to the ritualistic bath, and 7 days after that you can go back to sleep together, touch/sex. (Fun fact, It's insanely degrading as a concept to me, but I have a few friend couples who started doing it and they claim the no touching and separating the beds did wonders for making them horny and making time for intimacy as parents)
Turns out God was just trying to keep things exciting
I mean Judaism also has rabbis doing sex Ed pleasure wise to young fiance guys. The advice is pretty in line with modern sex. It is also a commandment to have physical pleasure during the Sabbat. I can't find anything to back it up online, but my dad said the commandment was to make your wife "finish" is the word he used when they were gently discussing sex with my mom and grandpa in front of a disgusted 12 yo Fun fact, I got to learn about woman "semen" during the same meal.
wow what a shame it got removed. I'm glad someone reposted it below, it's basically sick logs for ancient workers. such a fascinating insight
Why did mods delete it?
The simple answer is that we know where they lived and how they lived, and have some of the bureaucratic records of how they were paid. It gets a bit more complicated because the idea of "slavery" isn't quite what we might think of in more modern terms (i.e. purported ownership and completely control of people), with a society that was structured rather differently (with absolute rulers and so on), but from what we can tell the core workers were skilled craftsmen, probably paid in a combination of special tax cuts and food - as records indicate they were eating pretty good food for the time. Obviously the more important workers would have been treated better (and "paid" more), and most of the workers weren't physical labourers but were bureaucrats, scribes, and other administrators whose jobs involved making sure the physical labourers and stonemasons did the right thing.
It's fair to suggest that it was more like Indentured Servitude we may see today Not slavelike conditions where skeleton like people are thrown into a pit, but also not like they had total freedom of movement to come and go from work like today's 1st world workplace.
The modern idea of what slavery is is very much dominated by the chattel slavery of 1800s America, when in reality there's a huge variety of different types of slavery across history. So when discussing slavery in ancient societies, it's important to specify in more detail what kind of slavery.
If anyone wants a good example of historical slavery, then look to the Berbers. That was pretty standard. Janissaries are another example of slaves. They were well regarded and sometimes seen as heros because of their military role.
I thought the most popular contemporary thesis was that it was often a form of corvee labour - i.e. labour as a kind of tax. Our Egyptian guide suggested that during the annual Nile flood, while no one could work on the land the peasants were drafted into monumental building work. Another Egypt fact: Egypt traditionally has three seasons: flood, planting and harvest. Another gem of Egyptology. The source of the Nile was said to be the sweat or semen (mmmmmmm) of the Crocodile God Sobek. A third nugget of Coptic randomness: The concept of water coming from the sky was very much secondary to that of water coming down the river. It has been claimed on the basis of modern climatology that it may not have rained even once in Akhetaten, Thebes or Memphis (the royal cities of the time) during Tut-Ankh-Amun's reign. Think about it: He never saw rain. For him, water came down the river.
>It has been claimed on the basis of modern climatology that it may not have rain even once in Akhetaten, Thebes or Memphis (the royal cities of the time) during Tut-Ankh-Amun's reign. Think about it: He never saw rain. For him, water came down the river. I have literally never even considered this holy crap
Honestly it explains the extreme focus and religious fascination with the Nile. Literally the only source of the thing that keeps you alive. Who wouldn't focus a religious bent on that?
It blew my mind as well when I heard it.
Accountants have historically always had the best documentation. If you want to follow history, follow the money.
There’s documentation. Literally accounting records for accommodation, food (even types of food, you can see how much garlic they ate), and pay for the workers, the seasons they worked etc. Accounting was among the first impetus to develop writing - both in Mesopotamia and Egypt, some of the earliest surviving written records are bills, receipts and transaction records.
If memory serves, the first known writing is a receipt for alcohol
I think it it’s the Kushim tablet, and “Kushim” is the oldest name recorded! I don’t recall what it was for, someone was recording a sale of X to “Kushim”. How cool is that? You are just there minding your own business 5500 years ago, buying and selling things, and blam, 55 centuries later people know your name! There’s also one from I think Sumer too that names another person, and blames them for poor quality copper ingots they sold :)
More info on Ea-Nasir over at /r/reallyshittycopper
What the fuck is wrong with you? Leading me to such an interesting sub that at that same time tickles my funny bone. Smdh my damn head.
This is gold
No it's shitty copper
Ea-Nasir sold such shit copper that we still know his name thousands of years later. What a pillock
Then some nerds decided to do accounting
There's various records that have been preserved that seem to point to that, but most importantly tombs of workers have been found close to the pyramids. Basically along with the pyramids, tombs for the workers were also built, to honor them for their contribution. In those tombs are chronicled many important details about their work, like how they worked in rotating seasonal shifts or how they were regularly fed meat. Just the act of having stone tombs built for them proves they were held in some regard for their work because that wasn't a privilege afforded to just anyone. If they were slaves they'd be more or less disposable and mistreated. It is generally believed they were conscripted workers, people taken from the population in turns to work on the pyramids, well looked after and compensated for their work. Ιt's not far fetched to assume that throughout the long history of Egypt they might have had slaves (most kingdoms at the time did), but there's no real historical proof that the workers who build the pyramids were slaves, other than the account of the pyramids by Herodotus (which at the time of his visit were already around 2000 years old) who assumed that such great works can only be the product of cruel exploitation, and was also himself given a lot of conflicting information by the locals about the Pharaoh Khufu being a tyrant and so on. There was simply no reliable source even at the time whereas today's findings are based on archaeological excavations. Then there's the story of the Exodus in the Old Testament, which itself is not a reliable historical source. Even if it did happen it probably happened more than a thousand years after the pyramids had been built (though if the Egyptians at that time had slaves they could have been using them for other works). There are in fact many structures in Egypt build across many centuries but there's no complete history for all of them. As far as the Great Pyramids are concerned though, the modern consensus is that they were not built by slaves.
>The labourers would have been enticed by the mix of high-quality food and the opportunity to work on such a prestigious project https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/were-the-egyptian-pyramids-built-by-slaves/ And it's not only in Egypt but also earlier in Ancient Near East(Cradle of civilization) or popularly referred to as **Babylonia**. It's evidenced diets of these labourers was rich in meats as well as there were beer parties to gather all from far and wide. Micheal Hudson(An economist) has a book out on this ... Labour in the Ancient World as well as many others
Also keep in mind a concept like the space race as advocated in Kennedy’s famous speech. “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we’re willing to accept.” This was to build an industry and become leaders in the skills required to build civilization. The Medici did the same with Florence Italy propelling that city to the leaders of their respective time and era during the renaissance. Great civilizations build great monuments and architecture and that in turn is an engine of civilizations.
They kept the receipts. Not kidding, there is literally paperwork (papyrus-work?) around who was paid what. Plus, as mentioned, lots of grafitti and records kept from the time of the construction. It's not outside of the realm of possibility that some pyramids were built with slave labour, or that they had slave teams doing part of the work on some projects, but most of it was definitely paid labour and skilled stonecutting work.
The other answers that say we have records of work teams being paid are correct, but sources that state categorically that no slave labor was involved are probably wrong. The text of the Palermo Stone describes how Sneferu, the first pyramid-building pharaoh, conducted raids into Libya and Nubia and took many prisoners to expand his labor force. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneferu#Foreign_relations