The pyramids were not built by slaves. They were built by farmers during downtime, they were treated well. Pharaohs were living gods, so building for them and getting paid for it mustn’t have been that different from building a cathedral.
Yes guys it was fine. You just pretend that you are a god through threat of violence and having an uneducated population then get them to do things for you. It’s great!
Every time some uneducated schlub on the internet says “They were built by slaves” or “they were built by happy, well-fed capitalists” an actual archeologists’ eye twitches and we all get stupider. They’re not accurate descriptions either way. Learn more.
Yeah the best term that would fit would be peasant or serf but even that feels wrong. Problem is ancient Egypt existed so long ago that a lot of their social structures are a bit alien at this point to the average person, just because it was so damned early in history. Its basically like comparing the stem mammals to modern mammals, real close and lots of similarities but still quite different.
Problem is ancient Egypt existed so long ago that a lot of their social structures are a bit alien at this point to the average person
100% this, we wouldn’t recognize the attitudes and social systems, so while it’s true there was a lot of injustice and suffering in early history, (I can point anyone at mass graves with butchering marks on the bones if people really want to know how bad things were) it’s not appropriate to try to use the building of the pyramids as an example of well, anything really. All we know is that the people were paid a kind of ration system, maybe more. Maybe it was more complicated than that, but they also weren’t chained and whipped like we imagine slavery in other periods.
I think it makes people uncomfortable because we want to point to any kind of indentured servitude with moral absolutism. And big, giant stone monoliths are great things to point at to use as examples of human hubris. But most of the people who feel anything about it couldn’t connect with social attitudes and cultural norms of the 1980’s much less four-thousand-fucking-years ago.
lol working to build something for a god invented to keep the pharaoh in power and unquestionable in their authority to order you to build the pyramid is still slavery. Human shaped dogs are still slaves, not matter how well treated. “Believe in my divinity or die” is slavery.
except those “slaves” didn’t have to bother about buying food, affording rent or paying up morgage, while still working only for a fraction of time that we do.
People in countries with conscript armies are slaves too, by your logic.
We’re far more enslaved than they ever were, especially if we’re talking about modern physical job workers.
Not to mention that “believe in my divinity or die” is more of a christian shtick. And people did believe in pharaoh’s divinity, as everybody percieved reality as magical at the time. It’s important to remember that rationalism and atheism are relatively new ideas, emerged the moment that people noticed that our new knowledge contradicts christian dogmatics.
And while slavery was a thing pretty much from the beggining of human civilisation, don’t think it was the same as colonial slavery. Colonial slavery is more akin to what nazis did, really. Not that its surprising, considering that both utilised more-less the same rhetoric.
They didnt have a choice, they were sold a lie. It’s absolutely not chattel slavery, but neither is prison slavery but its all still slavery. I agree it is not chattel slavery.
Kenneth Copeland demanding you to volunteer for his benefit while he feeds and clothes you is slavery still, but the pharoah had an army and the priests on his side to subjugate everyone and literally designed around you whipping your own back so the gods wouldnt be upset at you for the bad harvest this season. All punishment was divine and good. Its slavery my friend.
TIL all social systems through all history are slavery.
I get what you’re trying to say but it’s not a smart principled argument. We don’t know the cultural attitudes and alternatives they had 4000 years ago, so let’s do what actual educated people and researchers do which is say “we don’t know.” Unless you’re advocating for an end to society broadly, that would certainly take care of the issue of people manipulating others to work in any capacity.
Otherwise it’s kind of dumbing-down and oversimplifying “slavery” which kind of harms modern anti-slavery efforts.
I firmly believe that every single bronze age civilization was no less morally apprehensive than what we have today with capitalism and wage slavery. Ancient egypt is no better—the pharoahs were slavers who had a happy set of cattle at their disposal as far as im concerned, just like employers do today in capitalist nations.
If you are employed and love your employer for giving you everything you need and no worries, live that life my friend, but you would be a slave. Egyptians didn’t have that choice tho
you’re stretching the term “slavery” beyond what is acceptable in the context of historical discussion.
The inequality is one of the core principles of society. And even if the society was magically equal, your freedom would end where other’s freedom would start.
Your definition of slavery is also quite useless simply due to the fact that everyone is a slave by your logic, as everyone has some kind of social obligation they are ought to fullfill, be it for the money or otherwise.
Egyptians didn’t have that choice tho
Do we tho? Not having to work is a privilege. Without a job you’ll most likely die a slow miserable death if you don’t have that privilege, as we no longer raise our food, collect our drinking water, or build our own houses. Not to mention, we still have to pay taxes.
By the way, according to what i heard, working on a pyramid construction was exactly the last case — a form of tax payment.
Anyway, considering that workers were well fed, receiving meat, beer and bread in greater quantities than any peasant of the day would dream of, as well as they had medical care for their conscription period, one might hypothesize that most people of the time would’ve jumped on an opportunity like that.
Your argument is neither constructive, nor it helps to represent reality better, let alone do so historically correct.
Thank you for this, this is a much better way of outlining what bothers me about the weird pyramid-builder’s rights movement that seems to always crop up in these posts.
You can make great arguments for better social welfare and support systems in today’s world without trying to drag invented-ghosts out of the deep-past from ages that are so far removed from modern values and standards that it may as well be another planet.
I guess the Pharaohs actually did achieve some form of immortality if those giant stacks of rock get people on the internet 4000 years to confront their own poorly-framed social arguments.
I don’t disagree with your ideas abstractly and broadly but I am more focused on material outcomes and the current world, and my knowledge of history and pre-history is enough to know that I don’t know a lot, which means others probably know even less, so I reject deep-history societal comparisons for any purpose other than curiosity and scientific interest.
Humans have historically been slavers as leaders. I demand the necessary incredible evidence to believe the pharoahs were truly benevolent. I am okay with us not knowing for certain if they were horrible god-emperor slaver tyrants or just your run of the mill god-emperor slaver tyrants, but I demand the necessary evidence that they werent slaver tyrants. Humans are humans, no matter the time period, and human leaders are slavers historically
The authorities would do something for them iirc, then they’d have to pay it off with work, where they were compensated with a protein heavy diet as well.
What kept the pharaohs in power was crop management and public infrastructure. The pyramids were much closer to public work to combat unemploynent than some power tool.
The pharohs certainly did make their slaves believe they controlled the weather with their brainwashing and the priests were more than happy to help him with their astronomical studies, seeing as they made that pharoah a god by doing so and benefiting from it as such
The pyramids were not built by slaves. They were built by farmers during downtime, they were treated well. Pharaohs were living gods, so building for them and getting paid for it mustn’t have been that different from building a cathedral.
But we know they weren’t living gods, so what does that make this system really?
deleted by creator
Well, building cathedrals wasn’t fun either unless you were the guy in charge.
Who says it wasn’t? Probably shorter days than us, more community, satisfaction of serving god…
Also allowed for artists to do some kick ass art with restrictions of course
Yes guys it was fine. You just pretend that you are a god through threat of violence and having an uneducated population then get them to do things for you. It’s great!
It was a vastly better situation than a lot of wandering tribes had it back then.
We can analyze history without trying to judge it by modern ideals or values, it’s a lot better that way, trust me. You learn more.
I was just responding to someone that said they weren’t slaves when in reality they absolutely were.
Conscript is a better term
that’s oversimplifying a complex area of history.
Every time some uneducated schlub on the internet says “They were built by slaves” or “they were built by happy, well-fed capitalists” an actual archeologists’ eye twitches and we all get stupider. They’re not accurate descriptions either way. Learn more.
Yeah the best term that would fit would be peasant or serf but even that feels wrong. Problem is ancient Egypt existed so long ago that a lot of their social structures are a bit alien at this point to the average person, just because it was so damned early in history. Its basically like comparing the stem mammals to modern mammals, real close and lots of similarities but still quite different.
100% this, we wouldn’t recognize the attitudes and social systems, so while it’s true there was a lot of injustice and suffering in early history, (I can point anyone at mass graves with butchering marks on the bones if people really want to know how bad things were) it’s not appropriate to try to use the building of the pyramids as an example of well, anything really. All we know is that the people were paid a kind of ration system, maybe more. Maybe it was more complicated than that, but they also weren’t chained and whipped like we imagine slavery in other periods.
I think it makes people uncomfortable because we want to point to any kind of indentured servitude with moral absolutism. And big, giant stone monoliths are great things to point at to use as examples of human hubris. But most of the people who feel anything about it couldn’t connect with social attitudes and cultural norms of the 1980’s much less four-thousand-fucking-years ago.
The greatest words in science are “I don’t know.”
TL;DR Imperfect but fairish
Why’s that guy holding a whip?
Because it was drawn there?
“I’m not really bad. I’m just drawn that way.”
He’s a motivation coach and this is motivation tool.
I cant tell if this is a joke or serious anymore.
He dangles that little frayed part in front of them and they get so distracted chasing it they forget they’re working
The ancient equivalent of key jingling.
I’m not sure if that photo is real, it might be AI.
He’s into some kinky stuff.
Carl
For rock and stone?
I think that’s a fishing pole, he’s going fishing and stopped to check on his friends.
So actually the labourers on the pyramid got rations of dried fish as part of their payment so this is topical.
He’s ever vigilant for scorpions.
lol working to build something for a god invented to keep the pharaoh in power and unquestionable in their authority to order you to build the pyramid is still slavery. Human shaped dogs are still slaves, not matter how well treated. “Believe in my divinity or die” is slavery.
except those “slaves” didn’t have to bother about buying food, affording rent or paying up morgage, while still working only for a fraction of time that we do.
People in countries with conscript armies are slaves too, by your logic.
We’re far more enslaved than they ever were, especially if we’re talking about modern physical job workers.
Not to mention that “believe in my divinity or die” is more of a christian shtick. And people did believe in pharaoh’s divinity, as everybody percieved reality as magical at the time. It’s important to remember that rationalism and atheism are relatively new ideas, emerged the moment that people noticed that our new knowledge contradicts christian dogmatics.
And while slavery was a thing pretty much from the beggining of human civilisation, don’t think it was the same as colonial slavery. Colonial slavery is more akin to what nazis did, really. Not that its surprising, considering that both utilised more-less the same rhetoric.
They didnt have a choice, they were sold a lie. It’s absolutely not chattel slavery, but neither is prison slavery but its all still slavery. I agree it is not chattel slavery.
Kenneth Copeland demanding you to volunteer for his benefit while he feeds and clothes you is slavery still, but the pharoah had an army and the priests on his side to subjugate everyone and literally designed around you whipping your own back so the gods wouldnt be upset at you for the bad harvest this season. All punishment was divine and good. Its slavery my friend.
TIL all social systems through all history are slavery.
I get what you’re trying to say but it’s not a smart principled argument. We don’t know the cultural attitudes and alternatives they had 4000 years ago, so let’s do what actual educated people and researchers do which is say “we don’t know.” Unless you’re advocating for an end to society broadly, that would certainly take care of the issue of people manipulating others to work in any capacity.
Otherwise it’s kind of dumbing-down and oversimplifying “slavery” which kind of harms modern anti-slavery efforts.
I firmly believe that every single bronze age civilization was no less morally apprehensive than what we have today with capitalism and wage slavery. Ancient egypt is no better—the pharoahs were slavers who had a happy set of cattle at their disposal as far as im concerned, just like employers do today in capitalist nations.
If you are employed and love your employer for giving you everything you need and no worries, live that life my friend, but you would be a slave. Egyptians didn’t have that choice tho
you’re stretching the term “slavery” beyond what is acceptable in the context of historical discussion.
The inequality is one of the core principles of society. And even if the society was magically equal, your freedom would end where other’s freedom would start.
Your definition of slavery is also quite useless simply due to the fact that everyone is a slave by your logic, as everyone has some kind of social obligation they are ought to fullfill, be it for the money or otherwise.
Do we tho? Not having to work is a privilege. Without a job you’ll most likely die a slow miserable death if you don’t have that privilege, as we no longer raise our food, collect our drinking water, or build our own houses. Not to mention, we still have to pay taxes.
By the way, according to what i heard, working on a pyramid construction was exactly the last case — a form of tax payment.
Anyway, considering that workers were well fed, receiving meat, beer and bread in greater quantities than any peasant of the day would dream of, as well as they had medical care for their conscription period, one might hypothesize that most people of the time would’ve jumped on an opportunity like that.
Your argument is neither constructive, nor it helps to represent reality better, let alone do so historically correct.
Thank you for this, this is a much better way of outlining what bothers me about the weird pyramid-builder’s rights movement that seems to always crop up in these posts.
You can make great arguments for better social welfare and support systems in today’s world without trying to drag invented-ghosts out of the deep-past from ages that are so far removed from modern values and standards that it may as well be another planet.
I guess the Pharaohs actually did achieve some form of immortality if those giant stacks of rock get people on the internet 4000 years to confront their own poorly-framed social arguments.
i no longer firmly believe it
We. Don’t. Know.
I don’t disagree with your ideas abstractly and broadly but I am more focused on material outcomes and the current world, and my knowledge of history and pre-history is enough to know that I don’t know a lot, which means others probably know even less, so I reject deep-history societal comparisons for any purpose other than curiosity and scientific interest.
Humans have historically been slavers as leaders. I demand the necessary incredible evidence to believe the pharoahs were truly benevolent. I am okay with us not knowing for certain if they were horrible god-emperor slaver tyrants or just your run of the mill god-emperor slaver tyrants, but I demand the necessary evidence that they werent slaver tyrants. Humans are humans, no matter the time period, and human leaders are slavers historically
Who’s saying that?
When did normal discourse become this binary and un-nuanced?
The authorities would do something for them iirc, then they’d have to pay it off with work, where they were compensated with a protein heavy diet as well.
What kept the pharaohs in power was crop management and public infrastructure. The pyramids were much closer to public work to combat unemploynent than some power tool.
The pharohs certainly did make their slaves believe they controlled the weather with their brainwashing and the priests were more than happy to help him with their astronomical studies, seeing as they made that pharoah a god by doing so and benefiting from it as such