this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2024
600 points (95.3% liked)

Comic Strips

12953 readers
2223 users here now

Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.

The rules are simple:

Web of links

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] Lumun@lemmy.zip 21 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I know it's part of the joke here, but not a bad time to mention the pyramids weren't built by enslaved workers at all. It was likely dedicated domestic laborers working 3-4 hr days.

https://www.worldatlas.com/ancient-world/were-slaves-used-to-build-the-pyramids-debunking-a-long-standing-myth.html

[โ€“] roguetrick@lemmy.world 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Labor in ancient Egypt is a strange from our perspective. Everybody was essentially a serf in a very collectivist society with a command economy. Creating any form of discord was not just against the will of the state but a denial of the authority of the gods.

For example, they had a labor strike for the monument builders, and that was a big cultural moment for them that eventually signaled the downfall of a dynasty. The laborers even threatened to damage the tombs, showing just how much they were rebelling against cultural norms. But to get to that point, they hadn't fed those laborers for a month, meaning the pharaoh himself was creating discord(since he technically owned all the food and his job was to direct the people and give them what they need to carry out his orders) and society was breaking down.

As an aside to the command economy thing, pay in ancient Egypt was always in the form of rations. Like, if you were rich in ancient Egypt that meant that the pharaoh was giving you enough grain to support 50 retainers or trade that food for something else, but there wasn't money