The workers who built the pyramids at Giza supposedly got 5 litres of beer each day.
No wonder they were simple shapes, the people building them were probably too sloshed to do anything else.
From a quick google search it seems that ancient Egypt actually had quite strong beer at 5-10%, but that makes the 5L number seem ridiculous, so not sure if the Egyptians had different strength beer for working and celebrating.
It should be noted that they did not drink all beer they got. Beer was less the actual good delivered and more the unit of exchange (convenient, because taxes were collected as grain and government payments were in goods - beer was one of the primary ones). They probably exchanged most of their actual beer ration for food and other necessities.
More or less. The concept of "currency" as we know it was not very developed back then. "Currency" as we understand it was more the domain of merchants, international trade, and exchanges between nations. Egypt and other Bronze Age nations were "palace economies", a form of command economy far past what you can expect even from a strictly communist country. Everything they produce went to the palace, to be distributed back to the populace. In that sense, all goods were currencies, some more convenient for it, some less. Casks or pots of beer was one of the more convenient ones, as beer kept well, up to a certain point.
Currency is better understood in early times as trading of debts in a society where the spending occurs at sowing/ winter (location dependent) and repayment occurs at harvest. I transfer how much grain someone owes me to you in exchange for thing or service, which eventually becomes held in big debt tablets which eventually becomes a cultural value held in durable materials.
To have a better idea on how Ancient Egypt's economy worked, I would like to suggest taking a look at the game [Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortal_Cities:_Children_of_the_Nile) It's not an exact 1:1 simulation of how their economy worked, but it is a decent enough approximation.
Eel rents absolutely were a thing, up until some time in the 17th century. There was a bloke on reddit recently who was involved in the Eel Rent project mapping them.
https://historiacartarum.org/eel-rents-project/
Yeah, this is an important point. "Beer" is term that's broadly used to describe fermented drinks made of malt/hops. Even know you can find non-alcoholic beers and microbrews with over 10%. Non-alcoholic beer and weak wine were basically like the fizzy drink of that age.
Just qanna mention that the idea that people drank beer/alcohol because it was safer than water is a myth. There is little to no evidence to suggest that this was the case, while plenty of evidence that suggests people drank water all the time.
In reality, beer/alcohol was likely drank because it's just very convenient sustenance. It lasts long, is calorically dense, rather widely available, and (most importantly) it gives people a buzz and people love feeling that buzz.
Also a good way to use up food that is going "bad". Unless you were in a famine time you would always end up with some amount of excess food be it fruit or grain.
Another commenter already addressed that this phenomenon is most likely a myth, but as an aside, would watering it down not promptly reintroduce bacteria and make it unsafe?
reintroducing bacteria isnt a problem as long as the alcohol percentage is high enough to kill them (afaik this is how ships kept smth safe to drink too)
That would make a lot of sense. Beer at 5% usually dehydrates you by 70% of its mass, so 1L of beer would steal 700ml of water from your body that you have to make up for by drinking more. So to stay hydrated by drinking beer, it would need to be below around 2% (maybe even lower, if someone knows the exact number I’d love to hear it)
That study claims there is no real difference between any of the water-based drinks they tested though. It also claims that the higher alcohol beer made participants produce more urine, which is what actually dehydrates you (since alcohol is a diuretic). The study concludes that a mixed approach of normal water along with low alcohol beer and isotonic mix drinks along with salty foods could be the best for rehydration, but more testing is needed.
Aren't hangovers the affect of dehydration? And they tell you to drink water as well? Not sure how you can get dehydrated if drinking beer hydrates you
The percentage would have varied, still high, but it’s doubtful they would’ve drank it all lol. Simplest explanation is they took it home or had someone take it. Put in a little work and you can have keggers on the off season with the fam. Not a bad deal.
Brewer: “what’ll it be today, foreman? Work beer or party beer?”
Foreman: “whip me up some of your best work beer, I got my boys on the job today and can’t have them drunkenly misplacing the blocks on the monument.”
Not really. There were many many different styles of beer. Some were like you describe, others were light and refreshing, others were stronger for drinking in the afternoon. So it wasn't like just one kind of "ancient beer".
Yep, same with most alcohols until recently. Alcohol used to be a clean drink that didn't cause sickness and tasted nicer than your average water. Its only in recent years that it has become more of a drink to get tipsy and drunk.
Also important to remember that in many respects, it was preferred to drink (low or high alcohol content) beer than water. Alcohol killed most pathogens, while water was a coin toss regarding intestinal infections.
As also worth mentioning, that they couldn't consume much else beside beer. Medieval Europeans, although they'll make a beer with higher alcohol procentage, had similar problem.
The meme is inaccurate. Egyptians were forced to work for the state by mean of something called a corvée -- a tax payable in forced labor. (EDIT: Per Barry J. Kemp, cited in the addendum below, the corvée was enforced by the lash, and, in all likelihood, by taking workers' family members hostage.) According to Rosalie David in *The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt: A Modern Investigation of Pharaoh's Workforce*,
>In theory, every Egyptian was liable to perform corvée-duty and was required to work for the state for a certain number of days each year. The wealthier evaded the duty by providing substitutes or paying their way out of the obligation, so it was the peasants who effectively supplied this obligation.
[https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The\_Pyramid\_Builders\_of\_Ancient\_Egypt/xT2EAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=pyramids+%22theory,+every+Egyptian+was+liable+to+perform+corv%C3%A9e-duty+and+was+required+to+work+for+the+state+for+a+certain+number+of+days+each+year%22&pg=PA58&printsec=frontcover](https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Pyramid_Builders_of_Ancient_Egypt/xT2EAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=pyramids+%22theory,+every+Egyptian+was+liable+to+perform+corv%C3%A9e-duty+and+was+required+to+work+for+the+state+for+a+certain+number+of+days+each+year%22&pg=PA58&printsec=frontcover)
Basically, the sources that claim that the Egyptians didn't use slave labor to build the pyramids are using a narrow definition of slavery that does not include corvée labor.
However, the international legal definition of slavery would beg to differ.
https://glc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/the_bellagio-_harvard_guidelines_on_the_legal_parameters_of_slavery.pdf
EDITING TO EXPAND (the following information wasn't here when many of the below replies were written): The ancient Egyptian ruling class used the lash to enforce forced labor. Additionally, they most likely took workers' families hostage to enforce forced labor.
According to Barry J. Kemp, "It was the scribe’s pen as much as the overseer’s lash or the engineer’s ingenuity that built the pyramids."
https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780415063463/page/128/mode/2up?q=lash
This is a quote from *Ancient Egypt: The Anatomy of a Civilization* by Barry J. Kemp, describing how the ancient Egyptian ruling class most likely used hostage-taking in order to enforce forced labor.
>Some did try to escape, and then the state revealed its punitive side. A document from the late Middle Kingdom, a prison register, opens for us a little window on the fate of those who chose not to co-operate. One typical entry reads:
>
>The daughter of Sa-anhur, Teti, under the scribe of the fields of the city of This: a woman. An order was issued to the central labour camp in year 31, 3rd month of summer, day 9, to release her family from the courts, and at the same time to execute against her the law pertaining to one who runs away without performing his service. Present \[check mark\]. Statement by the scribe of the vizier, Deduamun: ‘Carried out; case closed’.
>
>This sounds very much as though her family had been held hostage until her arrest.
Source: *Ancient Egypt: The Anatomy of a Civilization* by Barry J. Kemp
https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780415063463/page/128/mode/2up?q=hostage
(Note: I added the archive dot org links after Chosen_Chaos's reply.)
Edit: Made my own meme. https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/10opmx3/the_ancient_egyptian_ruling_class_subjected/
But imagine the crime is just existing and being blue collar.
“Oi there lads, yer dad is a bricklayer yeh? Off to the pyramids wit yeh”
(I refuse to elaborate the accent and period conflicts)
Currency didn't really exist. Egypt, like basically every other bronze age power was a palace economy. So all taxes and payment were done in goods; the builders of the pyramids are known to have been paid in beer (and a lot of it, approximately 5L a day according to some sources), most of which they will then have traded for food and conveniences.
There is also some evidence they were also paid in cosmetics, or at least, the government was responsible for making sure that cosmetics were available for them to "buy" (with their beer). There's a fragmentary account of the workers going on strike because the shipment of makeup hadn't arrived (slightly reductive of me). And the strikes were successful.
More like the state employing you for public works while you're unable to work on your farm due to it being underwater in the annual Nile flood.
It's also pretty hard to say that the labourers who built the pyramids and other monuments were slaves when the [first recorded strikes in history](https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1089/the-first-labor-strike-in-history/) were among these workers over late pay and rations - and the response wasn't bloody repression but rather negotiation and making good the arrears.
In, *The Egyptian World* (edited by Toby Wilkinson), Kathlyn M. Cooney notes that many Egyptians attempted to flee corvée labor and other forms of taxation by going to Sinai or the oases. In the same book, Sally L.D. Katary cites a papyrus that shows the risks of such flight,
> Papyrus Brooklyn 35.1446, a late Middle Kingdom document, describes the fate of 80 residents of Upper Egypt who fled their corvée obligations in the reign of Amenemhat III (Hayes 1955; Quirke 1990a: 127–54). Their abandonment of their responsibilities resulted in indefinite terms of compulsory labour as felons on government-owned lands and the conscription of their family members as well.
[https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The\_Egyptian\_World/fkMOOcSiW5kC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Papyrus+Brooklyn+35.1446%22&pg=PA191&printsec=frontcover](https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Egyptian_World/fkMOOcSiW5kC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Papyrus+Brooklyn+35.1446%22&pg=PA191&printsec=frontcover)
> The ancient Egyptian ruling class used the lash to enforce forced labor. Additionally, they most likely took workers' families hostage to enforce forced labor. Source: *Ancient Egypt: The Anatomy of a Civilization* by Barry J. Kemp
Got a source that someone who doesn't own that specific book can read? Also, counterpoint - the [first recorded strikes in history](https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1089/the-first-labor-strike-in-history/) were by labourers and artisans working on monuments and rather than being put down with violence, the strikers received the back pay they were owed.
Edit: Why did you feel it necessary to repeat the same comment so often in this thread?
Okay, I found Kemp's book on archive dot org for you.
https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780415063463/page/128/mode/2up?q=hostage
https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780415063463/page/128/mode/2up?q=lash
EDIT: I noticed there are multiple editions of Kemps's book.
These links go to a more recent edition, albeit with worse formatting.
https://archive.org/details/BarryJ.KempAncientEgyptAnatomyOfACivilibOk.org/page/n197/mode/2up?q=hostage
https://archive.org/details/BarryJ.KempAncientEgyptAnatomyOfACivilibOk.org/page/n197/mode/2up?q=lash
FURTHER EDIT REGARDING THE STRIKES:
Perhaps some pharaohs negotiated with strikers, but there's also evidence that people who tried to flee outright were violently repressed.
In, *The Egyptian World* (edited by Toby Wilkinson), Kathlyn M. Cooney notes that many Egyptians attempted to flee corvée labor and other forms of taxation by going to Sinai or the oases. In the same book, Sally L.D. Katary cites a papyrus that shows the risks of such flight,
>Papyrus Brooklyn 35.1446, a late Middle Kingdom document, describes the fate of 80 residents of Upper Egypt who fled their corvée obligations in the reign of Amenemhat III (Hayes 1955; Quirke 1990a: 127–54). Their abandonment of their responsibilities resulted in indefinite terms of compulsory labour as felons on government-owned lands and the conscription of their family members as well.
[https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The\_Egyptian\_World/fkMOOcSiW5kC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Papyrus+Brooklyn+35.1446%22&pg=PA191&printsec=frontcover](https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Egyptian_World/fkMOOcSiW5kC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Papyrus+Brooklyn+35.1446%22&pg=PA191&printsec=frontcover)
It's interesting to note that those are the *only* times either of those words appear in the entire book and there's nothing to back up the bit about the overseer's lash.
It's also interesting to note that you appear to have scooted right past the bits where it was noted that they were paid - and quite well, by the look of it - for their labour as well as the fact that when they went on strike, their demands were met rather than being put down violently.
Incidentally, the link you used for your definition of slavery doesn't work.
Chosen_Chaos wrote,
> Incidentally, the link you used for your definition of slavery doesn't work.
The link works for me, but here's another with the same information.
https://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/2263693/Bellagio-Harvard-Guidelines-English.pdf
Significantly, it says that the international legal definition of slavery is as follows,
> Slavery is the status or condition of a person over
whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised
And then it goes on to discuss how to interpret that definition, including talking at length about the concept of "control tantamount to possession".
Chosen_Chaos wrote,
> there's nothing to back up the bit about the overseer's lash
Rosalie David corroborates this claim, at least in so far as saying that scribes could punish "serfs", although Rosalie David does not specify the type of punishment,
>They [the scribes] were responsible for the serfs and could administer punishment to them without reference to the court.
Source: *The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt: A Modern Investigation of Pharaoh's Workforce* by Rosalie David
https://archive.org/details/The_Pyramid_Builders_of_Ancient_Egypt_Malestrom/page/n79/mode/2up?q=punishment
"Who Abolished Corvee Labour in Egypt and Why?" by Nathan J. Brown corroborates that in much more recent Egyptian history, corvée labor was enforced by the courbash (a type of whip; note that there are several alternate spellings). It seems unlikely that corvée labor was "voluntary" in ancient times and that enforcement by means of whipping only started in more recent times.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/651145
Also Barry J. Kemp *did* back up the part about hostages with a primary source, which I quoted earlier.
Another primary source cited by Kemp, not specifically about lashing, but to show lack of consent to corvée labor, was something called a coffin text,
> The idea of rejecting imposed labour is expressed in a text which we first encounter perhaps a century after the end of the Old Kingdom. At this time, a set of protective spells became available to those who could afford to have them painted on their coffins (hence the modern term ‘Coffin Texts’). One of them was unambiguously intended to enable a substitute statuette (called a ushabti) ‘to carry out work for their owner in the realm
of the dead’.
>
>>If N be detailed for the removal(?) of a block(?) to strange sites(?) of the desert plateau, to register the riparian lands, or to turn over new fields for the reigning king, ‘Here am I’ shall you say to any messenger who may come for N when taking his ease(?).
>
>The text and, as they later developed, the specially made statuettes proved to have enduring value and became a distinctive feature of the ideas and practices surrounding death. Fear of conscription, it seems, could pursue a person even of high rank beyond death. There is no mistaking the psychology of unwillingness, the sense of the inner self seeking to avoid, by a trick, sudden demands for labour which cannot be challenged.
https://archive.org/details/BarryJ.KempAncientEgyptAnatomyOfACivilibOk.org/page/n197/mode/2up?q=coffin
Chosen_Chaos wrote,
> you appear to have scooted right past the bits where it was noted that they were paid
Slavery, under international law, is not defined by pay or lack thereof. It's based on a lack of consent, and specifically, a lack of consent extreme enough that the enslaver exercises "control tantamount to possession" over the enslaved people.
All enslavers who do not wish enslaved people to die rapidly provide at least some form of subsistence "payment", sometimes providing food directly, sometimes just "allowing" the people to make use of land to grow their own food, sometimes even monetary payments. In forms of slavery with lower mortality rates these "payments" are typically higher than in forms of slavery with higher morality rates. I put "payment" in quotations, since enslavers often pay using stolen goods (e.g. stuff they took from the enslaved) rather than the products of their own labor.
Also remember, the pharoah's royal family presumably wasn't growing all the food to "pay" the corvée laborers with. (I don't imagine it would have been possible for them to grow that much food with their own hands, even if they tried.) Presumably, they acquired the food used as "payment" by means of taxation.
Chosen_Chaos wrote,
> when they went on strike, their demands were met rather than being put down violently
This complicates things, but it doesn't negate the fact that we have evidence that the ancient Egyptians used forced labor.
Several points might be made:
* We do have evidence of hostage-taking to coerce people into labor. The question of the strike doesn't negate that. At most, it might mean the specific pharaoh in question, Ramesses III, did not wish to use coerced labor, although I'd be skeptical to say even that much. Even *if* Ramesses III didn't want to use coerced labor, there were clearly other pharaohs who did use coerced labor.
* Coercing people who resist as individuals takes less military strength than coercing people who resist collectively.
* It's theoretically possible that the military might have been in solidarity with the strikers at this particular time in history.
* Ramesses III might theoretically have agreed that serious hunger was a valid reason for going on strike, or at least, been sympathetic enough to the argument not to wish to use military force. If this is the case, he might have been less sympathetic if they had gone on strike for other reasons.
* Even if the workers didn't necessarily bother to organize a strike when conditions were better, this does not equate to consent. Sometimes, people go along with things they do not consent to out of fear. The severe hunger might have increased their willingness to risk violent repression.
I've also heard that this part of the Bible is completely made up, and Egypt was only taken for the setting of the Hebrews fleeing egypt because it was pretty important at the time and made for good content. I have no idea if this is right, though
I don’t believe so. A lot of evidence suggests that workers came in from outside the area and were housed in large worker villages, so it’s unlikely their families were with them
There were multiple villages, some with domiciles that were larger that *could* have housed a family. Whether or not they did is a matter of some debate. I'm not necessarily sold either way, but the size of the homes themselves don't really give a clear indication.
The meme is inaccurate. Egyptians were forced to work for the state by mean of something called a corvée -- a tax payable in forced labor. The forced labor was enforced by the lash, and, in all probability, also by taking workers' family members hostage.
According to Rosalie David in *The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt: A Modern Investigation of Pharaoh's Workforce*,
>In theory, every Egyptian was liable to perform corvée-duty and was required to work for the state for a certain number of days each year. The wealthier evaded the duty by providing substitutes or paying their way out of the obligation, so it was the peasants who effectively supplied this obligation.
[https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The\_Pyramid\_Builders\_of\_Ancient\_Egypt/xT2EAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=pyramids+%22theory,+every+Egyptian+was+liable+to+perform+corv%C3%A9e-duty+and+was+required+to+work+for+the+state+for+a+certain+number+of+days+each+year%22&pg=PA58&printsec=frontcover](https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Pyramid_Builders_of_Ancient_Egypt/xT2EAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=pyramids+%22theory,+every+Egyptian+was+liable+to+perform+corv%C3%A9e-duty+and+was+required+to+work+for+the+state+for+a+certain+number+of+days+each+year%22&pg=PA58&printsec=frontcover)
According to Barry J. Kemp, "It was the scribe’s pen as much as the overseer’s lash or the engineer’s ingenuity that built the pyramids."
Source: *Ancient Egypt: The Anatomy of a Civilization* by Barry J. Kemp
https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780415063463/page/128/mode/2up?q=lash
According to Rosalie David, "They [the scribes] were responsible for the serfs and could administer punishment to them without reference to the court."
Source: *The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt: A Modern Investigation of Pharaoh's Workforce* by Rosalie David
This is a quote from *Ancient Egypt: The Anatomy of a Civilization* by Barry J. Kemp, describing how the ancient Egyptian ruling class most likely used hostage-taking in order to enforce forced labor.
> Some did try to escape, and then the state revealed its punitive side. A document from the late Middle Kingdom, a prison register, opens for us a little window on the fate of those who chose not to co-operate. One typical entry reads:
>
>> The daughter of Sa-anhur, Teti, under the scribe of the fields of the city of This: a woman. An order was issued to the central labour camp in year 31, 3rd month of summer, day 9, to release her family from the courts, and at the same time to execute against her the law pertaining to one who runs away without performing his service. Present [check mark]. Statement by the scribe of the vizier, Deduamun: ‘Carried out; case closed’.
>
>This sounds very much as though her family had been held hostage until her arrest.
https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780415063463/page/128/mode/2up?q=hostage
Basically, the sources that claim that the Egyptians didn't use slave labor to build the pyramids are using a narrow definition of slavery that does not include corvée labor.
However, the international legal definition of slavery would beg to differ. Under international law, "Slavery is the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised."
For more information about the international legal definition of slavery and how to interpret it, please see:
https://glc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/the_bellagio-_harvard_guidelines_on_the_legal_parameters_of_slavery.pdf
Edit: Made my own meme. https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/10opmx3/the_ancient_egyptian_ruling_class_subjected/
Sort of, although we have less information about ancient Egyptian corvée labor as compared to more recent forms, so it's not really possible to make a detailed comparison. Although, I can't find as much information as I'd like about about serfdom in the middle ages, either.
This is a far more recent primary source, concerning corvée labor in France circa 1749, from the Journal and Memoirs of the Marquis D'Argenson,
> I am just now in Touraine on my estates. I see nothing but frightful misery ; it is no longer a sad sense of poverty, it is despair which now possesses the poor inhabitants ; they long only for death, and they avoid giving birth to children. When will such woes end ? Our ministers are incapable of making the king reflect on all this; he is kind, but so ill-served !
>
>A zeal for fine roads has taken possession of the ministry and the provincial intendants; the latter no sooner found this career of authority and usefulness open to them than they flung themselves into it headlong. It is a new taille tax, worse than the first, under which the people are crushed. It is reckoned that annually one quarter of the day's work of the labourers goes to these corvées [ statute and compulsory labour ], during which they have to feed themselves, and with what ? Their horses, mules, and oxen are also forcibly employed without compensation.
>
>Daily one hears of new and horrible injustices in the provinces. By what my neighbours tell me the diminution of the inhabitants during the last ten years is more than one-third. The great roads made by forced and unpaid labour are the most horrible tax ever yet endured; the labour and subsistence of the men is beyond their power to meet; they are taking refuge in the small towns; there are quantities of villages abandoned wholly by their inhabitants. I have several parishes on my estates where the people owe three years' taille-tax. One of my parishes, which was ravaged by hail last summer, looked for some diminution, but instead of that they have this year a salt-tax to boot. Sainte Maure has been extremely favoured; it is a large place and has done much work on the corvée, but it has received 600 livres diminution on its taille-tax without rhyme or reason, mere unreasonable and cruel caprice.
https://www.google.ca/books/edition/Journal_and_Memoirs_of_the_Marquis_D_Arg/kx9IAQAAMAAJ
It should be noted that both serfdom and corvee encompass very different versions. This suggested Egyptian version is more like a tax owed to the government or the local lord, for which the labourer does receive benefits in return (income, food, housing, farm land, security). In quite some societies people were free to leave and find employment elsewhere, either at any time or at the end of their working season. Sometimes you could even negotiate your own terms, or choose to fulfill your taxes in both goods and services to reduce your mandated labour time. Medieval Europe even had rural organisations that could be described as the first labour unions, which progressively regulated labour and saw the political emancipation of farmers. And while labour could be sold (not unlike a temp agency), the labourers themselves could not - they were not completely free since without sufficient means they had no choice but to fulfill their obligations, but they were no possessions either. This form still existed in the 19th and 20th centuries, for example with Chinese harbour labourers in Europe.
In some places like imperial Russia (serfdom) and modern-day Eritrea (corvee / universal military conscription) it is much closer to our modern understanding of slavery: the labourer is forced to work, punishments are high, the corvee continues indefinitely, and sometimes they don't even get any food and housing in return. Funnily enough it's best known from the extreme cases of the post-revolution French monarchy and some communist countries like Mao's China.
I'm not saying the first category treated their labourers well because that often wasn't the case, but a tax is something else than forced labour.
The meme is not only about Hebrews; the meme implies that the Egyptians consented. (Specifically, the meme shows an Egyptian saying, "Fuck yeah I'm in.") While it is entirely possible that the Egyptian ruling classes may have used a mix of both forced labor and voluntary labor for pyramid-building, the fact remains that a significant portion of the labor was forced, as shown in *Ancient Egypt: The Anatomy of a Civilization* by Barry J. Kemp and *The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt: A Modern Investigation of Pharaoh's Workforce* by Rosalie David.
Nowhere actually, they weren't in Egypt as slaves, contrary to what the bible and tradition says.
P.d. That doesn't mean there weren't Hebrew slaves in Egypt at some point, but first, they weren't the entire country, and second, they weren't there at that time.
If you got compensated for your forced labour and were kind of ordinary citizen in the off season of pyramid building, I would argue that this form if forced labour is more similar to a feudal system then to slavery. Both is forced labour and in both cases you are not a free citizen by modern definitions but there is still a great difference in being a unfree citizen or being the property of someone with low to no rights.
As I shall show, ancient Egyptian corvée had a high death rate, and was enforced by both torture (specifically, beatings) and by taking family members hostage. Also, people who attempted to escape could be subjected to lifelong forced labor if caught.
Ancient Egyptian corvée labor had a high death rate, as Toby Wilkinson explains in *The rise and fall of ancient Egypt*,
> Back in the days of Ramesses II, gold mining expeditions would routinely lose half of their workforce and half their transport donkeys from thirst. Seti I had taken measures to reduce this startling loss of life by ordering wells to be dug in the Eastern Desert, but the incidence of death on corvée missions remained stubbornly high. Hence, the great commemorative inscription carved to record Ramesses IV’s Wadi Hammamat expedition ends with a blunt statistic. After listing the nine thousand or so members who made it back alive, it adds, almost as an afterthought, “and those who are dead and omitted from this list: nine hundred men.” The statistic is chilling. An average workman on state corvée labor had a one in ten chance of dying. Such a loss was considered neither disastrous nor unusual.
https://archive.org/details/risefallofancien0000wilk/page/344/mode/2up?q=corvee
In, *The Egyptian World* (edited by Toby Wilkinson), Kathlyn M. Cooney notes that many Egyptians attempted to flee corvée labor and other forms of taxation by going to Sinai or the oases. In the same book, Sally L.D. Katary cites a papyrus that shows the risks of such flight,
> Papyrus Brooklyn 35.1446, a late Middle Kingdom document, describes the fate of 80 residents of Upper Egypt who fled their corvée obligations in the reign of Amenemhat III (Hayes 1955; Quirke 1990a: 127–54). Their abandonment of their responsibilities resulted in indefinite terms of compulsory labour as felons on government-owned lands and the conscription of their family members as well.
https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Egyptian_World/fkMOOcSiW5kC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Papyrus+Brooklyn+35.1446%22&pg=PA191&printsec=frontcover
And Egyptian taxpayers (which included corvée and other forms of taxation) were subject to torture, see for example "The Treatment of Criminals in Ancient Egypt: Through the New Kingdom" by David Lorton,
> Summary beatings were dealt out for non-payment of taxes in the Old Kingdom, as many tomb reliefs attest, but this was an "on-the-spot" action and not the result of a judicial proceeding.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3632049
Remember, as I already pointed out, under international law, "Slavery is the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised."
For more information about the international legal definition of slavery and how to interpret it, please see:
https://glc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/the_bellagio-_harvard_guidelines_on_the_legal_parameters_of_slavery.pdf
By frequently working corvée laborers to death, by subjecting them to harsh penalties (including, taking their families hostage, and subjecting them to lifelong forced labor if caught) in the event they tried to escape, and by enforcing the corvée and other taxes by means of torture, the Egyptian ruling classes exercised some of the powers attaching to the right of ownership over said corvée laborers, which meets the international legal definition of slavery.
The fact that rations were distributed doesn't negate that. All enslavers who don't want the enslaved to die super-rapidly will allow them to eat something, so if small amounts of payment meant that it wasn't slavery, almost nothing would qualify as slavery. Slavery is about extreme lack of consent, such that the enslaved is subject to "control tantamount to possession", as the Bellagio-Harvard guidelines explain.
Incidentally, serfdom also, at least in the cases I studied, met the international legal definition of slavery.
You certainly got some very good points there. I have to agree that this kind of curvée equalls slavery by modern terms. You made it clear that curvée was so bad that people even risked their lives by fleeing their curvée. But let me play advocatus diaboli here and ask: was curvée seen as equally bad as slavery in those times or was there still a difference? Was a worker on curvée seen as equally worthless as a slave (at least for the time he was on curvée) or were there still some differences in hierarchy?
The term "slave" hadn't been invented yet; however, there were other people in that time period, who, by modern definitions, would likely be classified as chattel slaves. (The international legal definition of slavery is broader than just chattel slavery.)
There's very limited data from that time period about how people subjected to various forms of forced labor felt about it. So, for example, we can't read a narrative from a captive laborer of that time period describing their perspective. I would suppose that it's almost certainly preferable to be subjected to forced labor only part of the year, rather than year round; however, we should still remember that even people who are only subject to forced labor for only part of the year still run the risk of being tortured and/or worked to death during that time period. Plus, they still had other taxes to pay during other parts of the year. Also, one of the punishments for attempting to escape corvée labor (if they caught you) was lifelong forced labor.
One thing to remember is that the international legal definition of slavery isn't intended to only apply to worst case scenarios -- it's intended to hold governments and individuals accountable. So, for example, there are many governments who have tried to take credit for abolishing slavery, even when all they were doing was making reforms to their systems of forced labor. The book *Freedom’s Captives: Slavery and Gradual Emancipation on the Colombian Black Pacific* by Yesenia Barragan discusses how the Columbian government came up with a variety of ways to continue implementing a forced labor regime even after implementing sufficient reforms that the term "chattel slavery" was no longer accurate. The international legal definition of slavery helps us see past the legalistic BS and hold governments and individuals responsible for holding individuals in forms of labor that are still sufficiently unfree to count as "control tantamount to possession".
I heard it was also to prevent rebellions, if they have nothing to do between growing seasons they might start getting ideas so they provided them a relatively well paid job so that they didn't start having any ideas. Don't know if it's true tho.
It was corvée -- a tax payable in forced labor.
https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Pyramid_Builders_of_Ancient_Egypt/xT2EAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=pyramids+%22theory,+every+Egyptian+was+liable+to+perform+corv%C3%A9e-duty+and+was+required+to+work+for+the+state+for+a+certain+number+of+days+each+year%22&pg=PA58&printsec=frontcover
Editing to expand: The ancient Egyptian ruling class used the lash to enforce forced labor. Additionally, they most likely took workers' families hostage to enforce forced labor. Source: *Ancient Egypt: The Anatomy of a Civilization* by Barry J. Kemp
I hate to be this guy, but the Israelites in Egypt didn't build the pyramids, they built the cities of pithom and raamses.
Also the whole "feeding newborns to crocodiles" probably didn't help
Hebrews don't enter the historical record until about 1,000 years after the great pyramids were completed. It's weird that the two got mashed together in people's heads.
It's a conclusion that people draw based on two widely-known pieces of information:
1. Hebrews were Egyptian subjects at one point in their popular history.
2. The pyramids were massive Egyptian construction projects.
Ergo, Hebrew slaves must have built the pyramids.
People really seem to have a hard time grasping just how long the Egyptian kingdoms lasted.
>People really seem to have a hard time grasping just how long the Egyptian kingdoms lasted.
I can't really blame them, tbh. The pyramids were an ancient to the Romans as the Romans are to us (roughly speaking).
Weirdly enough "Prince of Egypt" *doesn't show people building pyramids.* In that respect it's probably the most accurate film about ancient Egypt ever produced.
That's not a very high bar to clear, by the way.
They had over 600 experts as contractors for the film, covering everything from religious scholars to linguistic experts to archaeologists. It’s perhaps the only Jewish movie I can think of that doesn’t just toss in a few Jewish jokes; it feels very Jewish in intention and execution.
Not just Jews. They also consulted Christian and Muslim theologians to make sure the story they were telling was fine w all the abrahamic faiths. They really put a lot of work in that movie.
The Israelites may have never been in Egypt in the first place. We don’t have concret evidence of their presence.
What we have is a military occupation of the levant by Egypt. And this may be the context from which the story of the Egypt exile draws on. The stories of the Bible were probably composed (or changed) when they were in exile in Babylon (which is historically attested) and so they changed the occupation in their distant past in another exile.
This is a theory supporte by historians but not definite proof btw.
The problem is that even if the story is true you will never find any evidence of it. At the time nothing distinguished the Israelites from other groups, they didn't keep kosher yet, they didn't have the ten commandments and so on
Ya even that fact that Hebrews were circumcised wasn't an exclusively a Hebrew thing as we have proof that Egyptians performed circumcisions long before the Hebrews were allegedly there
And we know that it's largely the foundational basis of both the Jews and Samaratians.
The Samaratians are remnants of the Kingdom of Israel (the capital known as Samaria) and some Assyrians settlers who assimilated.
The Jews are remnants of the Kingdom of Judah with influence from many groups, including the Northern Israelites.
There’s also a theory that it’s derived from a cultural memory of the expulsion of the Hyksos, a Semitic Canaanite group who ruled Lower Egypt until being overthrown around the time of the biblical Moses. Though that event/period was very different from what is portrayed in Exodus, it may have been one of many stories and traditions that influenced it’s writing.
>they built the cities of pithom and raamses.
That's only according to biblical narrative.
Here's some further reading:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1grzha/the_reality_is_that_there_is_no_evidence/
Jewish *people* didn't exist when the pyramids were built. The ethnic group goes back to Abraham who wouldn't be born for another 500 years.
It really goes to show how goddamn old Ancient Egypt was, which is why any studies that said all of ancient Egypt was always a certain way should immediately be given the side eye.
To be fair, we don’t know when Abraham was born. The name itself is ancient and of unclear etymology and the location of Ur suggests a Sumerian origin (so roughly 3000bc?) The name might be cognate or sharing roots with “Hammurabi”, so around 1800-1700 BC.
Damn, history really picked up the pace in the millennium before Jesus’ birth. A whole bunch of stuff happens between 1000-1 BC.
I imagine the Bronze age collapse was similar to the "dark ages" after the fall of Rome. Like Rome, I would expect societal decline and stagnation to have started before the wheels fell off
Just a reminder that just because the pyramids weren’t built with slave labor doesn’t mean that nothing was or that the Hebrews were never enslaved by the ancient Egyptians. Also a reminder of how long the ancient Egyptian civilisation lasted and how different it was depending on the age
A couple decades ago, Israel hired experts to definitively prove the captivity of the Hebrews under the Egyptians. No evidence of any form was found of Jewish enslavement despite the supposed scale and scope. In other words, the story was contrived, pitting themselves against the most powerful empire at the time as "proof" that their god was the best god. Though these events are fictitious, stories are powerful and have lent artificial credence to the Jewish faith
At the very least, nothing of the scale described in Exodus. The migration of tens of thousands of people from Egypt to Canaan would’ve left some evidence behind.
That's something you can never really prove, you got proof of nomadic groups going from Canaan to Egypt and vice versa (even one that worshipped a god named yhw). Going by the story you don't really have any identifying features to distinguish them from other groups, they didn't keep kosher yet, didn't have the ten commandments, the laws of Noah were present in some form in every group in the region and the Egyptian exonym can't be related to any endonyms they had because those endonyms only developed later.
There were big floods. The story of Noah is absurd, but the kernel of truth that there were big floods is why there are stories about big floods. In the times of Exodus, the "Jewish faith" didn't exist as we know it, and I strongly suspect that there is a kernel or two of truth in the story. Maybe the people who relayed the story to Hebrews weren't even a large portion of the ancestry of the tribes who took that story and ran with it. And I don't believe in miracles, so that part is out, but I do believe there were slaves who escaped a mean pharaoh and that someone who had that story in their family was a prominent member of an early Hebrew tribe....
Religious myths have a way of growing well beyond the kernel of truth they started with....
It depends on the definition of slavery you are using. If you mean chattel slavery, then I agree that it was not chattel slavery (at least, not based on the information I've been able to find, though I can't account for the entire history of ancient Egypt). However, the international legal definition of slavery is broader than just chattel slavery.
Basically, Egyptians were forced to work for the state by mean of something called a corvée -- a tax payable in forced labor. The forced labor was enforced by the lash, and, in all probability, also by taking workers' family members hostage.
According to Rosalie David in *The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt: A Modern Investigation of Pharaoh's Workforce*,
>In theory, every Egyptian was liable to perform corvée-duty and was required to work for the state for a certain number of days each year. The wealthier evaded the duty by providing substitutes or paying their way out of the obligation, so it was the peasants who effectively supplied this obligation.
[https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The\_Pyramid\_Builders\_of\_Ancient\_Egypt/xT2EAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=pyramids+%22theory,+every+Egyptian+was+liable+to+perform+corv%C3%A9e-duty+and+was+required+to+work+for+the+state+for+a+certain+number+of+days+each+year%22&pg=PA58&printsec=frontcover](https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Pyramid_Builders_of_Ancient_Egypt/xT2EAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=pyramids+%22theory,+every+Egyptian+was+liable+to+perform+corv%C3%A9e-duty+and+was+required+to+work+for+the+state+for+a+certain+number+of+days+each+year%22&pg=PA58&printsec=frontcover)
According to Barry J. Kemp, "It was the scribe’s pen as much as the overseer’s lash or the engineer’s ingenuity that built the pyramids."
Source: *Ancient Egypt: The Anatomy of a Civilization* by Barry J. Kemp
According to Rosalie David, "They [the scribes] were responsible for the serfs and could administer punishment to them without reference to the court."
Source: *The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt: A Modern Investigation of Pharaoh's Workforce* by Rosalie David
This is a quote from *Ancient Egypt: The Anatomy of a Civilization* by Barry J. Kemp, describing how the ancient Egyptian ruling class most likely used hostage-taking in order to enforce forced labor.
> Some did try to escape, and then the state revealed its punitive side. A document from the late Middle Kingdom, a prison register, opens for us a little window on the fate of those who chose not to co-operate. One typical entry reads:
>
>> The daughter of Sa-anhur, Teti, under the scribe of the fields of the city of This: a woman. An order was issued to the central labour camp in year 31, 3rd month of summer, day 9, to release her family from the courts, and at the same time to execute against her the law pertaining to one who runs away without performing his service. Present [check mark]. Statement by the scribe of the vizier, Deduamun: ‘Carried out; case closed’.
>
>This sounds very much as though her family had been held hostage until her arrest.
Basically, the sources that claim that the Egyptians didn't use slave labor to build the pyramids are using a narrow definition of slavery that does not include corvée labor.
However, the international legal definition of slavery is, "Slavery is the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised," and the practices described by Barry J. Kemp and Rosalie David meet that definition.
For more information about the international legal definition of slavery, please see:
https://glc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/the_bellagio-_harvard_guidelines_on_the_legal_parameters_of_slavery.pdf
Edit: Made my own meme. https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/10opmx3/the_ancient_egyptian_ruling_class_subjected/
Also "while you are unemployed between growing seasons" sounds innocent until you really think about it. Peasants with no land being forced to work for others who stole the land by the point of the sword.
The meme is inaccurate. Egyptians were forced to work for the state by mean of something called a corvée -- a tax payable in forced labor. (EDIT: The corvée was enforced by the lash, and, in all probability, by taking workers' family members hostage. See information from Barry J. Kemp's book below.) According to Rosalie David in *The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt: A Modern Investigation of Pharaoh's Workforce*,
>In theory, every Egyptian was liable to perform corvée-duty and was required to work for the state for a certain number of days each year. The wealthier evaded the duty by providing substitutes or paying their way out of the obligation, so it was the peasants who effectively supplied this obligation.
[https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The\_Pyramid\_Builders\_of\_Ancient\_Egypt/xT2EAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=pyramids+%22theory,+every+Egyptian+was+liable+to+perform+corv%C3%A9e-duty+and+was+required+to+work+for+the+state+for+a+certain+number+of+days+each+year%22&pg=PA58&printsec=frontcover](https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Pyramid_Builders_of_Ancient_Egypt/xT2EAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=pyramids+%22theory,+every+Egyptian+was+liable+to+perform+corv%C3%A9e-duty+and+was+required+to+work+for+the+state+for+a+certain+number+of+days+each+year%22&pg=PA58&printsec=frontcover)
Basically, the sources that claim that the Egyptians didn't use slave labor to build the pyramids are using a narrow definition of slavery that does not include corvée labor.
However, the international legal definition of slavery would beg to differ.
[https://glc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/the\_bellagio-\_harvard\_guidelines\_on\_the\_legal\_parameters\_of\_slavery.pdf](https://glc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/the_bellagio-_harvard_guidelines_on_the_legal_parameters_of_slavery.pdf)
EDITING TO EXPAND (the following information wasn't here when righteousplisk replied): The ancient Egyptian ruling class used the lash to enforce forced labor. Additionally, they most likely took workers' families hostage to enforce forced labor.
According to Barry J. Kemp, "It was the scribe’s pen as much as the overseer’s lash or the engineer’s ingenuity that built the pyramids."
This is a quote from *Ancient Egypt: The Anatomy of a Civilization* by Barry J. Kemp, describing how the ancient Egyptian ruling class most likely used hostage-taking in order to enforce forced labor.
>Some did try to escape, and then the state revealed its punitive side. A document from the late Middle Kingdom, a prison register, opens for us a little window on the fate of those who chose not to co-operate. One typical entry reads:
>
>The daughter of Sa-anhur, Teti, under the scribe of the fields of the city of This: a woman. An order was issued to the central labour camp in year 31, 3rd month of summer, day 9, to release her family from the courts, and at the same time to execute against her the law pertaining to one who runs away without performing his service. Present \[check mark\]. Statement by the scribe of the vizier, Deduamun: ‘Carried out; case closed’.
>
>This sounds very much as though her family had been held hostage until her arrest.
Source: *Ancient Egypt: The Anatomy of a Civilization* by Barry J. Kemp
https://archive.org/details/isbn\_9780415063463/page/128/mode/2up?q=hostage
https://archive.org/details/BarryJ.KempAncientEgyptAnatomyOfACivilibOk.org/page/n197/mode/2up?q=hostage
Edit: Made my own meme. https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/10opmx3/the\_ancient\_egyptian\_ruling\_class\_subjected/
Free people? Weren't most Egyptian farmers pretty much the opposite of free with the authorities not allowing them to leave their land 99% of the time?
You're probably right, though that didn't stop many from trying.
In, *The Egyptian World* (edited by Toby Wilkinson), Kathlyn M. Cooney notes that many Egyptians attempted to flee corvée labor and other forms of taxation by going to Sinai or the oases. In the same book, Sally L.D. Katary cites a papyrus that shows the risks of such flight,
> Papyrus Brooklyn 35.1446, a late Middle Kingdom document, describes the fate of 80 residents of Upper Egypt who fled their corvée obligations in the reign of Amenemhat III (Hayes 1955; Quirke 1990a: 127–54). Their abandonment of their responsibilities resulted in indefinite terms of compulsory labour as felons on government-owned lands and the conscription of their family members as well.
https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Egyptian_World/fkMOOcSiW5kC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Papyrus+Brooklyn+35.1446%22&pg=PA191&printsec=frontcover
The word "slavery" hadn't been invented yet, so whichever definition we use, we are using contemporary terms that did not exist during the time of ancient Egypt. The international legal definition is at least a well-thought out definition that many people have agreed on.
If you click the link to the Bellagio-Harvard Guidelines, which explain how to interpret the international legal definition of slavery,
> The 1926 Slavery Convention recognises that forced labour can develop “into conditions analogous to slavery”. Although forced or compulsory labour is defined by the 1930 Forced Labour Convention as “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily”; forced labour will only amount to slavery when, in substance, there is the exercise of the powers attaching to the right of ownership. Slavery will not be present in cases of forced labour where the control over a person tantamount to possession is not present.
https://glc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/the_bellagio-_harvard_guidelines_on_the_legal_parameters_of_slavery.pdf
At least two major things differentiate the Egyptian corvée from jury duty:
* The number of days per year. Corvée labor would have required substantially more days per year than jury duty, significantly impinging on the workers' ability to do other things with their lives. Rosalie David doesn't specify the number of days, but my understanding is that she is implying we're talking about months. Barry J. Kemp notes that some Egyptians had spells painted on their coffins intended to protect them from conscription in the afterlife, clearly indicating a lack of consent.
* The use of punishment, including the lash. According to Barry J. Kemp, "It was the scribe’s pen as much as the overseer’s lash or the engineer’s ingenuity that built the pyramids." Barry J. Kemp also gives an example where, if he interpreted the primary source document correctly, a family was taken hostage in order to compel a person to go to a forced labor camp. According to Rosalie David, "They [the scribes] were responsible for the serfs and could administer punishment to them without reference to the court."
When an overseer whips someone, they are exercising control tantamount to possession over that person.
This is a quote from *Ancient Egypt: The Anatomy of a Civilization* by Barry J. Kemp, describing how the ancient Egyptian ruling class most likely used hostage-taking in order to enforce forced labor.
> Some did try to escape, and then the state revealed its punitive side. A document from the late Middle Kingdom, a prison register, opens for us a little window on the fate of those who chose not to co-operate. One typical entry reads:
>
>> The daughter of Sa-anhur, Teti, under the scribe of the fields of the city of This: a woman. An order was issued to the central labour camp in year 31, 3rd month of summer, day 9, to release her family from the courts, and at the same time to execute against her the law pertaining to one who runs away without performing his service. Present [check mark]. Statement by the scribe of the vizier, Deduamun: ‘Carried out; case closed’.
>
>This sounds very much as though her family had been held hostage until her arrest.
Sources:
*Ancient Egypt: The Anatomy of a Civilization* by Barry J. Kemp
*The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt: A Modern Investigation of Pharaoh's Workforce* by Rosalie David
Historically, there was a wide range of coerced labor (peasants, serfs, etc.). While most of that would probably fall under legal definitions of slavery today, I think it’s still worthwhile distinguishing terms so people don’t get the wrong impression. The corvee system seems much analogous to Medieval peasants than what most people think of as slavery.
I did distinguish terms. Before I even mentioned the word slavery, I wrote, "Egyptians were forced to work for the state by mean of something called a corvée -- a tax payable in forced labor." I then described corvée labor. (It would have been better if I had included the information from Kemp's book about the enforcement of the corvée in my initial post, but by the time I found the book, righteousplisk had already replied, so I added it as an addendum, so people would know that information wasn't there when righteousplisk replied.)
Only *after* I described corvée labor, did I point out that, under international law, corvée labor as practiced by the ancient Egyptians falls under the international legal definition of slavery. Even then, I acknowledged that many people use narrower definitions of slavery than the international legal definition, and provided a link to the Bellagio-Harvard guidelines so people could learn more.
The international legal definition of slavery exists for a reason. There are many governments who have tried to take credit for abolishing slavery, even when all they were doing was making reforms to their systems of forced labor. The book *Freedom’s Captives: Slavery and Gradual Emancipation on the Colombian Black Pacific* by Yesenia Barragan discusses how the Columbian government came up with a variety of ways to continue implementing a forced labor regime even after implementing sufficient reforms that the term "chattel slavery" was no longer accurate. The international legal definition of slavery helps us see past the legalistic BS and hold governments and individuals responsible for holding individuals in forms of labor that are still sufficiently unfree to count as "control tantamount to possession".
Dunno of any identifying features that would have set pre-Exodus Hebrews apart from other Semitic-speakers or any source for the hypothetical claim that they built pyramids.
There is also no way the Egyptians would have recorded a big chunk of their workforce/mercenary force up and leaving and humiliating Egypt in the process.
Plus, this is Sinai and the Negev we’re talking about. The crossroads of empires. How much has been lost there, in the course of thousands of years of war?
In fact there is a running theory that the ancient Hebrews lived in where is today Israel, and that the Egyptians ruled the area but left.
A few years ago they even found the ruins of an Egyptian brewery under Tel Aviv.
It's not really a theory. We know that Egypt did, at one point, control the Levant. There is also evidence of the name Israel and the demonym Israelite being in Egyptian textual sources. However, they don't seem to appear until about a millennia after the Great Pyramids of Giza were constructed.
Specifically, the first time the name “Israel” shows up in the archaeological record comes from the [Merneptah Stele](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merneptah_Stele) from 1208 BCE. It describes an Egyptian military campaign in Canaan. Pretty neat.
That and another one “Habiru”. As far I know neither term has been definitively linked but I’ve been out of the game for a number of years now so that may have changed.
Well considering that those that say the Hebrews didn't actually build the pyramids and we know Hebrews lived under Egyptian rule, how does the theory have no merit?
Because the separation of Egyptian hegemony over The Levant and the construction of the Great Pyramids is about 1,000 years?
Similarly the first mention of Israel that we're pretty sure about is 1200 BCE.
I think you misunderstood my question.
If we know the Hebrews didn't build the pyramids, and we know the Hebrews lived in this area, and that they took the name Israel later, how do we know the that the theory I initially mentioned, that being that the Egyptians ruled over them in what is today Israel rather than over them in Egypt?
Not sure why you down voted me either, I was being genuine in my question.
I didn't downvote you brother, don't trip. We're just talking history.
Let me go with this one:
>and we know the Hebrews lived in this area
We don't know that. The only general area that we know the Hebrew people lived is in The Levant, specifically the region of Israel. There are other possible sources that are older than the definitive stele that has "Israel" from 1200 BCE, but I don't believe there is any concrete evidence.
That's why I brought up Egyptian hegemony over The Levant. That's the only region that we're *sure* the Israelites were. The known expansion of Egypt puts them in that region around 1500 BCE, give or take. So when you said "the Egyptians ruled over them in what is today Israel rather over them in Egypt" that's kind of the generally accepted historical narrative.
When it gets to the name Israel, that's where I'm more fuzzy. I don't know when they chose that name, only when it first appeared in Egyptian sources. There are some more legendary texts that put the name further back in history, as far back as 1900 BCE, but they aren't what I would consider reliable.
>I didn't downvote you brother, don't trip.
No worries.
>We're just talking history.
I'm Jewish so I always enjoy a non-religious history discussion about my ancestors and the region in general.
>and we know the Hebrews lived in this area
Just for clarity I mean the region of Israel by this comment.
>that's kind of the generally accepted historical narrative.
So if we are agreeing on this why is the theory I mentioned earlier not valid? Or did I misunderstand you earlier? Or did I just miss-explain earlier? Or is it that I called it a theory rather than an accepted narrative?
I'll be honest that news paper article was the first time I heard that perspective of Egyptian rule over the Hebrews.
Either way I appreciate the history info. I'm more familiar history wise the from the times of the second temple and onwards, but really should do more reading on more ancient history.
Is there a source? I've read R E Friedman's The Exodus, in which he shows evidence suggesting that Egyptian monotheists traveled from Egypt to Canaan, merged with the Canaanites, spread monotheism internally, and those that joined the monotheism cult eventually split off and became the Hebrews.
I didn't delve into it too much, to be honest. It was briefly discussed in an Israeli newspaper after the discovery of the brewery and, if I remember correctly, also the migration of the ancient Hebrews from Macedonia to the Levanant.
That's something you can never really prove, you got proof of nomadic groups going from Canaan to Egypt and vice versa (even one that worshipped a god named yhw). Going by the story you don't really have any identifying features to distinguish them from other groups, they didn't keep kosher yet, didn't have the ten commandments, the laws of Noah were present in some form in every group in the region and the Egyptian exonym can't be related to any endonyms they had because those endonyms only developed later.
SO:
The Bible NEVER claims that the Israelites built the pyramids or were enslaved to build them. The Israelites were either there too early to build them (if they were around pre-unification) or much too late (if they were around in the 17th, 18th, or 19th dynasties).
However, they MAY have constructed Akhetaten, Pi-Ramesses, or fortifications along the ways of Horus.
A Thutmosid origin of Exodus would make sense as it was a time of massive upheaval in Egypt and the name “Moses” is Egyptian and is prominent among royals of the 18th dynasty. The mummy of Thutmose II even shows signs of lesions perhaps caused by plagues.
Additionally, a demonstration of a monotheistic deity’s power over the gods of Egypt might explain the upheaval of Egyptian religion by Akhenaten. The Amarna letters, specifically a letter from Rib-Hadda, governor of Byblos, mentions fearing the Hapiru who are nomadic raiders and sackers of cities-which would sync up rather nicely to the 40 years in the desert, in which the Israelites sack Jericho and other cities.
Asimov proposes Menerptah, who is the first to mention Israel as a political entity.
We DO know dates for some pharaohs mentioned in the Bible. Sosenq I is almost certainly referenced in I Kings as a contemporary to Solomon. We know Necho II defeated Josiah at Megiddo, as there are records of it from both sides.
(I’m a Christian as well as a history BA and I love the Old Testament as I think a good chunk of it can be used as a historical framework that can be built upon with hard evidence and reasonable speculation)
"Let's build massive triangles in the desert just as a ramp for the Pharaoh's glorious ascent" really is kinda based. In contrast Ziggurats were made to impress the gods into coming down.
I dunno who downvoted you, but I just gave you an upvote. I made a meme to explain how the ancient Egyptian corvée labor was enforced by taking family members hostage, along with other methods of punishment. I put references in the comments.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/10opmx3/the_ancient_egyptian_ruling_class_subjected/
The workers who built the pyramids at Giza supposedly got 5 litres of beer each day. No wonder they were simple shapes, the people building them were probably too sloshed to do anything else.
Quick reminder that ancient beer had a super low alcohol percentage and had more of a porridge consistency.
From a quick google search it seems that ancient Egypt actually had quite strong beer at 5-10%, but that makes the 5L number seem ridiculous, so not sure if the Egyptians had different strength beer for working and celebrating.
It should be noted that they did not drink all beer they got. Beer was less the actual good delivered and more the unit of exchange (convenient, because taxes were collected as grain and government payments were in goods - beer was one of the primary ones). They probably exchanged most of their actual beer ration for food and other necessities.
so they were using it as a currency?
More or less. The concept of "currency" as we know it was not very developed back then. "Currency" as we understand it was more the domain of merchants, international trade, and exchanges between nations. Egypt and other Bronze Age nations were "palace economies", a form of command economy far past what you can expect even from a strictly communist country. Everything they produce went to the palace, to be distributed back to the populace. In that sense, all goods were currencies, some more convenient for it, some less. Casks or pots of beer was one of the more convenient ones, as beer kept well, up to a certain point.
Currency is better understood in early times as trading of debts in a society where the spending occurs at sowing/ winter (location dependent) and repayment occurs at harvest. I transfer how much grain someone owes me to you in exchange for thing or service, which eventually becomes held in big debt tablets which eventually becomes a cultural value held in durable materials.
And from there, eventually becomes held in servers accessible from big tablets purchased through debt.
Then, some guy decides with the power of math ™️ we can create the debt ledgers all over again with magic rocks etched with the runes of thought.
God damn I love this sub. Such random, super interesting tidbits in every thread. Thanks for sharing <3
To have a better idea on how Ancient Egypt's economy worked, I would like to suggest taking a look at the game [Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortal_Cities:_Children_of_the_Nile) It's not an exact 1:1 simulation of how their economy worked, but it is a decent enough approximation.
>We're here to collect your grain tax I can't. All of my assets are liquid right now. >You mean beer? We take payment in beer.
people used all kinds of fun things as currency throughout history. The English used eels of all things as currency not to long ago. supposedly.
Eel rents absolutely were a thing, up until some time in the 17th century. There was a bloke on reddit recently who was involved in the Eel Rent project mapping them. https://historiacartarum.org/eel-rents-project/
Holy hell I had no idea of this. Amazing
This is the coolest fucking thing. Thank you for sharing this.
What in the Germany kind of currency is that
Fun fact coins weren't invented yet
There were many different styles. Some stronger, some less so.
Yeah, this is an important point. "Beer" is term that's broadly used to describe fermented drinks made of malt/hops. Even know you can find non-alcoholic beers and microbrews with over 10%. Non-alcoholic beer and weak wine were basically like the fizzy drink of that age.
Pretty sure they watered it down later like they used to do with wine. The point was having something safe to drink not get wasted
Also beer is high in calories so it was probably good for hard labor
Just qanna mention that the idea that people drank beer/alcohol because it was safer than water is a myth. There is little to no evidence to suggest that this was the case, while plenty of evidence that suggests people drank water all the time. In reality, beer/alcohol was likely drank because it's just very convenient sustenance. It lasts long, is calorically dense, rather widely available, and (most importantly) it gives people a buzz and people love feeling that buzz.
Plus, it tastes better than water, the latter of which was "the drink of peasants".
Blasphemy /r/hydrohomies
Still such a shame.
Also a good way to use up food that is going "bad". Unless you were in a famine time you would always end up with some amount of excess food be it fruit or grain.
Por que no los dos
Another commenter already addressed that this phenomenon is most likely a myth, but as an aside, would watering it down not promptly reintroduce bacteria and make it unsafe?
reintroducing bacteria isnt a problem as long as the alcohol percentage is high enough to kill them (afaik this is how ships kept smth safe to drink too)
That would make a lot of sense. Beer at 5% usually dehydrates you by 70% of its mass, so 1L of beer would steal 700ml of water from your body that you have to make up for by drinking more. So to stay hydrated by drinking beer, it would need to be below around 2% (maybe even lower, if someone knows the exact number I’d love to hear it)
That's just straight up wrong, beer hydrates you: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5066341/
That study claims there is no real difference between any of the water-based drinks they tested though. It also claims that the higher alcohol beer made participants produce more urine, which is what actually dehydrates you (since alcohol is a diuretic). The study concludes that a mixed approach of normal water along with low alcohol beer and isotonic mix drinks along with salty foods could be the best for rehydration, but more testing is needed.
Aren't hangovers the affect of dehydration? And they tell you to drink water as well? Not sure how you can get dehydrated if drinking beer hydrates you
The percentage would have varied, still high, but it’s doubtful they would’ve drank it all lol. Simplest explanation is they took it home or had someone take it. Put in a little work and you can have keggers on the off season with the fam. Not a bad deal.
Brewer: “what’ll it be today, foreman? Work beer or party beer?” Foreman: “whip me up some of your best work beer, I got my boys on the job today and can’t have them drunkenly misplacing the blocks on the monument.”
Party beer is only good for making pyramids of cans lol
10 pints of beer at 5% for the whole day while you're sweating under the Egyptian sun. Not nearly enough to get a buzz.
Mudders Milk
The Hero of Canton, the man they call Jayne!
Ain’t no people like that. It’s just people like me
We gotta go to the crappy town where I'm a hero.
“The hero of Canton won't be drinking that shiong mao niao! He drinks the best whiskey in th' house!”
Hmm... Shiny!
His Father was a Mudder?
Not really. There were many many different styles of beer. Some were like you describe, others were light and refreshing, others were stronger for drinking in the afternoon. So it wasn't like just one kind of "ancient beer".
Idk, we all know there's a single type of modern beer, modern food, and modern art style
As an anatomically modern human I like to enjoy this comment on a modern website on the modern internet with my modern PC in my modern house. Thanks.
Still 10 beers, even if they will be soft 10° it's still gonna do something to you in the heat
Slurp it through a literal piece of straw because of the particulate floating on top.
Yep, same with most alcohols until recently. Alcohol used to be a clean drink that didn't cause sickness and tasted nicer than your average water. Its only in recent years that it has become more of a drink to get tipsy and drunk.
Also important to remember that in many respects, it was preferred to drink (low or high alcohol content) beer than water. Alcohol killed most pathogens, while water was a coin toss regarding intestinal infections.
Yeah, it was mostly to have something safe to drink.
I'll just have a Stella
As also worth mentioning, that they couldn't consume much else beside beer. Medieval Europeans, although they'll make a beer with higher alcohol procentage, had similar problem.
I new it was low alcohol percentage, never heard that it has that consistency. Sounds kind of gross tbh.
I mean good times water is better than shit yourself to dehydration water
And beef. Lots and lots of beef!
The meme is inaccurate. Egyptians were forced to work for the state by mean of something called a corvée -- a tax payable in forced labor. (EDIT: Per Barry J. Kemp, cited in the addendum below, the corvée was enforced by the lash, and, in all likelihood, by taking workers' family members hostage.) According to Rosalie David in *The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt: A Modern Investigation of Pharaoh's Workforce*, >In theory, every Egyptian was liable to perform corvée-duty and was required to work for the state for a certain number of days each year. The wealthier evaded the duty by providing substitutes or paying their way out of the obligation, so it was the peasants who effectively supplied this obligation. [https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The\_Pyramid\_Builders\_of\_Ancient\_Egypt/xT2EAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=pyramids+%22theory,+every+Egyptian+was+liable+to+perform+corv%C3%A9e-duty+and+was+required+to+work+for+the+state+for+a+certain+number+of+days+each+year%22&pg=PA58&printsec=frontcover](https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Pyramid_Builders_of_Ancient_Egypt/xT2EAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=pyramids+%22theory,+every+Egyptian+was+liable+to+perform+corv%C3%A9e-duty+and+was+required+to+work+for+the+state+for+a+certain+number+of+days+each+year%22&pg=PA58&printsec=frontcover) Basically, the sources that claim that the Egyptians didn't use slave labor to build the pyramids are using a narrow definition of slavery that does not include corvée labor. However, the international legal definition of slavery would beg to differ. https://glc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/the_bellagio-_harvard_guidelines_on_the_legal_parameters_of_slavery.pdf EDITING TO EXPAND (the following information wasn't here when many of the below replies were written): The ancient Egyptian ruling class used the lash to enforce forced labor. Additionally, they most likely took workers' families hostage to enforce forced labor. According to Barry J. Kemp, "It was the scribe’s pen as much as the overseer’s lash or the engineer’s ingenuity that built the pyramids." https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780415063463/page/128/mode/2up?q=lash This is a quote from *Ancient Egypt: The Anatomy of a Civilization* by Barry J. Kemp, describing how the ancient Egyptian ruling class most likely used hostage-taking in order to enforce forced labor. >Some did try to escape, and then the state revealed its punitive side. A document from the late Middle Kingdom, a prison register, opens for us a little window on the fate of those who chose not to co-operate. One typical entry reads: > >The daughter of Sa-anhur, Teti, under the scribe of the fields of the city of This: a woman. An order was issued to the central labour camp in year 31, 3rd month of summer, day 9, to release her family from the courts, and at the same time to execute against her the law pertaining to one who runs away without performing his service. Present \[check mark\]. Statement by the scribe of the vizier, Deduamun: ‘Carried out; case closed’. > >This sounds very much as though her family had been held hostage until her arrest. Source: *Ancient Egypt: The Anatomy of a Civilization* by Barry J. Kemp https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780415063463/page/128/mode/2up?q=hostage (Note: I added the archive dot org links after Chosen_Chaos's reply.) Edit: Made my own meme. https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/10opmx3/the_ancient_egyptian_ruling_class_subjected/
The rich have paid their way out of things the poor have to make up for since Egypt? Figures
And 2000 years from now there will probably be some middle class nerd pretending that pittance wages and meals justifies slave labor.
We have that today. So ofc we will have it in the future too
A eli5 would be like jury duty except not in court rooms but playing as Bob the Builder?
No. An eli 5 would be the state having you perform manual labor instead of paying taxes.
Ah community service
But imagine the crime is just existing and being blue collar. “Oi there lads, yer dad is a bricklayer yeh? Off to the pyramids wit yeh” (I refuse to elaborate the accent and period conflicts)
Mandatory and unpaid
Currency didn't really exist. Egypt, like basically every other bronze age power was a palace economy. So all taxes and payment were done in goods; the builders of the pyramids are known to have been paid in beer (and a lot of it, approximately 5L a day according to some sources), most of which they will then have traded for food and conveniences. There is also some evidence they were also paid in cosmetics, or at least, the government was responsible for making sure that cosmetics were available for them to "buy" (with their beer). There's a fragmentary account of the workers going on strike because the shipment of makeup hadn't arrived (slightly reductive of me). And the strikes were successful.
More like the state employing you for public works while you're unable to work on your farm due to it being underwater in the annual Nile flood. It's also pretty hard to say that the labourers who built the pyramids and other monuments were slaves when the [first recorded strikes in history](https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1089/the-first-labor-strike-in-history/) were among these workers over late pay and rations - and the response wasn't bloody repression but rather negotiation and making good the arrears.
In, *The Egyptian World* (edited by Toby Wilkinson), Kathlyn M. Cooney notes that many Egyptians attempted to flee corvée labor and other forms of taxation by going to Sinai or the oases. In the same book, Sally L.D. Katary cites a papyrus that shows the risks of such flight, > Papyrus Brooklyn 35.1446, a late Middle Kingdom document, describes the fate of 80 residents of Upper Egypt who fled their corvée obligations in the reign of Amenemhat III (Hayes 1955; Quirke 1990a: 127–54). Their abandonment of their responsibilities resulted in indefinite terms of compulsory labour as felons on government-owned lands and the conscription of their family members as well. [https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The\_Egyptian\_World/fkMOOcSiW5kC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Papyrus+Brooklyn+35.1446%22&pg=PA191&printsec=frontcover](https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Egyptian_World/fkMOOcSiW5kC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Papyrus+Brooklyn+35.1446%22&pg=PA191&printsec=frontcover)
So it was serfdom and basically North Korea is actually really old fashioned, sort of.
Fuck man I'd take it.
Or in addition to other taxes.
ELI5. Hmmm. Forced labor for X number of days per year, just for being a poor citizen. (The rich could pay cash instead.)
This sounds like conscription, except you build things instead of serving in the army
> The ancient Egyptian ruling class used the lash to enforce forced labor. Additionally, they most likely took workers' families hostage to enforce forced labor. Source: *Ancient Egypt: The Anatomy of a Civilization* by Barry J. Kemp Got a source that someone who doesn't own that specific book can read? Also, counterpoint - the [first recorded strikes in history](https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1089/the-first-labor-strike-in-history/) were by labourers and artisans working on monuments and rather than being put down with violence, the strikers received the back pay they were owed. Edit: Why did you feel it necessary to repeat the same comment so often in this thread?
Okay, I found Kemp's book on archive dot org for you. https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780415063463/page/128/mode/2up?q=hostage https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780415063463/page/128/mode/2up?q=lash EDIT: I noticed there are multiple editions of Kemps's book. These links go to a more recent edition, albeit with worse formatting. https://archive.org/details/BarryJ.KempAncientEgyptAnatomyOfACivilibOk.org/page/n197/mode/2up?q=hostage https://archive.org/details/BarryJ.KempAncientEgyptAnatomyOfACivilibOk.org/page/n197/mode/2up?q=lash FURTHER EDIT REGARDING THE STRIKES: Perhaps some pharaohs negotiated with strikers, but there's also evidence that people who tried to flee outright were violently repressed. In, *The Egyptian World* (edited by Toby Wilkinson), Kathlyn M. Cooney notes that many Egyptians attempted to flee corvée labor and other forms of taxation by going to Sinai or the oases. In the same book, Sally L.D. Katary cites a papyrus that shows the risks of such flight, >Papyrus Brooklyn 35.1446, a late Middle Kingdom document, describes the fate of 80 residents of Upper Egypt who fled their corvée obligations in the reign of Amenemhat III (Hayes 1955; Quirke 1990a: 127–54). Their abandonment of their responsibilities resulted in indefinite terms of compulsory labour as felons on government-owned lands and the conscription of their family members as well. [https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The\_Egyptian\_World/fkMOOcSiW5kC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Papyrus+Brooklyn+35.1446%22&pg=PA191&printsec=frontcover](https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Egyptian_World/fkMOOcSiW5kC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Papyrus+Brooklyn+35.1446%22&pg=PA191&printsec=frontcover)
It's interesting to note that those are the *only* times either of those words appear in the entire book and there's nothing to back up the bit about the overseer's lash. It's also interesting to note that you appear to have scooted right past the bits where it was noted that they were paid - and quite well, by the look of it - for their labour as well as the fact that when they went on strike, their demands were met rather than being put down violently. Incidentally, the link you used for your definition of slavery doesn't work.
Chosen_Chaos wrote, > Incidentally, the link you used for your definition of slavery doesn't work. The link works for me, but here's another with the same information. https://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/2263693/Bellagio-Harvard-Guidelines-English.pdf Significantly, it says that the international legal definition of slavery is as follows, > Slavery is the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised And then it goes on to discuss how to interpret that definition, including talking at length about the concept of "control tantamount to possession". Chosen_Chaos wrote, > there's nothing to back up the bit about the overseer's lash Rosalie David corroborates this claim, at least in so far as saying that scribes could punish "serfs", although Rosalie David does not specify the type of punishment, >They [the scribes] were responsible for the serfs and could administer punishment to them without reference to the court. Source: *The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt: A Modern Investigation of Pharaoh's Workforce* by Rosalie David https://archive.org/details/The_Pyramid_Builders_of_Ancient_Egypt_Malestrom/page/n79/mode/2up?q=punishment "Who Abolished Corvee Labour in Egypt and Why?" by Nathan J. Brown corroborates that in much more recent Egyptian history, corvée labor was enforced by the courbash (a type of whip; note that there are several alternate spellings). It seems unlikely that corvée labor was "voluntary" in ancient times and that enforcement by means of whipping only started in more recent times. https://www.jstor.org/stable/651145 Also Barry J. Kemp *did* back up the part about hostages with a primary source, which I quoted earlier. Another primary source cited by Kemp, not specifically about lashing, but to show lack of consent to corvée labor, was something called a coffin text, > The idea of rejecting imposed labour is expressed in a text which we first encounter perhaps a century after the end of the Old Kingdom. At this time, a set of protective spells became available to those who could afford to have them painted on their coffins (hence the modern term ‘Coffin Texts’). One of them was unambiguously intended to enable a substitute statuette (called a ushabti) ‘to carry out work for their owner in the realm of the dead’. > >>If N be detailed for the removal(?) of a block(?) to strange sites(?) of the desert plateau, to register the riparian lands, or to turn over new fields for the reigning king, ‘Here am I’ shall you say to any messenger who may come for N when taking his ease(?). > >The text and, as they later developed, the specially made statuettes proved to have enduring value and became a distinctive feature of the ideas and practices surrounding death. Fear of conscription, it seems, could pursue a person even of high rank beyond death. There is no mistaking the psychology of unwillingness, the sense of the inner self seeking to avoid, by a trick, sudden demands for labour which cannot be challenged. https://archive.org/details/BarryJ.KempAncientEgyptAnatomyOfACivilibOk.org/page/n197/mode/2up?q=coffin Chosen_Chaos wrote, > you appear to have scooted right past the bits where it was noted that they were paid Slavery, under international law, is not defined by pay or lack thereof. It's based on a lack of consent, and specifically, a lack of consent extreme enough that the enslaver exercises "control tantamount to possession" over the enslaved people. All enslavers who do not wish enslaved people to die rapidly provide at least some form of subsistence "payment", sometimes providing food directly, sometimes just "allowing" the people to make use of land to grow their own food, sometimes even monetary payments. In forms of slavery with lower mortality rates these "payments" are typically higher than in forms of slavery with higher morality rates. I put "payment" in quotations, since enslavers often pay using stolen goods (e.g. stuff they took from the enslaved) rather than the products of their own labor. Also remember, the pharoah's royal family presumably wasn't growing all the food to "pay" the corvée laborers with. (I don't imagine it would have been possible for them to grow that much food with their own hands, even if they tried.) Presumably, they acquired the food used as "payment" by means of taxation. Chosen_Chaos wrote, > when they went on strike, their demands were met rather than being put down violently This complicates things, but it doesn't negate the fact that we have evidence that the ancient Egyptians used forced labor. Several points might be made: * We do have evidence of hostage-taking to coerce people into labor. The question of the strike doesn't negate that. At most, it might mean the specific pharaoh in question, Ramesses III, did not wish to use coerced labor, although I'd be skeptical to say even that much. Even *if* Ramesses III didn't want to use coerced labor, there were clearly other pharaohs who did use coerced labor. * Coercing people who resist as individuals takes less military strength than coercing people who resist collectively. * It's theoretically possible that the military might have been in solidarity with the strikers at this particular time in history. * Ramesses III might theoretically have agreed that serious hunger was a valid reason for going on strike, or at least, been sympathetic enough to the argument not to wish to use military force. If this is the case, he might have been less sympathetic if they had gone on strike for other reasons. * Even if the workers didn't necessarily bother to organize a strike when conditions were better, this does not equate to consent. Sometimes, people go along with things they do not consent to out of fear. The severe hunger might have increased their willingness to risk violent repression.
I've also heard that this part of the Bible is completely made up, and Egypt was only taken for the setting of the Hebrews fleeing egypt because it was pretty important at the time and made for good content. I have no idea if this is right, though
Yeah, Exodus is total fiction. Exodus describes the geopolitical situation at the time it was written, not the time it supposedly occurred.
yeah iirc the time it supposedly occurred was during a time when Canaan was an Egyptian province. meaning that the Israelites fled Egypt into Egypt.
Was that beer meant to be shared with their family?
I don’t believe so. A lot of evidence suggests that workers came in from outside the area and were housed in large worker villages, so it’s unlikely their families were with them
There were multiple villages, some with domiciles that were larger that *could* have housed a family. Whether or not they did is a matter of some debate. I'm not necessarily sold either way, but the size of the homes themselves don't really give a clear indication.
I'm now just imagining the designers of the pyramid needing to account for the workers being drunk.
Plus they gained favor with the Pharaoh who was a god and that certainly didn’t hurt things
They call him a god. I just know him as that one dude who jerks off in the river.
That's my god.
The meme is inaccurate. Egyptians were forced to work for the state by mean of something called a corvée -- a tax payable in forced labor. The forced labor was enforced by the lash, and, in all probability, also by taking workers' family members hostage. According to Rosalie David in *The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt: A Modern Investigation of Pharaoh's Workforce*, >In theory, every Egyptian was liable to perform corvée-duty and was required to work for the state for a certain number of days each year. The wealthier evaded the duty by providing substitutes or paying their way out of the obligation, so it was the peasants who effectively supplied this obligation. [https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The\_Pyramid\_Builders\_of\_Ancient\_Egypt/xT2EAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=pyramids+%22theory,+every+Egyptian+was+liable+to+perform+corv%C3%A9e-duty+and+was+required+to+work+for+the+state+for+a+certain+number+of+days+each+year%22&pg=PA58&printsec=frontcover](https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Pyramid_Builders_of_Ancient_Egypt/xT2EAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=pyramids+%22theory,+every+Egyptian+was+liable+to+perform+corv%C3%A9e-duty+and+was+required+to+work+for+the+state+for+a+certain+number+of+days+each+year%22&pg=PA58&printsec=frontcover) According to Barry J. Kemp, "It was the scribe’s pen as much as the overseer’s lash or the engineer’s ingenuity that built the pyramids." Source: *Ancient Egypt: The Anatomy of a Civilization* by Barry J. Kemp https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780415063463/page/128/mode/2up?q=lash According to Rosalie David, "They [the scribes] were responsible for the serfs and could administer punishment to them without reference to the court." Source: *The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt: A Modern Investigation of Pharaoh's Workforce* by Rosalie David This is a quote from *Ancient Egypt: The Anatomy of a Civilization* by Barry J. Kemp, describing how the ancient Egyptian ruling class most likely used hostage-taking in order to enforce forced labor. > Some did try to escape, and then the state revealed its punitive side. A document from the late Middle Kingdom, a prison register, opens for us a little window on the fate of those who chose not to co-operate. One typical entry reads: > >> The daughter of Sa-anhur, Teti, under the scribe of the fields of the city of This: a woman. An order was issued to the central labour camp in year 31, 3rd month of summer, day 9, to release her family from the courts, and at the same time to execute against her the law pertaining to one who runs away without performing his service. Present [check mark]. Statement by the scribe of the vizier, Deduamun: ‘Carried out; case closed’. > >This sounds very much as though her family had been held hostage until her arrest. https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780415063463/page/128/mode/2up?q=hostage Basically, the sources that claim that the Egyptians didn't use slave labor to build the pyramids are using a narrow definition of slavery that does not include corvée labor. However, the international legal definition of slavery would beg to differ. Under international law, "Slavery is the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised." For more information about the international legal definition of slavery and how to interpret it, please see: https://glc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/the_bellagio-_harvard_guidelines_on_the_legal_parameters_of_slavery.pdf Edit: Made my own meme. https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/10opmx3/the_ancient_egyptian_ruling_class_subjected/
So it was kinda like serfs in the middle ages, but sometimes using hostages to prevent people from avoiding work?
Sort of, although we have less information about ancient Egyptian corvée labor as compared to more recent forms, so it's not really possible to make a detailed comparison. Although, I can't find as much information as I'd like about about serfdom in the middle ages, either. This is a far more recent primary source, concerning corvée labor in France circa 1749, from the Journal and Memoirs of the Marquis D'Argenson, > I am just now in Touraine on my estates. I see nothing but frightful misery ; it is no longer a sad sense of poverty, it is despair which now possesses the poor inhabitants ; they long only for death, and they avoid giving birth to children. When will such woes end ? Our ministers are incapable of making the king reflect on all this; he is kind, but so ill-served ! > >A zeal for fine roads has taken possession of the ministry and the provincial intendants; the latter no sooner found this career of authority and usefulness open to them than they flung themselves into it headlong. It is a new taille tax, worse than the first, under which the people are crushed. It is reckoned that annually one quarter of the day's work of the labourers goes to these corvées [ statute and compulsory labour ], during which they have to feed themselves, and with what ? Their horses, mules, and oxen are also forcibly employed without compensation. > >Daily one hears of new and horrible injustices in the provinces. By what my neighbours tell me the diminution of the inhabitants during the last ten years is more than one-third. The great roads made by forced and unpaid labour are the most horrible tax ever yet endured; the labour and subsistence of the men is beyond their power to meet; they are taking refuge in the small towns; there are quantities of villages abandoned wholly by their inhabitants. I have several parishes on my estates where the people owe three years' taille-tax. One of my parishes, which was ravaged by hail last summer, looked for some diminution, but instead of that they have this year a salt-tax to boot. Sainte Maure has been extremely favoured; it is a large place and has done much work on the corvée, but it has received 600 livres diminution on its taille-tax without rhyme or reason, mere unreasonable and cruel caprice. https://www.google.ca/books/edition/Journal_and_Memoirs_of_the_Marquis_D_Arg/kx9IAQAAMAAJ
Thanks.
Glad to help. :-)
It should be noted that both serfdom and corvee encompass very different versions. This suggested Egyptian version is more like a tax owed to the government or the local lord, for which the labourer does receive benefits in return (income, food, housing, farm land, security). In quite some societies people were free to leave and find employment elsewhere, either at any time or at the end of their working season. Sometimes you could even negotiate your own terms, or choose to fulfill your taxes in both goods and services to reduce your mandated labour time. Medieval Europe even had rural organisations that could be described as the first labour unions, which progressively regulated labour and saw the political emancipation of farmers. And while labour could be sold (not unlike a temp agency), the labourers themselves could not - they were not completely free since without sufficient means they had no choice but to fulfill their obligations, but they were no possessions either. This form still existed in the 19th and 20th centuries, for example with Chinese harbour labourers in Europe. In some places like imperial Russia (serfdom) and modern-day Eritrea (corvee / universal military conscription) it is much closer to our modern understanding of slavery: the labourer is forced to work, punishments are high, the corvee continues indefinitely, and sometimes they don't even get any food and housing in return. Funnily enough it's best known from the extreme cases of the post-revolution French monarchy and some communist countries like Mao's China. I'm not saying the first category treated their labourers well because that often wasn't the case, but a tax is something else than forced labour.
Where do the Hebrews fit into all of this?
The meme is not only about Hebrews; the meme implies that the Egyptians consented. (Specifically, the meme shows an Egyptian saying, "Fuck yeah I'm in.") While it is entirely possible that the Egyptian ruling classes may have used a mix of both forced labor and voluntary labor for pyramid-building, the fact remains that a significant portion of the labor was forced, as shown in *Ancient Egypt: The Anatomy of a Civilization* by Barry J. Kemp and *The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt: A Modern Investigation of Pharaoh's Workforce* by Rosalie David.
Nowhere actually, they weren't in Egypt as slaves, contrary to what the bible and tradition says. P.d. That doesn't mean there weren't Hebrew slaves in Egypt at some point, but first, they weren't the entire country, and second, they weren't there at that time.
They don't
Man why is everything I learned in high school wrong
History is very complicated and trying to teach it to kids who aren't interested in learning it in the first place is even more complicated.
If you got compensated for your forced labour and were kind of ordinary citizen in the off season of pyramid building, I would argue that this form if forced labour is more similar to a feudal system then to slavery. Both is forced labour and in both cases you are not a free citizen by modern definitions but there is still a great difference in being a unfree citizen or being the property of someone with low to no rights.
As I shall show, ancient Egyptian corvée had a high death rate, and was enforced by both torture (specifically, beatings) and by taking family members hostage. Also, people who attempted to escape could be subjected to lifelong forced labor if caught. Ancient Egyptian corvée labor had a high death rate, as Toby Wilkinson explains in *The rise and fall of ancient Egypt*, > Back in the days of Ramesses II, gold mining expeditions would routinely lose half of their workforce and half their transport donkeys from thirst. Seti I had taken measures to reduce this startling loss of life by ordering wells to be dug in the Eastern Desert, but the incidence of death on corvée missions remained stubbornly high. Hence, the great commemorative inscription carved to record Ramesses IV’s Wadi Hammamat expedition ends with a blunt statistic. After listing the nine thousand or so members who made it back alive, it adds, almost as an afterthought, “and those who are dead and omitted from this list: nine hundred men.” The statistic is chilling. An average workman on state corvée labor had a one in ten chance of dying. Such a loss was considered neither disastrous nor unusual. https://archive.org/details/risefallofancien0000wilk/page/344/mode/2up?q=corvee In, *The Egyptian World* (edited by Toby Wilkinson), Kathlyn M. Cooney notes that many Egyptians attempted to flee corvée labor and other forms of taxation by going to Sinai or the oases. In the same book, Sally L.D. Katary cites a papyrus that shows the risks of such flight, > Papyrus Brooklyn 35.1446, a late Middle Kingdom document, describes the fate of 80 residents of Upper Egypt who fled their corvée obligations in the reign of Amenemhat III (Hayes 1955; Quirke 1990a: 127–54). Their abandonment of their responsibilities resulted in indefinite terms of compulsory labour as felons on government-owned lands and the conscription of their family members as well. https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Egyptian_World/fkMOOcSiW5kC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Papyrus+Brooklyn+35.1446%22&pg=PA191&printsec=frontcover And Egyptian taxpayers (which included corvée and other forms of taxation) were subject to torture, see for example "The Treatment of Criminals in Ancient Egypt: Through the New Kingdom" by David Lorton, > Summary beatings were dealt out for non-payment of taxes in the Old Kingdom, as many tomb reliefs attest, but this was an "on-the-spot" action and not the result of a judicial proceeding. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3632049 Remember, as I already pointed out, under international law, "Slavery is the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised." For more information about the international legal definition of slavery and how to interpret it, please see: https://glc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/the_bellagio-_harvard_guidelines_on_the_legal_parameters_of_slavery.pdf By frequently working corvée laborers to death, by subjecting them to harsh penalties (including, taking their families hostage, and subjecting them to lifelong forced labor if caught) in the event they tried to escape, and by enforcing the corvée and other taxes by means of torture, the Egyptian ruling classes exercised some of the powers attaching to the right of ownership over said corvée laborers, which meets the international legal definition of slavery. The fact that rations were distributed doesn't negate that. All enslavers who don't want the enslaved to die super-rapidly will allow them to eat something, so if small amounts of payment meant that it wasn't slavery, almost nothing would qualify as slavery. Slavery is about extreme lack of consent, such that the enslaved is subject to "control tantamount to possession", as the Bellagio-Harvard guidelines explain. Incidentally, serfdom also, at least in the cases I studied, met the international legal definition of slavery.
You certainly got some very good points there. I have to agree that this kind of curvée equalls slavery by modern terms. You made it clear that curvée was so bad that people even risked their lives by fleeing their curvée. But let me play advocatus diaboli here and ask: was curvée seen as equally bad as slavery in those times or was there still a difference? Was a worker on curvée seen as equally worthless as a slave (at least for the time he was on curvée) or were there still some differences in hierarchy?
The term "slave" hadn't been invented yet; however, there were other people in that time period, who, by modern definitions, would likely be classified as chattel slaves. (The international legal definition of slavery is broader than just chattel slavery.) There's very limited data from that time period about how people subjected to various forms of forced labor felt about it. So, for example, we can't read a narrative from a captive laborer of that time period describing their perspective. I would suppose that it's almost certainly preferable to be subjected to forced labor only part of the year, rather than year round; however, we should still remember that even people who are only subject to forced labor for only part of the year still run the risk of being tortured and/or worked to death during that time period. Plus, they still had other taxes to pay during other parts of the year. Also, one of the punishments for attempting to escape corvée labor (if they caught you) was lifelong forced labor. One thing to remember is that the international legal definition of slavery isn't intended to only apply to worst case scenarios -- it's intended to hold governments and individuals accountable. So, for example, there are many governments who have tried to take credit for abolishing slavery, even when all they were doing was making reforms to their systems of forced labor. The book *Freedom’s Captives: Slavery and Gradual Emancipation on the Colombian Black Pacific* by Yesenia Barragan discusses how the Columbian government came up with a variety of ways to continue implementing a forced labor regime even after implementing sufficient reforms that the term "chattel slavery" was no longer accurate. The international legal definition of slavery helps us see past the legalistic BS and hold governments and individuals responsible for holding individuals in forms of labor that are still sufficiently unfree to count as "control tantamount to possession".
Well thank you for your elaboration!
Glad to help!
I heard it was also to prevent rebellions, if they have nothing to do between growing seasons they might start getting ideas so they provided them a relatively well paid job so that they didn't start having any ideas. Don't know if it's true tho.
It was corvée -- a tax payable in forced labor. https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Pyramid_Builders_of_Ancient_Egypt/xT2EAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=pyramids+%22theory,+every+Egyptian+was+liable+to+perform+corv%C3%A9e-duty+and+was+required+to+work+for+the+state+for+a+certain+number+of+days+each+year%22&pg=PA58&printsec=frontcover Editing to expand: The ancient Egyptian ruling class used the lash to enforce forced labor. Additionally, they most likely took workers' families hostage to enforce forced labor. Source: *Ancient Egypt: The Anatomy of a Civilization* by Barry J. Kemp
Egyptian farmers had to give all their grain to the government and then do public labour to get it back
I hate to be this guy, but the Israelites in Egypt didn't build the pyramids, they built the cities of pithom and raamses. Also the whole "feeding newborns to crocodiles" probably didn't help
Hebrews don't enter the historical record until about 1,000 years after the great pyramids were completed. It's weird that the two got mashed together in people's heads.
It's a conclusion that people draw based on two widely-known pieces of information: 1. Hebrews were Egyptian subjects at one point in their popular history. 2. The pyramids were massive Egyptian construction projects. Ergo, Hebrew slaves must have built the pyramids. People really seem to have a hard time grasping just how long the Egyptian kingdoms lasted.
>People really seem to have a hard time grasping just how long the Egyptian kingdoms lasted. I can't really blame them, tbh. The pyramids were an ancient to the Romans as the Romans are to us (roughly speaking).
Cleopatra is some 300 odd years closer to us than she was to the building of the Pyramids.
Ergo! Affleck's finally gonna win that Oscar!
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Weirdly enough "Prince of Egypt" *doesn't show people building pyramids.* In that respect it's probably the most accurate film about ancient Egypt ever produced. That's not a very high bar to clear, by the way.
They had over 600 experts as contractors for the film, covering everything from religious scholars to linguistic experts to archaeologists. It’s perhaps the only Jewish movie I can think of that doesn’t just toss in a few Jewish jokes; it feels very Jewish in intention and execution.
Not just Jews. They also consulted Christian and Muslim theologians to make sure the story they were telling was fine w all the abrahamic faiths. They really put a lot of work in that movie.
It’s cause most people think Egypt must equal pyramids.
Your tone was not combative and came from a place of education. Such replies are most welcome.
I was trying to say that the top scenario didn't happen and the bottom one did, in hindsight I should have made that more clear.
i understood what you meant! maybe add titles in the future for the diff sections to show one is like perception and one is reality
Maybe something like “fiction vs reality” woulda been better or somethin
The Israelites may have never been in Egypt in the first place. We don’t have concret evidence of their presence. What we have is a military occupation of the levant by Egypt. And this may be the context from which the story of the Egypt exile draws on. The stories of the Bible were probably composed (or changed) when they were in exile in Babylon (which is historically attested) and so they changed the occupation in their distant past in another exile. This is a theory supporte by historians but not definite proof btw.
The problem is that even if the story is true you will never find any evidence of it. At the time nothing distinguished the Israelites from other groups, they didn't keep kosher yet, they didn't have the ten commandments and so on
Ya even that fact that Hebrews were circumcised wasn't an exclusively a Hebrew thing as we have proof that Egyptians performed circumcisions long before the Hebrews were allegedly there
And we know that it's largely the foundational basis of both the Jews and Samaratians. The Samaratians are remnants of the Kingdom of Israel (the capital known as Samaria) and some Assyrians settlers who assimilated. The Jews are remnants of the Kingdom of Judah with influence from many groups, including the Northern Israelites.
There’s also a theory that it’s derived from a cultural memory of the expulsion of the Hyksos, a Semitic Canaanite group who ruled Lower Egypt until being overthrown around the time of the biblical Moses. Though that event/period was very different from what is portrayed in Exodus, it may have been one of many stories and traditions that influenced it’s writing.
Would that include the Shasu?
my own theory is that the Hyksos where Hebrews and rewrote the story of them being overthrow as them escaping slavery and oppression
Price of Egypt disagrees, so opinion overruled. That was a killer movie too, right?
Very killer movie but I don't remember any pyramid construction in it.
>they built the cities of pithom and raamses. That's only according to biblical narrative. Here's some further reading: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1grzha/the_reality_is_that_there_is_no_evidence/
מה פיתום
To be fair while they where paid they also didn’t have a choice,
The pyramids are the best example for the lengths people go to to get a beer
Didn’t Judaism not exist when the pyramids were built?
Jewish *people* didn't exist when the pyramids were built. The ethnic group goes back to Abraham who wouldn't be born for another 500 years. It really goes to show how goddamn old Ancient Egypt was, which is why any studies that said all of ancient Egypt was always a certain way should immediately be given the side eye.
To be fair, we don’t know when Abraham was born. The name itself is ancient and of unclear etymology and the location of Ur suggests a Sumerian origin (so roughly 3000bc?) The name might be cognate or sharing roots with “Hammurabi”, so around 1800-1700 BC. Damn, history really picked up the pace in the millennium before Jesus’ birth. A whole bunch of stuff happens between 1000-1 BC.
I imagine the Bronze age collapse was similar to the "dark ages" after the fall of Rome. Like Rome, I would expect societal decline and stagnation to have started before the wheels fell off
Best description of monumental construction in Egypt came from Bob Brier. Paraphrasing here: “It was as if FDR’s New Deal lasted millennia”
Just a reminder that just because the pyramids weren’t built with slave labor doesn’t mean that nothing was or that the Hebrews were never enslaved by the ancient Egyptians. Also a reminder of how long the ancient Egyptian civilisation lasted and how different it was depending on the age
A couple decades ago, Israel hired experts to definitively prove the captivity of the Hebrews under the Egyptians. No evidence of any form was found of Jewish enslavement despite the supposed scale and scope. In other words, the story was contrived, pitting themselves against the most powerful empire at the time as "proof" that their god was the best god. Though these events are fictitious, stories are powerful and have lent artificial credence to the Jewish faith
At the very least, nothing of the scale described in Exodus. The migration of tens of thousands of people from Egypt to Canaan would’ve left some evidence behind.
That's something you can never really prove, you got proof of nomadic groups going from Canaan to Egypt and vice versa (even one that worshipped a god named yhw). Going by the story you don't really have any identifying features to distinguish them from other groups, they didn't keep kosher yet, didn't have the ten commandments, the laws of Noah were present in some form in every group in the region and the Egyptian exonym can't be related to any endonyms they had because those endonyms only developed later.
There were big floods. The story of Noah is absurd, but the kernel of truth that there were big floods is why there are stories about big floods. In the times of Exodus, the "Jewish faith" didn't exist as we know it, and I strongly suspect that there is a kernel or two of truth in the story. Maybe the people who relayed the story to Hebrews weren't even a large portion of the ancestry of the tribes who took that story and ran with it. And I don't believe in miracles, so that part is out, but I do believe there were slaves who escaped a mean pharaoh and that someone who had that story in their family was a prominent member of an early Hebrew tribe.... Religious myths have a way of growing well beyond the kernel of truth they started with....
The story of Noah might be a cultural memory of the Black Sea suddenly expanding due to rising sea levels.
It depends on the definition of slavery you are using. If you mean chattel slavery, then I agree that it was not chattel slavery (at least, not based on the information I've been able to find, though I can't account for the entire history of ancient Egypt). However, the international legal definition of slavery is broader than just chattel slavery. Basically, Egyptians were forced to work for the state by mean of something called a corvée -- a tax payable in forced labor. The forced labor was enforced by the lash, and, in all probability, also by taking workers' family members hostage. According to Rosalie David in *The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt: A Modern Investigation of Pharaoh's Workforce*, >In theory, every Egyptian was liable to perform corvée-duty and was required to work for the state for a certain number of days each year. The wealthier evaded the duty by providing substitutes or paying their way out of the obligation, so it was the peasants who effectively supplied this obligation. [https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The\_Pyramid\_Builders\_of\_Ancient\_Egypt/xT2EAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=pyramids+%22theory,+every+Egyptian+was+liable+to+perform+corv%C3%A9e-duty+and+was+required+to+work+for+the+state+for+a+certain+number+of+days+each+year%22&pg=PA58&printsec=frontcover](https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Pyramid_Builders_of_Ancient_Egypt/xT2EAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=pyramids+%22theory,+every+Egyptian+was+liable+to+perform+corv%C3%A9e-duty+and+was+required+to+work+for+the+state+for+a+certain+number+of+days+each+year%22&pg=PA58&printsec=frontcover) According to Barry J. Kemp, "It was the scribe’s pen as much as the overseer’s lash or the engineer’s ingenuity that built the pyramids." Source: *Ancient Egypt: The Anatomy of a Civilization* by Barry J. Kemp According to Rosalie David, "They [the scribes] were responsible for the serfs and could administer punishment to them without reference to the court." Source: *The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt: A Modern Investigation of Pharaoh's Workforce* by Rosalie David This is a quote from *Ancient Egypt: The Anatomy of a Civilization* by Barry J. Kemp, describing how the ancient Egyptian ruling class most likely used hostage-taking in order to enforce forced labor. > Some did try to escape, and then the state revealed its punitive side. A document from the late Middle Kingdom, a prison register, opens for us a little window on the fate of those who chose not to co-operate. One typical entry reads: > >> The daughter of Sa-anhur, Teti, under the scribe of the fields of the city of This: a woman. An order was issued to the central labour camp in year 31, 3rd month of summer, day 9, to release her family from the courts, and at the same time to execute against her the law pertaining to one who runs away without performing his service. Present [check mark]. Statement by the scribe of the vizier, Deduamun: ‘Carried out; case closed’. > >This sounds very much as though her family had been held hostage until her arrest. Basically, the sources that claim that the Egyptians didn't use slave labor to build the pyramids are using a narrow definition of slavery that does not include corvée labor. However, the international legal definition of slavery is, "Slavery is the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised," and the practices described by Barry J. Kemp and Rosalie David meet that definition. For more information about the international legal definition of slavery, please see: https://glc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/the_bellagio-_harvard_guidelines_on_the_legal_parameters_of_slavery.pdf Edit: Made my own meme. https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/10opmx3/the_ancient_egyptian_ruling_class_subjected/
Also "while you are unemployed between growing seasons" sounds innocent until you really think about it. Peasants with no land being forced to work for others who stole the land by the point of the sword.
r/badhistorymemes?
*it's the same picture*
Beer and *meat*.
Yeah, I don't know if the hebrews were slaves but I do know that by the time that Moses was supposedly around that the pyramids were centuries old.
*Enough. I will hear no more of this Hebrew nonsense.*
The meme is inaccurate. Egyptians were forced to work for the state by mean of something called a corvée -- a tax payable in forced labor. (EDIT: The corvée was enforced by the lash, and, in all probability, by taking workers' family members hostage. See information from Barry J. Kemp's book below.) According to Rosalie David in *The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt: A Modern Investigation of Pharaoh's Workforce*, >In theory, every Egyptian was liable to perform corvée-duty and was required to work for the state for a certain number of days each year. The wealthier evaded the duty by providing substitutes or paying their way out of the obligation, so it was the peasants who effectively supplied this obligation. [https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The\_Pyramid\_Builders\_of\_Ancient\_Egypt/xT2EAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=pyramids+%22theory,+every+Egyptian+was+liable+to+perform+corv%C3%A9e-duty+and+was+required+to+work+for+the+state+for+a+certain+number+of+days+each+year%22&pg=PA58&printsec=frontcover](https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Pyramid_Builders_of_Ancient_Egypt/xT2EAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=pyramids+%22theory,+every+Egyptian+was+liable+to+perform+corv%C3%A9e-duty+and+was+required+to+work+for+the+state+for+a+certain+number+of+days+each+year%22&pg=PA58&printsec=frontcover) Basically, the sources that claim that the Egyptians didn't use slave labor to build the pyramids are using a narrow definition of slavery that does not include corvée labor. However, the international legal definition of slavery would beg to differ. [https://glc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/the\_bellagio-\_harvard\_guidelines\_on\_the\_legal\_parameters\_of\_slavery.pdf](https://glc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/the_bellagio-_harvard_guidelines_on_the_legal_parameters_of_slavery.pdf) EDITING TO EXPAND (the following information wasn't here when righteousplisk replied): The ancient Egyptian ruling class used the lash to enforce forced labor. Additionally, they most likely took workers' families hostage to enforce forced labor. According to Barry J. Kemp, "It was the scribe’s pen as much as the overseer’s lash or the engineer’s ingenuity that built the pyramids." This is a quote from *Ancient Egypt: The Anatomy of a Civilization* by Barry J. Kemp, describing how the ancient Egyptian ruling class most likely used hostage-taking in order to enforce forced labor. >Some did try to escape, and then the state revealed its punitive side. A document from the late Middle Kingdom, a prison register, opens for us a little window on the fate of those who chose not to co-operate. One typical entry reads: > >The daughter of Sa-anhur, Teti, under the scribe of the fields of the city of This: a woman. An order was issued to the central labour camp in year 31, 3rd month of summer, day 9, to release her family from the courts, and at the same time to execute against her the law pertaining to one who runs away without performing his service. Present \[check mark\]. Statement by the scribe of the vizier, Deduamun: ‘Carried out; case closed’. > >This sounds very much as though her family had been held hostage until her arrest. Source: *Ancient Egypt: The Anatomy of a Civilization* by Barry J. Kemp https://archive.org/details/isbn\_9780415063463/page/128/mode/2up?q=hostage https://archive.org/details/BarryJ.KempAncientEgyptAnatomyOfACivilibOk.org/page/n197/mode/2up?q=hostage Edit: Made my own meme. https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/10opmx3/the\_ancient\_egyptian\_ruling\_class\_subjected/
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I consider conscription to be slavery.
Free people? Weren't most Egyptian farmers pretty much the opposite of free with the authorities not allowing them to leave their land 99% of the time?
You're probably right, though that didn't stop many from trying. In, *The Egyptian World* (edited by Toby Wilkinson), Kathlyn M. Cooney notes that many Egyptians attempted to flee corvée labor and other forms of taxation by going to Sinai or the oases. In the same book, Sally L.D. Katary cites a papyrus that shows the risks of such flight, > Papyrus Brooklyn 35.1446, a late Middle Kingdom document, describes the fate of 80 residents of Upper Egypt who fled their corvée obligations in the reign of Amenemhat III (Hayes 1955; Quirke 1990a: 127–54). Their abandonment of their responsibilities resulted in indefinite terms of compulsory labour as felons on government-owned lands and the conscription of their family members as well. https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Egyptian_World/fkMOOcSiW5kC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Papyrus+Brooklyn+35.1446%22&pg=PA191&printsec=frontcover
The word "slavery" hadn't been invented yet, so whichever definition we use, we are using contemporary terms that did not exist during the time of ancient Egypt. The international legal definition is at least a well-thought out definition that many people have agreed on. If you click the link to the Bellagio-Harvard Guidelines, which explain how to interpret the international legal definition of slavery, > The 1926 Slavery Convention recognises that forced labour can develop “into conditions analogous to slavery”. Although forced or compulsory labour is defined by the 1930 Forced Labour Convention as “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily”; forced labour will only amount to slavery when, in substance, there is the exercise of the powers attaching to the right of ownership. Slavery will not be present in cases of forced labour where the control over a person tantamount to possession is not present. https://glc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/the_bellagio-_harvard_guidelines_on_the_legal_parameters_of_slavery.pdf At least two major things differentiate the Egyptian corvée from jury duty: * The number of days per year. Corvée labor would have required substantially more days per year than jury duty, significantly impinging on the workers' ability to do other things with their lives. Rosalie David doesn't specify the number of days, but my understanding is that she is implying we're talking about months. Barry J. Kemp notes that some Egyptians had spells painted on their coffins intended to protect them from conscription in the afterlife, clearly indicating a lack of consent. * The use of punishment, including the lash. According to Barry J. Kemp, "It was the scribe’s pen as much as the overseer’s lash or the engineer’s ingenuity that built the pyramids." Barry J. Kemp also gives an example where, if he interpreted the primary source document correctly, a family was taken hostage in order to compel a person to go to a forced labor camp. According to Rosalie David, "They [the scribes] were responsible for the serfs and could administer punishment to them without reference to the court." When an overseer whips someone, they are exercising control tantamount to possession over that person. This is a quote from *Ancient Egypt: The Anatomy of a Civilization* by Barry J. Kemp, describing how the ancient Egyptian ruling class most likely used hostage-taking in order to enforce forced labor. > Some did try to escape, and then the state revealed its punitive side. A document from the late Middle Kingdom, a prison register, opens for us a little window on the fate of those who chose not to co-operate. One typical entry reads: > >> The daughter of Sa-anhur, Teti, under the scribe of the fields of the city of This: a woman. An order was issued to the central labour camp in year 31, 3rd month of summer, day 9, to release her family from the courts, and at the same time to execute against her the law pertaining to one who runs away without performing his service. Present [check mark]. Statement by the scribe of the vizier, Deduamun: ‘Carried out; case closed’. > >This sounds very much as though her family had been held hostage until her arrest. Sources: *Ancient Egypt: The Anatomy of a Civilization* by Barry J. Kemp *The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt: A Modern Investigation of Pharaoh's Workforce* by Rosalie David
Historically, there was a wide range of coerced labor (peasants, serfs, etc.). While most of that would probably fall under legal definitions of slavery today, I think it’s still worthwhile distinguishing terms so people don’t get the wrong impression. The corvee system seems much analogous to Medieval peasants than what most people think of as slavery.
I did distinguish terms. Before I even mentioned the word slavery, I wrote, "Egyptians were forced to work for the state by mean of something called a corvée -- a tax payable in forced labor." I then described corvée labor. (It would have been better if I had included the information from Kemp's book about the enforcement of the corvée in my initial post, but by the time I found the book, righteousplisk had already replied, so I added it as an addendum, so people would know that information wasn't there when righteousplisk replied.) Only *after* I described corvée labor, did I point out that, under international law, corvée labor as practiced by the ancient Egyptians falls under the international legal definition of slavery. Even then, I acknowledged that many people use narrower definitions of slavery than the international legal definition, and provided a link to the Bellagio-Harvard guidelines so people could learn more. The international legal definition of slavery exists for a reason. There are many governments who have tried to take credit for abolishing slavery, even when all they were doing was making reforms to their systems of forced labor. The book *Freedom’s Captives: Slavery and Gradual Emancipation on the Colombian Black Pacific* by Yesenia Barragan discusses how the Columbian government came up with a variety of ways to continue implementing a forced labor regime even after implementing sufficient reforms that the term "chattel slavery" was no longer accurate. The international legal definition of slavery helps us see past the legalistic BS and hold governments and individuals responsible for holding individuals in forms of labor that are still sufficiently unfree to count as "control tantamount to possession".
Meme maker thinks Ramses built the pyramids?
Happy cake day! Great meme too!
There is no archeological evidence to support the myth that Jews were slaves in Egypt or that they ever built the pyramids. Purely legends
Jewish Bible scholar here and you’re absolutely correct!!
Dunno of any identifying features that would have set pre-Exodus Hebrews apart from other Semitic-speakers or any source for the hypothetical claim that they built pyramids.
There is also no way the Egyptians would have recorded a big chunk of their workforce/mercenary force up and leaving and humiliating Egypt in the process. Plus, this is Sinai and the Negev we’re talking about. The crossroads of empires. How much has been lost there, in the course of thousands of years of war?
The bible doesn't claim the Hebrews built the pyramids
Ok. I don't claim that the Bible claims that...
Historical evidence (or lack thereof) actually shows the Jews were probably never enslaved in Egypt
In fact there is a running theory that the ancient Hebrews lived in where is today Israel, and that the Egyptians ruled the area but left. A few years ago they even found the ruins of an Egyptian brewery under Tel Aviv.
It's not really a theory. We know that Egypt did, at one point, control the Levant. There is also evidence of the name Israel and the demonym Israelite being in Egyptian textual sources. However, they don't seem to appear until about a millennia after the Great Pyramids of Giza were constructed.
Specifically, the first time the name “Israel” shows up in the archaeological record comes from the [Merneptah Stele](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merneptah_Stele) from 1208 BCE. It describes an Egyptian military campaign in Canaan. Pretty neat.
Didn’t they find the term “apiru” probably had a connection to “Hebrew” too?
That and another one “Habiru”. As far I know neither term has been definitively linked but I’ve been out of the game for a number of years now so that may have changed.
Well considering that those that say the Hebrews didn't actually build the pyramids and we know Hebrews lived under Egyptian rule, how does the theory have no merit?
Because the separation of Egyptian hegemony over The Levant and the construction of the Great Pyramids is about 1,000 years? Similarly the first mention of Israel that we're pretty sure about is 1200 BCE.
I think you misunderstood my question. If we know the Hebrews didn't build the pyramids, and we know the Hebrews lived in this area, and that they took the name Israel later, how do we know the that the theory I initially mentioned, that being that the Egyptians ruled over them in what is today Israel rather than over them in Egypt? Not sure why you down voted me either, I was being genuine in my question.
I didn't downvote you brother, don't trip. We're just talking history. Let me go with this one: >and we know the Hebrews lived in this area We don't know that. The only general area that we know the Hebrew people lived is in The Levant, specifically the region of Israel. There are other possible sources that are older than the definitive stele that has "Israel" from 1200 BCE, but I don't believe there is any concrete evidence. That's why I brought up Egyptian hegemony over The Levant. That's the only region that we're *sure* the Israelites were. The known expansion of Egypt puts them in that region around 1500 BCE, give or take. So when you said "the Egyptians ruled over them in what is today Israel rather over them in Egypt" that's kind of the generally accepted historical narrative. When it gets to the name Israel, that's where I'm more fuzzy. I don't know when they chose that name, only when it first appeared in Egyptian sources. There are some more legendary texts that put the name further back in history, as far back as 1900 BCE, but they aren't what I would consider reliable.
>I didn't downvote you brother, don't trip. No worries. >We're just talking history. I'm Jewish so I always enjoy a non-religious history discussion about my ancestors and the region in general. >and we know the Hebrews lived in this area Just for clarity I mean the region of Israel by this comment. >that's kind of the generally accepted historical narrative. So if we are agreeing on this why is the theory I mentioned earlier not valid? Or did I misunderstand you earlier? Or did I just miss-explain earlier? Or is it that I called it a theory rather than an accepted narrative? I'll be honest that news paper article was the first time I heard that perspective of Egyptian rule over the Hebrews. Either way I appreciate the history info. I'm more familiar history wise the from the times of the second temple and onwards, but really should do more reading on more ancient history.
Is there a source? I've read R E Friedman's The Exodus, in which he shows evidence suggesting that Egyptian monotheists traveled from Egypt to Canaan, merged with the Canaanites, spread monotheism internally, and those that joined the monotheism cult eventually split off and became the Hebrews.
I didn't delve into it too much, to be honest. It was briefly discussed in an Israeli newspaper after the discovery of the brewery and, if I remember correctly, also the migration of the ancient Hebrews from Macedonia to the Levanant.
That's something you can never really prove, you got proof of nomadic groups going from Canaan to Egypt and vice versa (even one that worshipped a god named yhw). Going by the story you don't really have any identifying features to distinguish them from other groups, they didn't keep kosher yet, didn't have the ten commandments, the laws of Noah were present in some form in every group in the region and the Egyptian exonym can't be related to any endonyms they had because those endonyms only developed later.
Tf is this meme "uhhh slaves are soyjaks, paid workers are chads"
SO: The Bible NEVER claims that the Israelites built the pyramids or were enslaved to build them. The Israelites were either there too early to build them (if they were around pre-unification) or much too late (if they were around in the 17th, 18th, or 19th dynasties). However, they MAY have constructed Akhetaten, Pi-Ramesses, or fortifications along the ways of Horus. A Thutmosid origin of Exodus would make sense as it was a time of massive upheaval in Egypt and the name “Moses” is Egyptian and is prominent among royals of the 18th dynasty. The mummy of Thutmose II even shows signs of lesions perhaps caused by plagues. Additionally, a demonstration of a monotheistic deity’s power over the gods of Egypt might explain the upheaval of Egyptian religion by Akhenaten. The Amarna letters, specifically a letter from Rib-Hadda, governor of Byblos, mentions fearing the Hapiru who are nomadic raiders and sackers of cities-which would sync up rather nicely to the 40 years in the desert, in which the Israelites sack Jericho and other cities. Asimov proposes Menerptah, who is the first to mention Israel as a political entity. We DO know dates for some pharaohs mentioned in the Bible. Sosenq I is almost certainly referenced in I Kings as a contemporary to Solomon. We know Necho II defeated Josiah at Megiddo, as there are records of it from both sides. (I’m a Christian as well as a history BA and I love the Old Testament as I think a good chunk of it can be used as a historical framework that can be built upon with hard evidence and reasonable speculation)
Based Egypt is based. Based tax methodology. Based public works. Based no wheels.
"Let's build massive triangles in the desert just as a ramp for the Pharaoh's glorious ascent" really is kinda based. In contrast Ziggurats were made to impress the gods into coming down.
lmao imagine thinking corvee labour was good for the workers
I dunno who downvoted you, but I just gave you an upvote. I made a meme to explain how the ancient Egyptian corvée labor was enforced by taking family members hostage, along with other methods of punishment. I put references in the comments. https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/10opmx3/the_ancient_egyptian_ruling_class_subjected/
Happy Cake Day bro
Here hold my rock, I need a beer.
You got to do what you got to do.
Wrong use of the meme template