Comments

You have commented 358 times on Rantburg.

Your Name

Your e-mail (optional)

Website (optional)

	My Original Nic Pic-a-Nic Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Foto

Submit your comments on this article

-Short Attention Span Theater-

Tombs show Egypt pyramids not built by slaves

2010-01-11

[Iran Press TV Latest] Chief Egyptian archeologist says the newly-found tombs contradict the idea that the country's Great Pyramids were built by slaves. "These tombs were built beside the king's pyramid, which indicates that these people were not by any means slaves," head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawass said in a Sunday statement. "If they were slaves, they would not have been able to build their tombs beside their king's."
Corvee laborers were in theory free, assuming that concept applied in 3200 B.C. Their labor was considered as payment of a tax.
Found in Giza, the new tombs are part of the collection of workers' tombs, which belonged to workers building the pyramids of Khufu and Khafre.

Hawass had earlier spotted graffiti on the walls from workers referring to themselves as "friends of Khufu", which is another evidence supporting the idea of their being free workers.

Egypt's chief archeologist also referred to the evidence showing that farmers in Delta and Upper Egypt used to send 21 buffalo and 23 sheep every day to feed the builders.

The farmers were exempted from paying taxes to the ancient Egyptian government for their contribution to a national project, Reuters reported.

Posted by:Fred

#18 Thus, things got progressively worse.

Correct but for the wrong reason.

Rather than claiming one's labor directly the government claims said labor indirectly via a levy on the fruits of that labor. This is worse because the labor required to compute the levy isn't included and because mistakes incur a further levy. At least with a direct contribution of labor your "tax" is paid when you're allowed to go home at the end of your shift.

Posted by: AzCat 2010-01-11 21:32

#17 Some of the ancient Greeks used simple geometry to calculate the (nearly correct) radius of the earth long before Christ. To most other learned ancients whether the earth was a sphere or flat didn't matter one way or the other. A Muslim teacher in Spain in the 1100's stated that material the size of a chickpea could be used to destroy a city -- which IIRC is about the actual amount of plutonium/uranium that destroyed Hiroshima & Nagasaki, the rest of the fissile cores having been scattered by the explosion.
Most if not all the ancient civilizations were tyrannies built on a massive base of slavery and other wholesale abuse of human beings. Yet somehow liberty spread, however slowly and imperfectly. To me that is the real wonder of the world.

Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2010-01-11 16:03

#16 The idea that slaves built the pyramids is rather like the old saw about the universal belief that the world was flat when Columbus discovered America. Neither are true in any real sense (in fact, Columbus disagreed with the then-common-wisdom about the circumference of the globe, and *he was wrong*) but both falsehoods are useful shorthand for certain historical narratives.

The real problem is that grown adults never get past the grade-school historical narratives, and never absorb the grown-up version of events:

Firstly, that Egypt was a hydraulic tyranny built on vast substructures of agricultural slave labor, but that expert craftsmen capable of stoneworking on a monumental scale would of necessity be more free than the general run of society.

Secondly, that Columbus was a brave, determined, religiously motivated, highly skilled navigator who was fundamentally wrong about almost every controversial aspect of his profession. His seamanship, intrepidity, and luck made up for his errors of theory and fact.

Posted by: Mitch H. 2010-01-11 13:43

#15 Egypt NOT having slaves is just the latest in PC smoke and mirrors not real science.

Oh Egypt had slaves. Lots of slaves. They just weren't used to build the pyramids it seems. Maybe to bring food to the builders and such, but not the actual construction. A lot of the tombs showed that the individuals did do a lot of heavy lifting/moving as would be expected for stone workers, but they also showed no signs of malnutrition and they had tools buried with them showing their profession.

Pretty interesting actually.

Posted by: DarthVader 2010-01-11 13:24

#14 As far as dirt ramps goes, they are as close as it gets as a "universal technology" in the ancient world. About 500 B.C., Darius I of Persia built a humdinger to build his palace, and another was used to build the wonder of the world Temple of Artemis.

For a hasty ramp, layers of stone were used, and for a more durable one, layers of mud brick, sometimes straw mats. Then earth was laid down, then pounded down to pack it. Then start over.

Oddly enough, the real mystery of the pyramids are not the pyramid stones, but the casing stones that formed the smooth, outer shell of the pyramids.

Posted by: Anonymoose 2010-01-11 12:16

#13 A guy in Michigan figured out how they built Stonehenge. He moves massive blocks all by himself using some basic principles we abandoned because machinery was more efficient.

link

I don't really see how the pyramids would be all that different.

Posted by: rjschwarz 2010-01-11 12:01

#12 'moose, I've seen that one along with many others such as the internal ramp system with the missing blocks to allow them to turn corners.

How much dirt is needed and how strong does it have to be to support the weight over and over? What happens to the ramps when it rains?

The last one I saw was the "proof" that the obelisks were raised by the aid of giant kites. That one didn't turn out to scale up very well. Which always seems to be the problem with these "proofs".

It's obviously doable as it was done, but, the knowledge of how to do it was lost. And my major point is that modern academics are very quick to hand wave their way past these issues to push their pet theory. Egypt NOT having slaves is just the latest in PC smoke and mirrors not real science. There is much that we don't and won't know about the way Egypt was organized.

Posted by: AlanC 2010-01-11 11:28

#11 AlanC: The Smithsonian, years ago devised a simple, low tech way for the Egyptians to have built the pyramids in a fraction of the time and cost. The trick is to use two wooden "wheels", to turn a block of stone into a cylinder.

To make a wheel, you need four pieces of wood that form a block-sized square inside, and are held together with pins. The outside sides of the wood are fashioned so that when pinned together, they make a circle.

First the block is cut at the quarry, then a handful of men put the wheels on it and roll it to the stonemason town where the block is finished by chipping and sanding.

Then, on the wheels again, it is rolled to the river where a small, expendable boat takes the block to near the pyramid site. The pyramid itself is surrounded by an ever growing earthen ramp. The ancient world was very expert with earthen ramps.

When the capstone is finally emplaced, then the dirt is removed.

Posted by: Anonymoose 2010-01-11 10:30

#10 I'll worry about who built them when they can figure out HOW they built them. As far as I've seen we couldn't build a pyramid like that today without massive amounts of heavy eqipment.

So what did they know that was lost? (No, it was not aliens) This is the hubris of modernity, that we know everything the ancients did PLUS all the new stuff.

What we know is what we use and what works best in our current economic and social structure. Stuff that used to work but no longer fits? Not so much so it dies in the minds of people.

Posted by: AlanC 2010-01-11 09:16

#9 Or Girl Scout cookies for Do Dads.

Posted by: badanov 2010-01-11 08:02

#8 I'm prefer a Red Bandana for Obama's Civilian Security Force

Posted by: badanov 2010-01-11 07:56

#7 I heard they also found duplicate memos discussing the need for a new cover papyrus on the TPS report.

Posted by: lord garth 2010-01-11 07:24

#6 Hey just 10 months ago Congress authorized a modern version the Egyptian Workfare program.

The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a plan to set up a new "volunteer corps" and consider whether "a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people" should be developed.

The legislation also refers to "uniforms" that would be worn by the "volunteers" and the "need" for a "public service academy, a 4-year institution" to "focus on training" future "public sector leaders." The training, apparently, would occur at "campuses."

The vote yesterday (March 18, 2009) came on H.R. 1388, which reauthorizes through 2014 the National and Community Service Act of 1990 and the Domestic Volunteer Service Act of 1973, acts that originally, among other programs, funded the AmeriCorps and the National Senior Service Corps.

It not only reauthorizes the programs, but also includes "new programs and studies" and is expected to be funded with an allocation of $6 billion over the next five years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Many, however, are raising concerns that the program, which is intended to include 250,000 "volunteers," is the beginning of what President Obama called his "National Civilian Security Force" in a a speech last year in which he urged creating an organization as big and well-funded as the U.S. military. He has declined since then to elaborate.

So what I want to know is when are they going to put the Great One's likeness on Mount Rushmore ?

Posted by: Thaviting Johnson8905 2010-01-11 07:10

#5 This from the BBC version:
The authorities have long fought what they call the "myth" of slaves building the pyramids, saying it undermines the skill involved in their construction, and the sophistication of ancient Egypt's civilisation.
This is about as scientific as AGW.

Posted by: Free Radical 2010-01-11 07:01

#4 "Friends of Khufu"....? I thought that was a Local 1231 Pyramid and Stone Mason Union bug. But, but, but the whips! Why were all the supervisors carrying WHIPS?

Posted by: Besoeker 2010-01-11 05:31

#3 Everyone knows it was Obama who singlehandedly built them.

Posted by: JFM 2010-01-11 05:22

#2 AzCat, a government would readily accept your contribution of voluntary labor, but nowhere I found a notion that it would give you a tax exemption in lieu of your contribution. Thus, things got progressively worse.

Posted by: twobyfour 2010-01-11 03:42

#1 Their labor was considered as payment of a tax.

So roughly three millennia later and halfway 'round the world nothing significant has changed in how government views its serfs. Great, just great.

Posted by: AzCat 2010-01-11 00:27

00:00