I'm seeing more and more about this belief that the Pyramid builders were not slaves, but paid laborers. Since when?
They find a couple hundred structures near them that some workers lived at and just assumed that this was the entire labor force? That temporary structures do not exist? That these couldn't possibly be the team leaders, architects, engineers or on-site guards?
Why are they now trying to dismiss slavery and the harsh conditions it took to endure constructing these in the fucking desert?
No proofs for slavery, only source is shit greeks made up centuries later.
Many proofs for payments given out to workers.
seasonal work to keep the retard peasants busy. Typically paid in beer. Imagine the smell when she beer braaaaps as you slide it in sumerian style
They were serf-like poorfags who worked for a few months for a shitty wage (but that was far better than what they’d get in their village)
Most of them anyway honestly speaking it would’ve been a mixture of freemen and slaves
The people who claim it wasn't slavery base their entire argument on the fact that they were supplied with rations. It's a completely retarded argument considering humans need calories to survive. If providing sustenance to someone means they're not a slave then slavery never existed anywhere.
They werent rations they were payment in additions to their rations, egypt didnt have currency retard
>they weren't (1500cal/day) survival rations they were (3000cal/day) laboring rations
The excavation also uncovered “tremendous quantities of cattle, sheep, and goat bone, ‘enough to feed several thousand people, even if they ate meat every day,’ adds Lehner,” suggesting that workers were “fed like royalty.” Another excavation by Lehner’s friend Zahi Hawass, famed Egyptian archaeologist and expert on the Great Pyramid, has found worker cemeteries at the foot of the pyramids, meaning that those who perished were buried in a place of honor. This was incredibly hazardous work, and the people who undertook it were celebrated and recognized for their achievement.
Laborers were also working off an obligation, something every Egyptian owed to those above them and, ultimately, to their pharoah. But it was not a monetary debt. Lehner describes what ancient Egyptians called bak, a kind of feudal duty. While there were slaves in Egypt, the builders of the pyramids were maybe more like the Amish, he says, performing the same kind of obligatory communal labor as a barn raising.
So much for “the slaves” lol, you fucking retard.
the ancient egyptians didn't have coins retard
So did they really just get paid in food and beer then?
Because
1 Egyptians usually did not rely on slave labour unlike Romans who based their entire economic system on slavery
2 Even Herodotus who is notoriously unreliable and writes 2100 years after Cheops died does not mention slaves, he says that cheops forced his subject (AKA the Egyptian population) to build them
Forcing people to build things is slavery
No it’s not you fucking retarded nobody. Those were free men Who were ordered to build the structures by their king (again according to a non-local, non egyptian speaking source from 2000 years after the event). The names for people who are forced to do something by their kings is SUBJECTS. Hell even republics forced their male subjects to go to war and literally die for them, that does NOT make slave, words have a precise meaning, unfortunately human trash like you is below animals since you can’t even communicate, and even as a slave you would have been useless
>do I get paid in money
>no
>do I get paid in food and housing
>yes
>can I leave
>no
>do I get whipped
>yes
>am I a slave
>I prefer subject
>money
Didn’t exist at the time, they were rewarded for their labour though
>whipped
Zero evidence
>individual owners
Zero
ah, you're just Kangz lives denier poster. nm. carry on.
You’re just a retard but everybody knew that already
They were given housing, dignified tombs and proteins , not just cheap food
sustenance isn't a "reward" idiot it's a life necessity. It's literally impossible to force people to build things without sustenance because they would die.
take a look at what the pharao is holding, its pretty easy to understand
A whip, yes, thank you for finally admitting they were slaves and contradicting yourself here retard
>whipped
>Zero evidence
>posts pharaoh holding whip
You are so fucking stupid
He’s not me, and that’s not a whip, might as well say the judges bash people in their head with their hammers
So now your argument is that not getting killed/punished was their "reward"?
No that’s my argument for them NOT BEING slaves
How is being forced to work under threat of punishment an argument that they weren't slaves?
What threat?
The flail that he's holding to bash their heads in with retard
>he says that cheops forced his subject (AKA the Egyptian population) to build them
so slavery in all but name....
Again
1 NO, that’s not slavery
2 Herodotus’ histories about Egypt are usually very unreliable. Like when he said that an Egyptian pharaoh once conquered all the lands up to Thrace (there is zero evidence of Egyptian presence that far), and he even thought that the Luwian inscription and relief ordered by the king of Mira were Egyptian and left by the aforementioned pharaoh, because he couldn’t distinguish eguptian hieroglyphs from Anatolian ones
No it’s not you fucking retarded nobody. Those were free men Who were ordered to build the structures by their king (again according to a non-local, non egyptian speaking source from 2000 years after the event). The names for people who are forced to do something by their kings is SUBJECTS. Hell even republics forced their male subjects to go to war and literally die for them, that does NOT make slave, words have a precise meaning, unfortunately human trash like you is below animals since you can’t even communicate, and even as a slave you would have been useless
>The names for people who are forced to do something by their kings is SUBJECTS
No it’s not you fucking retarded nobody. Egyptians didn't speak english and these semantic arguments are less than worthless you fucking monkey. Egyptian people were considered slaves of the pharoah. Inventing new words doesn't change material realities. Forced labor is slavery.
Subjects is not a new word (except for illiterate cretins like you), and Herodotus, your beloved (unreliable) source does not use the greek word for slavery either, so your claim is completely untenable, you retarded waste of sperm
>Subjects is not a new word
Yes it is retard egyptians didn't even distinguish between "subjects" and "slaves" because people as retarded as you didn't exist back then so they couldn't fool them with useless semantic arguments
Yes, they did you absolute moron. Do a little Google search before showcasing your retardation next time
>discussions of slavery in Pharaonic Egypt are complicated by terminology used by the Egyptians to refer to different classes of servitude over the course of dynastic history; interpretation of the textual evidence of classes of slaves in ancient Egypt has been difficult to differentiate by word usage alone.
>The word translated as "slave" from the Egyptian language does not neatly align with modern terms or traditional labor roles
Wow thanks google for proving me right
holy fucking illiterate retard
All grain was the property of the government. Grain and beer was issued to people by the government. Most people did not need to grow food but there was more than enough to feed everyone. The government required the excess labor go to civil construction programs. Slavery, is what some called it.
slaves didn't build the pyramids = the first step toward western academia succumbing to WE WUZ KANGZ theory
50-100 years from now yakub will be spoken of unironically in western universities as if he were a real person
What do you think of the idea that the pyramids were built using sound technology that no longer exists? Or that aliens or angels built the pyramids?
It'd be funnier if aliens were there, had the capabilities to build them, but dared the pharaoh to make his people build them.
I like to think that the aliens did a shit job and the pharaoh had to summon the lads to unfuck it
Aliens built them, idiots.
paid workers aliens or slave aliens?
Illegal aliens
should have built a wall instead then
Aliens you dumbtards
No, it says Egypt had different words for different categories of slaves
It says the words that egyptians used for "servant", "slave", "laborer" were interchangeable depending on context as in they didn't have separate words clearly separating a "subject" from a "slave"
Is there any evidence that the pyramid labourers could be sold? NO
Is there evidence they were war captives or people who sold themselves in slavery to pay their debts? NO
Then they were nothing like the slaves of the ancient graeco-roman or even islamic/medieval world and nothing like the transatlantic slaves either
AT MOST they resembled medieval serfs who had to work fo their lords for some determined period every year, and even that is doubtful, moron
When the roman emperors stopped calling themselves "princeps" and started calling themselves "dominus" and forced people to work the land those people became slaves and that is the foundation of medieval "serfs"(slaves). Free people in Greece and Rome couldn't be forced to perform unpaid labor, so yes ancient egyptian pyramid builders resemble greco-roman slaves because they could be forced to perform unpaid labor, they were like transatlantic slaves too because they could be forced to perform unpaid labor just like transatlantic slaves
No. They became SERFS NOT SLAVES
The word the romans used for their emperors when they forced people to become 'serfs" was dominus which was the same word they used for a slave-master, this change in word choice was deliberate. Their is no functional difference between a serf and a slave, semantic arguments have no value and you would know that if you weren't retarded.
Serfs and slaves are the same? Male and female too, right, you retarded tranny? Kill yourself
Being a serf was worse than being a slave moron. The god of this world believes that transatlantic slaves were better than white serfs and that the descendants of transatlantic slaves should possess a higher status/be viewed as better/have more freedom than the descendants of serfs because he believes that the status of transatlantic slaves was higher than the status of serfs and that this entitles them to a higher status right now in modern times.
>The god of this world believes that transatlantic slaves were better than white serfs and that the descendants of transatlantic slaves should possess a higher status/be viewed as better/have more freedom than the descendants of serfs because he believes that the status of transatlantic slaves was higher than the status...
Ok so you're not just a retard, you're a schizophrenic retard too
Egyptians didn't even need to canpaign to obtain foreign slaves. Regions around egypt were in a constant state of famine and they would seek refuge in egypt even as slaves because the alternative was starvation
>A state workforce could potentially have been concentrated in the xnrwt, the ghettos of the njwt mAwt (‘new towns’). Those institutions may have served as the basis of the state’s corvée labor workforce.110 It seems likely that the main purpose of the xnrwt was to amass and control, on a considerable scale, a workforce of convicts, criminals and captives, either prisoners of war and/or natives. This restricted the social status of the convicts, while making them available as required for cult activities, private household work, quarrying, mining, and large- scale construction works.
>During the Middle Kingdom, a large number of captives, Asiatic/Western Asiatic (Levantine) and Nubian, were taken by force to Egypt after successful campaigns as a result of the expansion of the Egyptian state over that time.111 Many of these non-acculturated groups, especially those men- tioned in papyri with the ethnic label aAm.w/aAm.t (‘male/female Asiatic’),112 were transported to Egypt, organized into gangs and sent to work in ghetto camps or on estates,113 while others ended up in private ownership.114
Cont.
>At el-Lahun, the term mrjt (‘dependent’) is frequently used to refer to foreign captives brought to Egypt, primarily as property of the king, and assigned to temple workshops, granaries and to the fields. According to Bakir, n-Dt refers to subjugated foreigners and people who contributed service to religious institutions. The population of el-Lahun, composed mainly of confined men and women, often of Syrian-Palestinian origins and scarcely motivated by religious devotion to the sovereign, were most likely subject to a certain amount of coercion.119 Seclusion and beatings were probably common, and were most likely aimed toward subduing the foreigners.120 There is evidence documenting this in the historical record, in literature and in iconography. The role of foreigners within Egyptian society, a society considered by some to have been liberal in some respects, was clearly one of total subjugation:
>js aAm Xsy qsn pw n bw ntf Ahw mw StA m xt aSA wAwt jry qsn m-a Dww n Hms.f m st wat stSw aqw rdwy.fy jw.f Hr aHA Dr rk @r
‘...the miserable Asiatic! He is wretched because of the place he is in, lacking of water, scarce in wood, many are its roads and painful because of mountains. He has not settled in one place. Food forces his legs forward, he has been fighting since the time of Horus’.121
>Based on the evidence, the living conditions of these confined men and women must have been low due to poverty, cramped quarters and general overcrowding in the town.122 While a controlled level of hostility and forced assimilation of social groups into the social system were essential in this setting, at el-Lahun there were all the components of a violent society in which social cohesion was achieved by the use of physical force.123
Cont
>From the 4th Dynasty onwards, the pharaohs obtained the necessary workforce of Hmw/Hmwt (‘male/female slave’) from Asia and Nubia. Often the foreigners were brought to Egypt via trade or as prisoners of war, and were assigned to local temples or to prominent officials.126 It appears that inside xnrwt-quarters, every captive was forced as an individual to execute the required hAw (‘manual labor’) as demanded by the institutions, or find a jwAw/jwAyt (‘male/female substitute’).127
A document of the time of Amenemhat III (c. 1844-1797 B.C.) recovered in a similar urban context seems to depict the control of food supplies and relief from ‘deprivation’ and ‘starvation’ as another aspect of the labor system during the Middle Kingdom Egypt. Individuals from the desert seeking refuge in Egyptian towns and volunteering to work are attested in several places.128 The papyri P. BM10752 contains on its recto a military dispatch from Elephantine, one of the so-called ‘Semna dis- patches’, a series of reports on Egyptian border activities from the fortress of Semna West:
‘Copy of a document which was brought to him as something brought from the fortress of Elephantine as something sent by a fortress to another fortress. For the gladdening of your heart, may you be healthy and living. To the effect two Medjay-men three Medjay-women and two infants came down from the desert hills in year 3 third month of the winter season day 27(?). They said, we have come to serve the Palace (i.e. the Pharaoh) life-prosperity-health. It was asked about the condi- tion of the desert. They said we did not hear anything, except that the desert population is starving to death so they said. Then the servant there caused them to be dismissed to their desert on this day’.129
Based on sources such as the one above, it is reasonable to think that many individuals were forced to live in state-planned towns because they had little choice over their lifestyle.
Cont
>A consistent number of documents mention Asiatics who were permanent residents in the town. Generic ethnonyms such as aAm.w/aAm.t (‘male/female Asiatic’) or nHsy (‘Nubian’), were used by the ancient Egyptians to refer to both foreigners living outside of Egypt, and ‘adapted members’ living in the Egyptian social system, i.e. assimilated members of Egyptian society.1
>residents came from numerous areas comprising the Levant, Syr- ia, and Mesopotamia. As discussed above, it appears that the individuals also included Egyptians who, due to famine, debt and the like gave up their legal freedoms voluntarily. They were usually referred to as bAk.w (‘servants’) but generally not as Hm.w (‘slaves’). The generic word for aAm.w (‘male Asiatic’), became synonymous with ‘slave’ to indicate those condemned to live on the fringes of Egyptian society, in awful conditions, occupied in heavy labor in the mines and in the quarries of the eastern desert. The term Xsy (‘miserable’, ‘wretched’ or ‘vile’) is often associated with it.135 Lorton noted that in the context of the Instruction for King Merikare this emphasizes the misery of their daily life and their hopeless situation.136
>The generic word for aAm.w (‘male Asiatic’), became synonymous with ‘slave’
Lol
The defining feature of chattel slavery is that a slave is property. They belong to their owner, and may be sold, hired, rented and inherited as any other possession could be, although often subject to specific regulation.
In contrast, a serf is not owned by their lord. They are compelled by their status to fulfil certain obligations they owe their lord, and negligence on this front would be punished with violence. But they were still men, not property to be bought and sold.
Based on this defining characteristic, the workers who built the pyramids could most likely be described as serfs, who may not have had a choice in working on the monument but was not compelled by any type of ownership, but rather obligation.
You might say that technically any type of labour extracted through any threat of force is slavery, and that serfs are technically slaves to you. But that merely means your definition of slave is different from people who characterise slavery through status as property, and unless you can give a convincing reason why your definition is superior there’s no reason for anyone you’re arguing with to change their mind.
>But that merely means your definition of slave is different from people who characterise slavery through status as property, and unless you can give a convincing reason why your definition is superior there’s no reason for anyone you’re arguing with to change their mind.
The problem is that people try to pretend that "serfdom" is significantly less bad than "slavery" when the only functional difference is that a serf in theory can't be forced to move to a different property. "They" can't be bought or sold but the property they live on can be and they are fixtures of the property they live on. The argument that serfdom is moral whereas slavery is evil basically relies on the idea that it's not wrong to force people to work with the threat of violence and generally dominate and control every aspect of their lives and have complete power over them just as long as you never force them to move to a different property. The argument is basically saying it would be morally ok to buy a property that already has someone who can't leave and will be forced to do whatever you say and who you can do whatever you want to just as long as they came with the property and you didn't buy them separately, because if they came with the property they're a serf, but if you bought them separately then they're a slave. I don't believe that semantic specificity has no value in every case but when you try to turn minor actual differences into extreme moral differences using entirely semantic arguments it just makes you seem retarded.
chattel slavery is not all forms of slavery. and serfdom and indentured servitude can fall under the umbrella.
There is lots of archaeological evidence to support builders, like special cities and villages near the pyramids dedicated to craftsmen. They were paid quite a lot and given special privileges, but they had to do their job well and if they didn't they were just kicked out
They were built by aliens, there is not a single évidence humans built them
We literally still don't even know HOW the great pyramids were built or why let alone if slave labor was employed.
So itt there was no slavery because either we don't know or 'nah bro they were just serfs so slavery in all but name, they liked it!'
Another tragic victim of the peculiar American brain disease of conflating any and all unfree labor (and even non-cash paid labor!!!) with Antebellum South style plantation slavery.
suuurre. ooookkkk. faacinating.