Who Built the Pyramids? (2003)

The claim isn't that slaves weren't involved, the claim is that the common knowledge that it was all slaves is wrong.

It was widely believed the pyramids were a massive slave operation because obviously people had to be forced to work on something of that scale and obviously nobody would subject themselves to something this arduous freely. Imagining how they were built conjures up images of Egyptian guards whipping slaves who drag massive slabs in the scorching heat.

But new evidence suggests not only wasn't everybody who worked on it a slave, there's even good reason to believe that slaves didn't play any bigger role than in the society at the time in general.

They have an idea of how many people were required to do the work, and they found evidence of roughly that many people housed nearby who were fed and respected much better than we would expect slaves to be. Also, they found them exactly where they expected to find the slaves.

It's not the strongest evidence, but it seems like enough to displace the presumption that most of the laborers were slaves, unless there's equally strong evidence for that. I would expect the article to have mentioned such evidence, though.

It is one of those topics that crop up every now and then. What emerges from the picture is that few of the low skilled worker at the construction site where slaves in the way we picture slavery today with many in a social situation more akin to serfdom.

At what point slavery becomes serfdom is more a matter of semantic. Then again there were both actual slaves, i.e. prisoner and spoil of wars and skilled craftmen working at the decorations, detailing etc, because building a pyramid was not just the "moving rocks" parts.

Attempting to reduce something that complex to a single slave vs non slave structure is reductive at best, especially in a society with a caste system such as the Ancient Egyptian. Just think about the ideograms, those were written under the direction of the religious caste, even if indirectly.

Thanks! Added.

The article helpfully addresses a lot of this.

The majority of the article talks about the town that they excavated that existed for precisely this reason. The evidence strongly suggests that the residents were very well looked after.

They also speculate that the town was populated as a consequence of a form of feudal duty called bak. This feudalism is documented but isn't known to have been used specifically to build the great pyramids (though it seems likely).

On the assumption that this is true, the lack of family accommodation etc is entirely plausible: the workers are seconded to the town for periods rather than live there full time.

I would really recommend reading the article, even if you're not an archaeologist. It's very interesting what you can learn from the evidence.

An acquaintance works in in the oil industry and they can have tens of thousands of people working on projects costing tens of billions. This looks like a similar scenario.

OK I know the city has encroached more recently - but the pyramids aren't 'in the middle of the desert with nothing around for miles' - https://twistedsifter.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/aerial-vie...

and

http://www.geographylists.com/egypt_sphinx_backside

You are thinking about this as a state-sponsored project, however it is more akin a governmental agency dedicated to building the Pyramids. People there (almost certainly all men) were likely not paid employees but instead people taken from all over Egypt enrolled in a mandatory public service (akin to mandatory military service), fed and supplied by the Egyptian government, with goods which likely came from taxes created with the explicit purpose of supporting the construction of the Pyramids.

So, all considered, this place must look more akin an ancient Egyptian military camp of a massive scale than a regular city, thus lacking some 'basic' civilian like markets or schools. Also, ancient Egyptians cared a lot about their death ones, so likely a proper burial were given to everybody who died while working in the Pharaon's tomb.

On an unrelated note, I wonder why they were wasting all these massive logistics into piling rocks in middle of the dessert, when they could, you know, be building roads or dams or walls across all their frontiers.

Apparently, so did Lehner in his younger days.

Fortunately, he realised that evidence is better than ignorant speculation and, as a consequence, has done quite a lot for our understanding of the period and the great pyramids in particular.

Didn't know about the involvement of Big Foot and Nessie, but it's obvious that the pyramids are in fact landing pads for similarly shaped starships.

There is no historic evidence for the jews ever being in egypt.

Because those sections of the Bible were fabricated by neighboring Canaanite herder tribes in the 9th century BC as justification for their unification. Why would they know what Egypt was like?

Why would it mention the pyramids? It is not a tourist guide.

What's the connection there? I asked a friend just the other day if he thought the pyramid numerology kooks and the "cosmic A432" kooks had ever joined forces. Would love to watch a 50 minute youtube video of a guy rambling incoherently about it into a bad microphone.