Deir El-Medina Strikes | Hacker News Reader

Deir El-Medina Strikes

en.wikipedia.org

85 pointsmooreds19 comments

In ancient Egypt, there were various trade unions, usually organized by profession

One of the most interesting was the thieves' union

Suppose someone stole yr carpet at night, and in the morning you'd go to the office of the head of the thieves' union, pay 25% of the carpet's value, and get it back. Much better than modern insurance!

Sounds a little like the Thieves' Guild in Discworld.

> The Thieves' Guild was established early in Lord Havelock Vetinari's rule of Ankh-Morpork. Lord Vetinari realised that what people crave is stability, and that, while it is impossible to stamp out crime altogether, it is possible to regulate it. The major gang leaders of the city were therefore called to the Patrician's Palace, where they agreed to be held responsible for ensuring a socially acceptable number of thefts.

> While initially the main money-making venture of Thieves' Guild members remained theft, albeit under strict guidelines and leaving a receipt, more recent books show a system of "insurance", whereby people may pay a fee directly to the Guild and therefore become immune to robbery for a specified period.

Even without reaching for fantasy, the real world has plenty of examples of "regulated crime" with various degrees of officialdom. From the Japanese Yakuza of the Showa era, to the mafia of postwar Italy, governments will often prefer to deal with organised crime by striking deals and agreeing to shared rules of engagement.

When I lived in Glasgow's leafy suburbia, my local pub was roughly equidistant between a pair of taxi offices and the local police station, so the regulars were in roughly equal quantity off-duty police or off-duty small-to-medium-scale gangsters.

Despite this, the pub was considered neutral ground and the hats were very much off, in there.

And nobody would ever be so improper as to be a grass or a "bent copper".

But, equally, it might become known that someone particularly unpleasant may be found in a particular place, alive and well at least until the weekend, or it might become known that someone's more questionable side businesses were getting a little too noticeable and maybe older and wiser heads needed to offer them some friendly advice, before they got themselves in trouble over it.

And so it went, peaceful for everyone, unless the old boy that had a stroke was in, throwing pound coins at people's heads and shouting "ELVIS!" until they put Elvis on the jukebox for him.

Simpler times, long gone now, washed away in a flood of gentrification, and now there's nothing really keeping the nastier elements in check.

> Even without reaching for fantasy, the real world has plenty of examples of "regulated crime" with various degrees of officialdom. From the Japanese Yakuza of the Showa era, to the mafia of postwar Italy,

... to the government of Russia ...

And my favourite:

"There must be a hundred dollars in there", he moaned, "I mean that's not my league, I can't steal that much! You've got to be in the Guild of Lawyers to steal that much!"

> system of "insurance", whereby people may pay a fee directly to the Guild and therefore become immune to robbery for a specified period.

We call that taxes

> Much better than modern insurance!

Sort of, unless you lost it to a fire or flooding, which the thieves guild presumably wouldn't cover.

Also, is this really true or an urban myth? I'm not finding sources googling this, at most I can find mentions that there were during some norr unstable periods maffia-like structures with large unofficial power.

To protect their homes from floods and fires, the ancient Egyptians made sacrifices and offerings to deities like Hapi (god of the Nile)[1] and Bastet[2]

But this naive actuarial model with a 100% deductible is obviously far less sophisticated than modern insurance ;)

—-

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hapi_(Nile_god)

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastet

This sounds like something out of a historical fantasy novel or a video game. Why wouldn't the robbery victim just get a bunch of dudes to go down and take the rug and kill everyone? I mean, it really tied the room together

There are papyri of tomb robber confessions, but those were more along the line of the thieves needing to fence their goods and bribing various officials. Not explicitly selling stolen goods back to the victim

This seems ridiculous. People wouldn’t tolerate getting “taxed” like this unless the thieves union also had a lot of muscle like a modern extorting criminal organization.

>One of the most interesting was the thieves' union

>Suppose someone stole yr carpet at night, and in the morning you'd go to the office of the head of the thieves' union, pay 25% of the carpet's value, and get it back. Much better than modern insurance!

https://traaonline.com/

> In 1156 BC, the workers' pay was late and a representative, Amennakht (or Amen-nakhte), a scribe, went to the mortuary temple of Horemheb and negotiated with officials to dispense 46 sacks of corn to restore peace.[10][12] However this was only a portion of the rations the workers had been promised.

Is that a mistranslation? I don't think Egypt had corn for a few more thousand years.

I had to look it up. Apparently maize did not get to Egypt till around the year 1600 but in British English the word “corn” refers to any local grain. Eg these “Corn laws” refer to wheat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_Laws

Before the American meaning became ubiquitous, corn used to mean (and still does sometimes) just any grain. In fact it also survives in other languages like German, where “Korn” is a singular kernel, or an uncountable amount of grain, as well as the figurative meaning in “film grain”.

In Swedish "korn" is a specific species of grain (called barley in English). For grains in general we use the term "sädesslag".

The "Past Lives" podcast just had an episode on the workers of Deir El-Medina.

Earliest known labor strikes.

Apropos systems collapse, a recent theme here on HN it seems, perhaps being meme’d a bit to highlight the dangers, in systems thinking terms, of hyper-interconnected globalized system of trade. Or to explain Theil’s move to Argentina. Maybe Tech oligarchs are the new ship peoples?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com