Egypt tombs suggest pyramids not built by slaves

[Narukami]

If this turns out to be correct it would cast a new light on the pyramids and the popular view of them.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100110/sc_ ... R0b21ic3N1


[size=150:374krvks]Egypt tombs suggest pyramids not built by slaves[/size]

AP – In this undated photo released by the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities on Sunday, Jan. 10, 2010, …
Slideshow:Anthropology & Archaeology
Sun Jan 10, 12:30 pm ET
CAIRO (Reuters) – New tombs found in Giza support the view that the Great Pyramids were built by free workers and not slaves, as widely believed, Egypt's chief archaeologist said on Sunday.
Films and media have long depicted slaves toiling away in the desert to build the mammoth pyramids only to meet a miserable death at the end of their efforts.
"These tombs were built beside the king's pyramid, which indicates that these people were not by any means slaves," Zahi Hawass, the chief archaeologist heading the Egyptian excavation team, said in a statement.
"If they were slaves, they would not have been able to build their tombs beside their king's."
He said the collection of workers' tombs, some of which were found in the 1990s, were among the most significant finds in the 20th and 21st centuries. They belonged to workers who built the pyramids of Khufu and Khafre.
Hawass had earlier found graffiti on the walls from workers calling themselves "friends of Khufu" -- another sign that they were not slaves.
The tombs, on the Giza plateau on the western edge of Cairo, are 4,510 years old and lie at the entrance of a one-km (half mile)-long necropolis.
Hawass said evidence had been found showing that farmers in the Delta and Upper Egypt had sent 21 buffalo and 23 sheep to the plateau every day to feed the builders, believed to number around 10,000 -- or about a tenth of Greek historian Herodotus's estimate of 100,000.
These farmers were exempted from paying taxes to the government of ancient Egypt -- evidence that he said underscored the fact they were participating in a national project.
The first discovery of workers' tombs in 1990 came about accidentally when a horse stumbled on a brick structure 10 meters (yards) away from the burial area.
(Writing by Marwa Awad; Editing by Alison Williams and Michael Roddy)

:wink:

Narukami

[Jona Lendering]

This is old news; I remember having seen this some time ago already. But never estimate that old archaeological proverb, "Never bring out a press release once if you can also attract attention twice". 5 on the Ctesias Scale.

[Narukami]

:oops:

Narukami

[Matt Lukes]

Typical Hawass, eh? LOL Geez- I saw the first TV documentary about this years ago, and the 'city' of workers by the quarries was found what, in the 1980s? Maybe the idea is to reinforce that the foolish old idea of slaves is wrong- gotta displace the ludicrous Hollywood propaganda somehow :lol:

[Narukami]

:oops: :oops:

Good night -- where was I to miss all of this the first time? :?

(Let's see, 1980's ... immersed in kabuki theatre... ya, that's it...) :roll:

Of course you're quite right Matt, these well known "facts" are so deeply ingrained that they need continual correction. Every time Ben Hur plays a new generation is firmly convinced that the Roman Navy used slaves to power their war ships. Just imagine what new "facts" will be firmly known by the public in two weeks when the new Spartacus series begins on the Starz cable network... hock:

:wink:

Narukami

[Epictetus]

Of course you're quite right Matt, these well known "facts" are so deeply ingrained that they need continual correction.

Yes, exactly. I first read about this some years ago, but it bears repeating. I think the idea of slaves building the pyramids is so widely believed that "continual correction" (good quote!) is needed.

One intersting question is how did this idea of slave labour building them originate? Harvard Magazine rather obscurely blames a "Judeo-Christian tradition." I guess that is plausible: the Old Testament describes the Jews as slaves in Egypt, and maybe someone somewhere surmised that slaves did these grandiose projects.

[Sean Manning]

Interestingly, Herodotus (2.124-125) believed that the pyramids were built by conscripted Egyptians who were supported by the king, which is probably correct. It wouldn't surprise me if the idea of slave workers comes from the Old Testament legends of the Jews being the king's slaves in Egypt.

[Jona Lendering]

It wouldn't surprise me if the idea of slave workers comes from the Old Testament legends of the Jews being the king's slaves in Egypt.

Or the other way round: that Exodus was written after Herodotus, which is one of today's theories.

[MARCvSVIBIvSMAvRINvS]

Everyone knows that the pyramids were built by the Goa' uld using slaves around 10.000 BC after which an uprising closed the gate for eternity, at least that is what the hieroglyphs tell us.





Hawass will invoke the wrath of Ra and Apophis if he continues this slander!

LOL

M.VIB.M.

[Sean Manning]

It wouldn't surprise me if the idea of slave workers comes from the Old Testament legends of the Jews being the king's slaves in Egypt.

Or the other way round: that Exodus was written after Herodotus, which is one of today's theories.

So they suggest that the authors of Exodus had read Herodotus and been influenced by his account? I hadn't heard that theory.

Herodotus did believe that other monuments had been built by prisoners taken by some of his legendary pharaohs, and talked about campaigns into Canaan/Asia/Abarnahara. But he states fairly clearly (at least, in the translation I have handy) that he thought the pyramids were built by ordinary Egyptians forced to work for short periods by their king. He does say that this was a great hardship for the Egyptians, but going from "corvee workers" to "slaves" seems a bit of a stretch ...

[Jona Lendering]

So they suggest that the authors of Exodus had read Herodotus and been influenced by his account? I hadn't heard that theory.

Yup, I read about it some time ago, was unconvinced and decided that it was one of those crackpot theories. But it isn't; I suspend my judgment, and just note that some Herodotean errors, like the existence of a strong Median Empire and the significance of the word "magians", occur in the younger parts of the Jewish part of the Bible. If Daniel can contain Herodotean influences, other parts of the Bible may have been influenced as well.

Yet, I can not ultimately judge the quality of the arguments.

[taira1180]

I remember reading once that a group of workers made a strike because of being delayed in the payment when they were building a tomb, but I think it wasn't the pyramids, probably in the near empire.

[Paullus Scipio]

I think the knowledge that the Pyramid builders were free peasants (for the labour) and specialist free workers and artisans (the permanent workforce) has been well known in the archaeology/Egyptology world almost as long as Egyptology itself - from about 150 years ago. While initially attention focused on the more glamourous Grand Pyramids, investigation of the archaeology of the workforce really came to the fore in 1888 , when British archaeologist Flinders Petrie started his investigation into the Middle Kingdom pyramid complex of Senwosert II at Ilahun. Here an associated walled settlement, Kahun, yielded a complete town plan whose neat rows of mud-brick terraced houses provided a wealth of papyri, pottery, tools, clothing and children's toys - all the debris of day-to-day life that is usually missing from Egyptian sites.

It did not take long to deduce that the permanent workforce numbered something like 4-6,000 skilled workers and their families living in a town on-site for the 20 or so years it took to build a pyramid, and that these were augmented by a temporary workforce numbering up to 100,000 peasants/fellaheen, working some 20,000 at a time for a 'shift' of several months - who would have been glad to work for Pharoah in return for the Labourer's wage (Old Kingdom) of ten loaves and a measure of beer per day during the Nile flood period, when fields could not be worked nor was there much other work available. We even know the size, organisation and even nicknames of many of the 'work-gangs'.

In the last twenty years or so, this work of studying the archaeology of the peasants has been extended to the area around the Great Pyramid at Giza by Egyptologist Mark Lehner and others, to which, in his usual fashion, Hawass has associated his name and credit for the results.....but genuine Egyptologists/scholars have had to accept this 'condition' if they are to obtain permission to work there.....

The idea that Pharoah Cheops enslaved and used 100,000 slaves ( an impossible number of slaves for all sorts of reasons) is a 'myth' which goes back to ancient times, for this is what Herodotus the Greek Historian (II.124-126) was told by his priestly Egyptian informers - to impress with the 'might and power' of ancient Egypt's rulers .......

[Sean Manning]

The idea that Pharoah Cheops enslaved and used 100,000 slaves ( an impossible number of slaves for all sorts of reasons) is a 'myth' which goes back to ancient times, for this is what Herodotus the Greek Historian (II.124-126) was told by his priestly Egyptian informers - to impress with the 'might and power' of ancient Egypt's rulers .......

I hate to be pedantic, but I pointed out a few days ago that Herodotus believed that the pyramids were built by corvee workers, not slaves. I think he's the source of the countless ("ten myriads") workers legend, but not the slaves.

Thanks for the summary of the historiography.

I think the workers' strike was at Deir El-Medina, the village where the builders of the Valley of the Kings lived with their families. A lot of papyri and ostraca survive from that site.

[Paullus Scipio]

Sean wrote:

I hate to be pedantic, but I pointed out a few days ago that Herodotus believed that the pyramids were built by corvee workers, not slaves. I think he's the source of the countless ("ten myriads") workers legend, but not the slaves.

...I'm afraid that depends on the translated version, Sean.

McCaulay's 1890 translation of 2.124 runs:-

....Cheops became king over them and brought them to every kind of evil: for he shut up all the temples, and having first kept them from sacrificing there, he then bade all the Egyptians work for him. So some were appointed to draw stones from the stone-quarries in the Arabian mountains to the Nile, and others he ordered to receive the stones after they had been carried over the river in boats, and to draw them to those which are called the Libyan mountains; and they worked by a hundred thousand men at a time, for each three months continually.Of this oppression there passed ten years while the causeway was made by which they drew the stones......

Aubrey de Selincourt ( Penguin 1954) translates this passage as:-

...his successor Cheops ( to continue the account which the priests gave me) brought the country into all sorts of misery.He closed all the temples, then, not content with excluding his subjects from the practice of their religion, compelled them without exception to labour as slaves for his own advantage.Some were forced forced to drag blocks of stone from the quarries in the Arabian hills to the Nile, where they were ferried across and taken over by others who hauled them to the Libyan hills.The work went on in three month shifts, a hundred thousand men to a shift.It took ten years of this oppressive slave-labour to build the track....

This is the Greek:

????? ?? ????? ???????? ??????. ????????????? ??? ??? ????? ?? ??? ????? ??? ????? ??????? ??????? ???????, ???? ?? ?????????? ????? ???????? ?????? ??????????. [2] ????? ??? ?? ??????????? ?? ??? ??????????? ??? ?? ?? ?????? ????, ?? ??????? ?????? ?????? ????? ??? ??????· ??????????????? ?? ??? ??????? ???????? ???? ?????? ???????? ??????? ?????????? ??? ???? ?? ??????? ?????????? ????, ???? ????? ??????. [3] ????????? ?? ???? ???? ???????? ???????? ???? ??? ???????? ???????.????????? ?? ???? ???? ???????? ???????? ???? ??? ???????? ???????. ?????? ?? ?????????? ????????? ?? ??? ???? ???? ??? ??? ???? ???? ?? ?????? ???? ??????, ??? ??????? ????? ??? ?? ????? ??? ??????? ??? ?????????.

Perhaps someone with a better knowledge of greek than me can indicate which translation is more accurate.......