Posted on 01/10/2010 6:35:05 PM PST by jerry557
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.
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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.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Slave or free, a complicated question. Roman slaves generally had more rights than American slaves. Were “free” men able to move from one village to another without higher level permission? What was owed to the state in labor and production by various strata of society? Were buried laborers/”slaves” more or less healthy/well nourished than neighboring villagers/farmers? All questions that can clarify the extent of slavery/citizenship.
So far as Moses and the slaves, that was a much later period of history. The pyramids were more than 4000 years ago before the chaos of the First Intermediate Period. Google Ipuwer papyrus. Abraham and the subsequent migration into Egypt was after the FIP, perhaps because of the FIP. Who knows what changes might have taken place in the 3 or 4 hundred years after the first of Abraham’s people settled in Egypt. They might have become so numerous that it awakened jealosy. Also the exodus period was probably after the Second Intermediate Period, and the Hyksos (shepherd kings) period in Egyptian history. Were they relatives? and subsequently despised?
Depends which period of Roman history you're talking about. In the early days, nobody except the pater familias had any legal rights whatsoever. He had power of life and death, quite literally, over slaves, wife, sons, daughters, daughters-in-law, etc. I believe he could even legally sell a son, which makes the distinction between slave and free subject to change at any moment.
Romans, until quite late, routinely executed their slaves freely. Augustus was particularly disgusted by a guy who fed them to his lampreys. It wasn't illegal, just kind of bad taste.
Romans openly used their slaves, male and female, for sexual purposes. They also routinely murdered their slaves' children.
OTOH, there was never anything resembling a racial component to Roman slavery, except that Romans viewed themselves as the master race over everybody.
Slaves in Rome gained more legal rights as time went by.
From early days, a freed Roman slave immediately became a Roman citizen and was then free to compete economically. Many became wealthy and powerful. His children were generally accepted socially.
All things considered, I'd rather have been a slave in Rome than Jamaica.
Tombs of the union bosses.
Unless you were sent to the mines. That was a death sentence.
True enough.
Interestingly, the Romans and other ancient peoples never used galley slaves, despite what Charlton Heston says. They were an invention of gunpowder weapon days.
Quite logical really. If the fighting, with minor exceptions, is by edged weapons or ramming, then having all the rowers ready to fight for you is a huge advantage. If most of the fighting is by artillery, the rowers are mostly just an engine.
The vast majority of the population of Egypt were farmers, and there is an “off” season for farming, when they could be conscripted or compelled or otherwise temporarily “enslaved” to build the Pyramids.
L. Sprague DeCamp in “the Ancient Engineers” talked about how it was most likely to have happened. He also mentions a very salient point about stone age technology and pyramids; without ‘post and lintel’ construction, the only tall imposing building you CAN make is, by necessity, a pyramid.
So much for the ‘cosmic significance’ of pyramids.
4000? I’m guessing you meant 400? The Giza pyramids were built about 2500 BC, the 1st IP was a few hundred years later, and the Exodus was about 1000 years after the 4th dyn Giza pyramids went up; in between time the Middle Kingdom pharaohs had large pyramids built — of mud brick — and what is left of them can still be seen, including this big one in the Fayyum:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawara
Actually, the problem is that I forgot to put a comma after “more than 4000 years ago,”. I meant before the First Intermediate Period, but NOT 4000 years before.
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