The Egyptian, Zahi Hawass, makes an even more ridiculous argument. He says that because the worker accommodations near the pyramid sites look like ordinary villages where ordinary people would live the workers could not have been slaves. When I first heard that argument I had to laugh at the choice of words. The root of the Saxon word “village” is villain, which means slave.
Excellent comment on Hawass. Read post # 19.
No. The Root is the Latin word "Villa": a country dwelling. And the concept of the villein, technically a freeman owing labour service to his Lord as rent for his land, only arrived with the Normans.