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Labor in ancient Egypt is a strange from our perspective. Everybody was essentially a serf in a very collectivist society with a command economy. Creating any form of discord was not just against the will of the state but a denial of the authority of the gods.
For example, they had a labor strike for the monument builders, and that was a big cultural moment for them that eventually signaled the downfall of a dynasty. The laborers even threatened to damage the tombs, showing just how much they were rebelling against cultural norms. But to get to that point, they hadn’t fed those laborers for a month, meaning the pharaoh himself was creating discord(since he technically owned all the food and his job was to direct the people and give them what they need to carry out his orders) and society was breaking down.
As an aside to the command economy thing, pay in ancient Egypt was always in the form of rations. Like, if you were rich in ancient Egypt that meant that the pharaoh was giving you enough grain to support 50 retainers or trade that food for something else, but there wasn’t money
Labor in ancient Egypt is a strange from our perspective. Everybody was essentially a serf in a very collectivist society with a command economy. Creating any form of discord was not just against the will of the state but a denial of the authority of the gods.
For example, they had a labor strike for the monument builders, and that was a big cultural moment for them that eventually signaled the downfall of a dynasty. The laborers even threatened to damage the tombs, showing just how much they were rebelling against cultural norms. But to get to that point, they hadn’t fed those laborers for a month, meaning the pharaoh himself was creating discord(since he technically owned all the food and his job was to direct the people and give them what they need to carry out his orders) and society was breaking down.
As an aside to the command economy thing, pay in ancient Egypt was always in the form of rations. Like, if you were rich in ancient Egypt that meant that the pharaoh was giving you enough grain to support 50 retainers or trade that food for something else, but there wasn’t money