
Who Built the Pyramids? (2003) - helloworld
https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2003/07/who-built-the-pyramids-html
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trott
I remember a humoristic Soviet daily wall calendar that said: "And then we'll
destroy the cranes, and the whole world will wonder how we built these
pyramids"

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alphydan
Unrelated, but I really enjoyed this guy's hands on approach to moving 20 ton
blocks by himself,
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5pZ7uR6v8c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5pZ7uR6v8c)

It goes to show that wood, levers and clever engineering could have achieved
amazing construction feats.

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perl4ever
Presenting evidence of people who worked on project [X] and were not in group
[A] is not the same thing as showing that group [A] did not work on project
[X]. Surely that's elementary?

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pluma
The claim isn't that slaves weren't involved, the claim is that the common
knowledge that it was all slaves is wrong.

It was widely believed the pyramids were a massive slave operation because
obviously people had to be forced to work on something of that scale and
obviously nobody would subject themselves to something this arduous freely.
Imagining how they were built conjures up images of Egyptian guards whipping
slaves who drag massive slabs in the scorching heat.

But new evidence suggests not only wasn't everybody who worked on it a slave,
there's even good reason to believe that slaves didn't play any bigger role
than in the society at the time in general.

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perl4ever
The claim isn't that slaves weren't involved?

The very first thing you see when loading the page is "Who Built the Pyramids?
_Not slaves_.".

Later on, the article says (of Lehner): "He has found the city of the pyramid
builders. They were _not slaves_."

Near the end, it says "Slaves or not, as the last season of his dig began,
Lehner still did not know where all the workers slept."

So I think my original comment was salient and reacting to how the article
actually presented things. It makes clear statements that slaves weren't
involved. Then it leaves the possibility open at the end. It's common in many
articles to overstate a claim in the beginning to grab readers, and I don't
care for it.

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pluma
Surely "slaves built the pyramids" implies that at least the majority of
people involved were slaves. The article inverses that simplified statement,
implying the same caveat: at least the majority of people involved _weren 't_
slaves (though some might have been).

If slaves were present in the society, it's absurd to interpret a blanket
statement like "not slaves (built the pyramids)" to imply no slaves were
involved, especially when it's a direct response to the blanket statements
"the pyramids were built by slaves" (which noone would take to mean that no
non-slaves were present anywhere near the construction site -- it's a given
that someone would need to oversee the slaves somehow).

But we're literally arguing over semantics. Unless you assume that all
generalisations are always intended to be understood 100% literally and that
archeologists would want to express 100% confidence in knowing exactly what
group in society each person involved in a construction project thousands of
years ago belonged to, there really isn't anything worth arguing over.

General ignorance has it that the pyramids were built almost entirely by
slaves. This article claims that is not the case. Everything else is just
fluff to make for a better read.

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alasdair_
>Surely "slaves built the pyramids" implies that at least the majority of
people involved were slaves.

If I heard "structural engineers built the suspension bridge" I'd simply
assume they were involved, not that they were physically responsible for over
50 percent of all tasks.

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bufferoverflow
"structural engineers built the suspension bridge" is a false statement
though. Engineers don't build generally, they engineer.

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vasilipupkin
This article is from 2003. Did subsequent research confirm these findings ?

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LoSboccacc
It is one of those topics that crop up every now and then. What emerges from
the picture is that few of the low skilled worker at the construction site
where slaves in the way we picture slavery today with many in a social
situation more akin to serfdom.

At what point slavery becomes serfdom is more a matter of semantic. Then again
there were both actual slaves, i.e. prisoner and spoil of wars and skilled
craftmen working at the decorations, detailing etc, because building a pyramid
was not just the "moving rocks" parts.

Attempting to reduce something that complex to a single slave vs non slave
structure is reductive at best, especially in a society with a caste system
such as the Ancient Egyptian. Just think about the ideograms, those were
written under the direction of the religious caste, even if indirectly.

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ggm
[https://allpoetry.com/A-Worker-Reads-History](https://allpoetry.com/A-Worker-
Reads-History)

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peterwwillis
An article from Mark Lehner, written for the internet in 1997, about bread
pots:
[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pyramid/newsflash/newsflash9702...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pyramid/newsflash/newsflash970203.html)

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DrScump
(2003)

~~~
dang
Thanks! Added.

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HenryBemis
Thinking of the economics behind this feat, if these were not slaves, but paid
employees, I would assume that a whole ecosystem would exist nearby.

These people would need to be housed, buy food with their salaries
(stores/markets), send kids to 'school'. A city would need to have been
developed to accommodate that population.

Also, if they were slaves they wouldn't have been given the luxury of a proper
burial/cremation, so somewhere nearby there should be mass graves.

I am not an archeologist, I am just trying to think with modern days
analogies.

~~~
lucozade
The article helpfully addresses a lot of this.

The majority of the article talks about the town that they excavated that
existed for precisely this reason. The evidence strongly suggests that the
residents were very well looked after.

They also speculate that the town was populated as a consequence of a form of
feudal duty called _bak_. This feudalism is documented but isn't known to have
been used specifically to build the great pyramids (though it seems likely).

On the assumption that this is true, the lack of family accommodation etc is
entirely plausible: the workers are seconded to the town for periods rather
than live there full time.

I would really recommend reading the article, even if you're not an
archaeologist. It's very interesting what you can learn from the evidence.

~~~
pjmlp
Yep, that is why I love reading any kind of document that has managed to
survive to our days.

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wickedlogic
Haven't we well established that water was used? ;)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dup19cX6yXo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dup19cX6yXo)

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qiqitori
I thought it was ancient aliens...

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lucozade
Apparently, so did Lehner in his younger days.

Fortunately, he realised that evidence is better than ignorant speculation
and, as a consequence, has done quite a lot for our understanding of the
period and the great pyramids in particular.

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odammit
I’m pretty sure they were making a Giorgio joke.

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rb808
duh, anyone who watches Teen Titans Go knows that aliens built the pyramid
with the help of Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster.

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TeMPOraL
Didn't know about the involvement of Big Foot and Nessie, but it's obvious
that the pyramids are in fact landing pads for similarly shaped starships.

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bovermyer
Aye, Dr. Daniel Jackson proved that pretty conclusively.

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gt_
Great article! This Lehner guy is an absolute inspiration.

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tastythrowaway
was it not aliens?

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billfruit
Another enduring mystery, why doesn't the Bible mention the Pyramids?

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dschn_dstryr
There is no historic evidence for the jews ever being in egypt.

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WillReplyfFood
There is a lot of evidence for large parts of the early bible stories beeing
copyied from the egyption sun god movement.

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olavk
Not really, no. It has been speculated that Akhenatens elevation of Aten above
other Gods inspired the monotheism of Moses. But AFAIK this is pure
speculation without a shred of evidence. Moses might not even be historical
anyway, and the chronology is off. It is much more likely the later monotheism
was inspired by Persian religion.

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cholantesh
>monotheism of Moses

 _Was_ Moses a monotheist, though? I thought that at the time depicted in the
Pentateuch, the Israelites were henotheists - they believed that there were
many gods but that YHWH was the only one worthy of worship.

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olavk
Indeed, and Akhenatens was heneotheist also, since he elevated Aten to the
primary god, but still allowed the other gods.

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WillReplyfFood
On could argue that even jesus did allow for xeno-theism, given that he argued
for giving the roman emperor what the roman emperor was due- and the roman
emperors at that time considered themselves basically gods or god decendants.

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olavk
I don't think you can argue that. Jesus argued it was acceptable for Jews to
pay taxes, but certainly not that it was acceptable for Jews to _worship_ the
emperor. In any case, only some emperors where proclaimed divine, and it only
happened after their death. Tiberius (the emperor at the time of Jesus) was
never proclaimed divine. Caligula was the first to be proclaimed divine while
still living, and this was after Jesus.

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amriksohata
I wish there would be more research done on the pyramids and the number 432

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boomlinde
What's the connection there? I asked a friend just the other day if he thought
the pyramid numerology kooks and the "cosmic A432" kooks had ever joined
forces. Would love to watch a 50 minute youtube video of a guy rambling
incoherently about it into a bad microphone.

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amriksohata
They pyramids 1/43200 ratio is well documented, the same ratio and number is
seen as very important in many Vedic texts and Vedic structures

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boomlinde
_> They pyramids 1/43200 ratio is well documented_

Interesting. As I suspected, the only thing I can find is kooks playing
numberwang to "roughly" arrive at 43200 by connecting various geometric
properties of the pyramids to various measurements in cubits, meters, miles,
seconds. It's an equation where you decide the units and operators, and also
get to throw in whatever factors that seem significant to you, and at every
stage of the equation you get to choose whether to dismiss the error of the
number you "approximately" arrived at or not, so of course you'll find
whatever number you want if you look hard enough.

