
What the World's Oldest Papyrus Can Tell Us About the Great Pyramids (2015) - dsr12
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ancient-egypt-shipping-mining-farming-economy-pyramids-180956619/?no-ist
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HillaryBriss
> _Astonishingly, the papyri were written by men who participated in the
> building of the Great Pyramid, the tomb of the Pharaoh Khufu, the first and
> largest of the three colossal pyramids at Giza ... the entries provide a
> never-before-seen snapshot of the ancients putting finishing touches on the
> Great Pyramid._

really amazing to learn that such documentation survives to this day. just
amazing.

~~~
pjmlp
Sadly we cannot say the same about our current digital knowledge.

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autokad
I'm sure they'll dig up quite a few AOL disks a couple thousand years from now

~~~
tpeo
Funny thing how the invention of plastics might reverse the pattern of future
artifacts. Valuable/costly artifacts are currently over-presented, since they
were made either of stone or metal, as opposed to mud and wood.

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yourapostasy
What fascinates me from reading the article is this expands the scope of the
ancient Egyptian economy. While we assume the pace of technological change
back then was far slower and less disruptive, it is still a remarkable
accomplishment that their civilization's economy lasted intact for over 3,000
years. Much of that time the economy existed was built on barter, without the
abstractions we take for granted as superior, such as money.

Now with Tallet's contributions to our understanding, not only did that
economy support the massive royal bureaucracy and pyramids projects, but
apparently much more extensive brown water and offshore naval infrastructure
than we previously thought. The taxes were apparently quite heavy [1], but
somehow they made it work for a much longer time than any extant civilization
has existed. The kind of archaeology that could explain how they pulled that
off would be _really_ interesting. I don't think it could be explained by a
single factor like "just" slavery, or "just" religious devotion, _etc._

[1] [http://classroom.synonym.com/taxes-were-collected-ancient-
eg...](http://classroom.synonym.com/taxes-were-collected-ancient-
egypt-23655.html)

~~~
vladsotirov
> without the abstractions we take for granted as superior, such as money.

That's only true if by "money" you mean coinage, which is a definition so
narrow that it also excludes the modern notion of money (you think that's
dollar bills you're spending with your credit card?). The Egyptians did have
currency that wasn't explicitly coins (e.g. shaped piece of metal), and, at
least a 1000 years before they had currency at all, they exchanged items
according to the items' value measured in units of metal, even if they didn't
exchange the actual metal [1]. Calling this barter (as the linked articles
do), from which it's perhaps reasonable to conclude the Egyptians lacked money
as an abstraction, is then disingenuous because that's no different than how
we exchange goods in the modern world (again, you think that's actual dollar
bills that are moving around when you purchase from Amazon? or when you
deposit or pay via checks?).

What the ancient Egyptians did lack for most of their history is the device of
interest-bearing debt (see [2], pp. 217-219).

[1] [http://classroom.synonym.com/ancient-egyptian-forms-
money-57...](http://classroom.synonym.com/ancient-egyptian-forms-
money-5775.html)

[2]
[http://libcom.org/files/__Debt__The_First_5_000_Years.pdf](http://libcom.org/files/__Debt__The_First_5_000_Years.pdf)

~~~
dTal
>they exchanged items according to the items' value measured in units of
metal, even if they didn't exchange the actual metal

This is still bartering. When I order something off Amazon, I don't have to
package up an item of equal value and physically mail it to them. This is the
fundamental problem that money solves - an abstract, finely divisible, non-
spoiling value store.

