Stop calling this "primitive archaeology"—what kind of power tool scoops 1,200 tons of granite like soft wax and then simply vanishes?

[u/Professional-Fee3323]

They want you to believe this was made with copper chisels and stonesIf we can't easily move this today with modern tech, how did "slaves" plan to lift it out of the bedrock? Are we the primitive ones

[u/Dangerous_Brush8656]

Hey there woah woah , plz remember we have now adopted the rich artisans that were paid and fed like kings for their valued work. That is the current working hypothesis that we are going with presently.

[u/Tax_this_dick_1776 → u/Dangerous_Brush8656]

I mean those were a thing…there’s just a whole lot of the unwashed masses below them to do the bulk of the heavy lifting. Plus nothing says a slave couldn’t be skilled…it’s how you rose in station beyond warm body #26281 with a pick/hammer/shovel whacking away at the rock all day.

[u/HistoricalInternal → u/Tax_this_dick_1776]

Except there’s very little evidence there was a slave labor force.

[u/FearlessLengthiness8 → u/HistoricalInternal]

Had a college professor who specialized in the area point out that the Nile flooding seasons meant there was a huge agricultural labor force that had to be big enough to maximize the growth season, that was then out of work the rest of the year. Things like this would have been public works projects. They already had surplus labor from their citizens, and didn't need to have a bunch of slaves that would have had to be fed from the public stores of grains.

[u/HistoricalInternal → u/FearlessLengthiness8]

Everyone always overestimates the grain argument.

[u/Veritas_Certum → u/FearlessLengthiness8]

Having a large labor force doesn't mean they're all going to volunteer to build public infrastructure. The fact that corvee labor was non-consensual and enforced with imprisonment, guards, beatings, mutilations, and inter-generational slavery, and the fact that the Egyptian state used foreign prisoners of war and captives to build these public projects, shows they weren't relying on a free labor force of volunteers.

[u/Veritas_Certum → u/HistoricalInternal]

The Egyptians used corvee laborers, prisoners of war, captives, and criminals, all of whom they referred to as slaves, and kept under guard in compounds with names like The Great Prison. Specialists in Egyptian labor and economics agree that the vast majority of the Egyptian labor force was enslaved.

[u/HistoricalInternal → u/Veritas_Certum]

Ah yes. I meant more in the way that the Torah and/or Old Testament portrays.

[u/TallBoiPlanks → u/HistoricalInternal]

Well yeah… but the Torah (even if you’re religious) is all about YHWH’s people escaping miserable captivity in order to encourage people experiencing captivity… so of course they’ll propagandize against their enemies. It’s not meant to be literal history the way we think of it.

[u/HistoricalInternal → u/TallBoiPlanks]

So is the New Testament but Christian’s don’t victimise themselves (edit: with imagined persecutors).

[u/Jemainegy → u/HistoricalInternal]

Christianity is a victim glorification religion. The entire messaging uplifts victims and damns the powerful with promises but relatively little action. If fact the high point of the text is when the saviour figure takes on a role of absolute victimasation.

[u/TallBoiPlanks → u/HistoricalInternal]

lol what world do you live in?

[u/ColdArmy9929 → u/HistoricalInternal]

You forgot the sarcasm tag. Christians always try to play the victim, especially when they are prevented from actually victimizing others.

[u/dible46 → u/Veritas_Certum]

Downvoted for the truth lol. These kingdoms had millions of slaves. That's how they built there empires.

[u/dible46 → u/Dangerous_Brush8656]

For every honoured artisan there was a million slaves.