Movies like The Ten Commandments have created a image of vast slave populations driven by a cruel Pharaoh, but the Archaeological evidence shows that the builders of the pyramids were all highly skilled paid workers.
posted
even in the bible it is said that it is the jui that built the pyramids. the jui that moses will free
Posts: 16 | From: grenoble | Registered: Nov 2006
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posted
Wrong. The Hebrew book Shemoth records that the Hebrews known as the Children of Israel built the store cities named Pithom and Ramses.
Later people carelessly and haphazardly came to think of the pyramids as either the grainaries that Yoseph built or the work of enslaved Hebrews a generation or two after Yosef.
But to answer the question WHO BUILT THE PYRAMIDS the answerer must first ask which particular pyramid.
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:Originally posted by With a name like Smuckers:
Who Built the Pyramids?
Egyptians.
Well, yeah, egyptian peasants
Well, it takes a lot more than peasantry skills, to design and build the functionally-structured pyramids like those in Egypt and Sudan.
Posts: 5964 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
Peasant usually denotes a low social rank in a feudal society.
It gives a possibly misleading picture of Km.t.
It's not as bad as the American film 10 commandments which thinks Km.t is the Confederate South of the United States, structured on brutal/lazy plantation owners and a massive population of slaves, but still...
One interesting facet of Kemetic 'buiding culture' is that foriegners were often forbidden any involvement in building temples or pyramids.
Km.t was not feudalistic Europe or America. It was and African society with its own, African social system.
Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
But asking who built and who designed the pyramids is two differnet things. To assume the same people who designed them built them is probably not very logical. As we say in the West 'mud flows downhill', so the grunt heavy work probably went to workers who did physical labor as a living. But it still doesn't tell us who designed the pyramids, who was intelligent enough to consider their placement with respect to the stars/moon/sun etc.
Posts: 13440 | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:Originally posted by With a name like Smuckers:
But asking who built and who designed the pyramids is two differnet things. To assume the same people who designed them built them is probably not very logical.
Common sense: without designers, you don't have the pyramids to build in the first place. Why leave their crucial input into the building of the structure? Secondly, these designers would have had direct input into how to go about building these structures, not the ordinary laborers. The laborers follow instructions on how to build the structure. This like talking about your car [if you have one] and simply asking about who "built" it, without taking into consideration a whole range of people from the financial backers of the new product project, designers to the factory floor workers; how logical is that kind of rational? Know anything about engineering, and why it also applies to the pyramids?
Posts: 5964 | Registered: Jan 2005
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quote:Originally posted by With a name like Smuckers:
But asking who built and who designed the pyramids is two differnet things. To assume the same people who designed them built them is probably not very logical.
Common sense: without designers, you don't have the pyramids to build in the first place. Why leave their crucial input into the building of the structure? Secondly, these designers would have had direct input into how to go about building these structures, not the ordinary laborers. The laborers follow instructions on how to build the structure. This like talking about your car [if you have one] and simply asking about who "built" it, without taking into consideration a whole range of people from the financial backers of the new product project, designers to the factory floor workers; how logical is that kind of rational? Know anything about engineering, and why it also applies to the pyramids?
Ok I see your point, but think about it in modern terms, you have engineers who design grand buildings and structures but are they the workers??
Posts: 13440 | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
hmmm well that's true, but once again isn't the question who actually built the pyramids? so we can say the designers were probably (obviously) high skilled as engineers and the workers were obviously highly skilled physical laborers, or were well supervised. still doesn't tell us who the designers and who the workers were?
Posts: 13440 | Registered: Feb 2006
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I've read Cheif Priests were the educated, and geometry was held sacred. So I agree with Supercar's statement.
You bet. These pyramids have chambers, which are purposefully laid out; these chambers are not there for cosmetic purposes, put in place by people who have no directions about what they are building. Somebody must have designed them. It would be a mistake to assume that folks of antiquity had no concept of engineering simply on the account of their being "ancient".
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quote:Originally posted by With a name like Smuckers:
hmmm well that's true, but once again isn't the question who actually built the pyramids?
And what do you suppose we've been discussing all along? Of course, the pyramid builders.
quote:With a name like Smuckers:
so we can say the designers were probably (obviously) high skilled as engineers and the workers were obviously highly skilled physical laborers, or were well supervised. still doesn't tell us who the designers and who the workers were?
Who do you suppose these folks were, if not Egyptians? What is your evidence that this has nothing to do with Egyptians?
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posted
i never said they weren't egyptians but I cant imagine there isn't more proof of who they actually were....I don't know a lot about ancient egypt (as much as others here do) but the question is always there, is there anything in the ancient egyptian artwork that clued anyone in?
Posts: 13440 | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:Originally posted by rasol: Peasant usually denotes a low social rank in a feudal society.
It gives a possibly misleading picture of Km.t.
It's not as bad as the American film 10 commandments which thinks Km.t is the Confederate South of the United States, structured on brutal/lazy plantation owners and a massive population of slaves, but still...
One interesting facet of Kemetic 'buiding culture' is that foriegners were often forbidden any involvement in building temples or pyramids.
Km.t was not feudalistic Europe or America. It was and African society with its own, African social system.
Feudalism is not a Western peculiarity. Ethiopia's land tenure systems of rist and gult have long been likened to the European feudal system, as have the land tenure systems of Japan and other areas outside of Europe and North America (that said, it's not anything to be proud of, but it's not a Western quirk).
Posts: 1024 | Registered: Jun 2006
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posted
When we ask who built the Eiffel Tower, or something, we don't think in terms of "gruntworkers." We think of the architects, civil and mechanical engineers. Likewise for the pyramids.
The laborers aren't credited as the builders of monumental projects.
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
Most pyramids are simply attributed to the pharaoh who ordered and paid whatever wages were necessary for their building.
I recall Imhotep being the mind behind either the very first true pyramid or the perfeced earlier step pyramid.
Is there anything like the plaques listing all involved in erecting public civil works like the WPA did? Don't know for certain, but I've not seen or heard of such for the pyramids.
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote: As a builder, Imhotep is the first master architects who we know by name. He is not only credited as the first pyramid architect, who built Djoser's Step Pyramid complex at Saqqara, but he may have had a hand in the building of Sekhemkhet's unfinished pyramid, and also possibly with the establishment of the Edfu Temple, but that is not certain.
Imhotep is the immortal Egyptian architect who, 4650 years ago, designed and managed the construction of King Djoser’s all-stone funerary complex. Its centerpiece was the first pyramid ever built (the “step pyramid”). Surrounding the pyramid, was a stone rendition of the multitude of temporary buildings traditionally used for a king’s sed festival (jubilee). It was the most monumental building project the world had ever seen. In terms of scope, logistics, innovation, and collective determination, it would be difficult to overstate the quantum leap realized under Imhotep’s stewardship. It was then, and remains today an overwhelming demonstration of the wealth and skill of the Egyptian state.
. . . .
... Manetho called him with reverence “the inventor of the art of building with hewn stone” (Baines 2001:142).
Today, scholars such as Michael Rice (2002) call him “Perhaps the most original creative genius that Egypt ever produced”, and continue “The technical and logistical problems inherent in constructing a monument requiring the quarrying, transportation, dressing, decoration, and erection of nearly one million tons of limestone with no precedents which are known, are phenomenal, as was Imhotep’s response to the challenges. . . The Third Dynasty was a time of exceptionally rapid technological advances, of which Imhotep was the vanguard.”
quote:Originally posted by With a name like Smuckers: But asking who built and who designed the pyramids is two differnet things. To assume the same people who designed them built them is probably not very logical. As we say in the West 'mud flows downhill', so the grunt heavy work probably went to workers who did physical labor as a living. But it still doesn't tell us who designed the pyramids, who was intelligent enough to consider their placement with respect to the stars/moon/sun etc.
There was probably very little labor work on the pyramid crews. Some of the work required much less skill than others but the hardest work was probably the one which required the greatest skill as well; the cutting and placing of stone.
Posts: 393 | From: NW Indiana, US of A | Registered: Aug 2006
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quote:Originally posted by With a name like Smuckers:
i never said they weren't egyptians but I cant imagine there isn't more proof of who they actually were....
In other words, you are not sure if Egyptians actually had any role in the construction of royal pyramids in their own land, and need proof of this to be reassured? In any case, discoveries to this end aren't new.
quote:Originally posted by With a name like Smuckers:
I don't know a lot about ancient egypt (as much as others here do) but the question is always there, is there anything in the ancient egyptian artwork that clued anyone in?
Sure, and I've hinted on this a few times before; see:
"During the construction of the sewage system of the village of Nazlet-el Samman and other villages located down the foot of the great pyramid, we found a large Old Kingdom settlement about 3 km square.
We recorded a continuous layer of mud-brick buildings starting about 165 feet south of the valley Temple of Khufu and extending about 1 mile to the south. Among the artifacts are thousands of fragments of every day pottery and bread molds, cooking pots, beer jars and trays for sifting grain and flour. Medium to large pieces of charcoal suggest that trees once grew here. Also domesticated animal bones, such as beef, pork and sheep with butchers marks on them. The workmen camp should be located on this site.
I believe that there were two types of settlement, one for the workmen who moved the stones, and the other camp for the artisans…
On April 14, 1990, the chief of the pyramid guards, Mohammed Abdel Razek, reported to me that an American tourist was thrown from her horse when the animal stumbled on a previously unknown mud-brick wall. Located to the south of the wall of the crow.
The mud-brick wall turned out to be a tomb, with a long vaulted chamber and two false doors through which the dead could commune with the living and receive offerings.
Crude hieroglyphs scrawled on the false doors identified the tomb owners as Ptah-shepsesu and his wife. At the back of the chamber were three burial shafts for the man, his wife, and, probably, their son. In front of the tomb was a square courtyard with low walls of broken limestone. While not in the style of the great stone mastaba tombs of nobles beside the pyramids, Ptah-shepsesu's tomb and courtyard are grand in comparison to others that we have uncovered around it.
Pieces of granite, basalt, and diorite, stones used in the pyramid temples, had been incorporated into the walls. Such material suggests that some tombs in the cemetery may belong to the pyramid builders or succeeding generations of workers who made use of stone left over from the construction of the pyramids, temples, and tombs. Attached to Ptah-shepsesu's tomb were small shaft burials of people who probably worked under him.
The lower part of the cemetery contains about 600 such graves for workmen and 30 larger tombs, perhaps for overseers…
We have found many false doors and some stelae attached to these tombs. Inscribed in crude hieroglyphs, they record the names of the people whose skeletons lay below: on one stela a man named Khemenu is depicted sitting at an offering table in front of his wife, Tep-em nefret; a false door is inscribed with a woman's name, Hetep-repyt (Offering to Presiding Goddess, or Hathor); another belongs to Hy, priestess of the goddess Hathor, Lady of (the) Sycamore Tree, and her son Khuwy. These women, the wives of the pyramid builders, served as priestesses of Hathor, goddess of love, music, dance, and the necropolis, and a counterpart to Horus, god of kingship…" - Zahi Hawass, 1997
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