The pyramids were not built by slaves. They were built by farmers during downtime, they were treated well. Pharaohs were living gods, so building for them and getting paid for it mustn't have been that different from building a cathedral.
this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2026
657 points (95.9% liked)
Comic Strips
22415 readers
1598 users here now
Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.
The rules are simple:
- The post can be a single image, an image gallery, or a link to a specific comic hosted on another site (the author's website, for instance).
- The comic must be a complete story.
- If it is an external link, it must be to a specific story, not to the root of the site.
- You may post comics from others or your own.
- If you are posting a comic of your own, a maximum of one per week is allowed (I know, your comics are great, but this rule helps avoid spam).
- The comic can be in any language, but if it's not in English, OP must include an English translation in the post's 'body' field (note: you don't need to select a specific language when posting a comic).
- Politeness.
- AI-generated comics aren't allowed.
- Limit of two posts per person per day.
- Bots aren't allowed.
- Banned users will have their posts removed.
- Adult content is not allowed. This community aims to be fun for people of all ages.
Web of links
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world: "I use Arch btw"
- !memes@lemmy.world: memes (you don't say!)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Yes guys it was fine. You just pretend that you are a god through threat of violence and having an uneducated population then get them to do things for you. It's great!
It was a vastly better situation than a lot of wandering tribes had it back then.
Isn't it like working for Amazon today?
You work for some pay and all the value goes to the rich person on top.
It makes less sense today, in the modern age we have the capability to provide for people in mass-scale, and today we have more alternatives for different lifestyles. Like, if you can't stand working for Amazon, there are ways you can go live off the land if you know your agriculture and farming. Or you can self-employ, you can gamble on all kinds of things if you're good at navigating the system, you can save money and change your location or your career. Not always easy but for a lot of people the option is there.
In around 4000 BC your options were either getting work stacking giant rocks for a living God, or go out to the wilderness and pray to whatever gods you believe in that you don't grow enough crops or build a large enough family that it attracts the attention of another tribe with no qualms about murdering everyone and taking your stockpiles.
Not exactly the best options either way, but it gets even worse the further back you go.
We are going backwards, I see.
If Bezos had his way, it would be the same today.
It was a vastly better situation than a lot of wandering tribes had it back then.
No it wasn't. Life expectancy was shorter. They had higher instances of domestic violence and stunted growth from disease and malnutrition. The process of sustaining an agricultural economy is grueling, the labor monotonous, and the results of months of labor can be as fickle as the wind. And grain-based diets are fucking horrible for your health - particularly with respect to your teeth and your weight.
Wandering tribes had it significantly better. That's why migrant civilizations - from the Hittites to the Persians to the Mongols to the Apache - were such a terror for agricultural communities. They were more fit, often more intelligent (or at least more educated), and because they were more mobile they could outrun regional catastrophes and pounce upon underdeveloped unprepared sedentary populations hundreds of miles away.
Large agricultural societies were good at one thing and that was getting large numbers of people in a dense community to fuck out kids at a rapid rate. And eventually these large populations developed the industries capable of winning wars of attrition against migrant raiders.
But this process took millennia. It was iterative and routinely prone to failure. And absent membership in the rarefied elite - the planter class, the aristocracy, the theocracy - you were much better off as a nomad than a serf until perhaps 80-150 years ago, depending on where you were living.
Depending on how you want to view the world, nomadic peoples are still at the forefront of human civilization. We've congealed this cohort of people into institutions we call corporations and militaries. But you better believe the overseas contractor driving a truck or piloting a drone in Iraq is doing way better than the fertile crescent farmers who have been tilling the soil for the last 10,000 years.
load more comments
(5 replies)
Well, building cathedrals wasn't fun either unless you were the guy in charge.
Who says it wasn't? Probably shorter days than us, more community, satisfaction of serving god...
Also allowed for artists to do some kick ass art with restrictions of course
Why's that guy holding a whip?
Because it was drawn there?
“I’m not really bad. I’m just drawn that way.”
He's a motivation coach and this is motivation tool.
He’s into some kinky stuff.
I cant tell if this is a joke or serious anymore.
He dangles that little frayed part in front of them and they get so distracted chasing it they forget they’re working
The ancient equivalent of key jingling.
I think that's a fishing pole, he's going fishing and stopped to check on his friends.
So actually the labourers on the pyramid got rations of dried fish as part of their payment so this is topical.
He's ever vigilant for scorpions.
Carl
For rock and stone?
I'm not sure if that photo is real, it might be AI.
But we know they weren't living gods, so what does that make this system really?
The workers quarters at the Giza necropolis have been excavated, and they found evidence that the work crews lived a pretty high standard of life. Yes, as far as I know other than transporting stones via the Nile they were built with human muscle power, but the men cutting and moving the stones were fed an extremely luxurious diet for the time. Huge numbers of bakeries were found, along with evidence of vegetables, fish, beef...my personal hypothesis is this is a requirement; the Great Pyramid is probably the greatest feat of athleticism ever performed, and you had to feed the men lots of calories, protein, vitamins and minerals to get it done.
They got healthcare, too. There have been bodies found that showed healed amputations. People got hurt on the job but were cared for as best as they knew how 4,000 years ago.
Now imagine you're a young man living in some village in lower Egypt in the 4th dynasty, and a royal messenger shows up recruiting workers to build some big triangle in the West for the king, and they promise wages along with all the beer, bread and steak you can eat made and served by more young women than you knew existed, plus medical and dental. You'd probably go check out the king's big triangle thing. I've taken worse jobs than that.
They were not forced to do this. It was a privilege, one that actual slaves weren't allowed. So looking back that makes it a system of a rich guy paying people for his passion project while they didn't have any other income.
Not quite communism but it's as much slavery as any other job.
They were built by farmers during downtime, they were treated well.
The Pharaoh's government would take a tithe of the farmer's crops during the growing season and hold it in reserve. Farmers then got a share of their deposits back in exchange for doing this backbreaking work in pursuit of the vanity projects of the wealthiest merchant and priest families (of which the Pharaoh's was the pinnacle).
Idk what "treated well" is supposed to mean in this context. They were treated about as well as any other laboring people. But the average life expectancy of an Egyptian laborer was late-30s to early-40s. They worked until their bodies gave out and then their kids took over.
I wouldn't call any kind of Bronze Age agricultural society benevolent to its working class.
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(21 replies)
On deathbead, poor as a rock: at least I didn't slack off and was of value to the economy!
view more: next ›