WEBVTT - Part One: The First Labor Strike: How the Tomb Builders of Deir El-Medina Started It All 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:06.720 Cool Zone Media, Hello, and welcome to cool people who 0:00:06.720 --> 0:00:09.720 did cool stuff. You're a reminder that as long as 0:00:09.760 --> 0:00:13.320 there has been labor, there have been labor strikes. As 0:00:13.360 --> 0:00:17.000 long as there's been wage theft, there's been road blockades, 0:00:17.400 --> 0:00:20.919 and as long as there have been bosses stealing from workers, 0:00:21.880 --> 0:00:24.959 there have been workers stealing from bosses. I am your host, 0:00:25.000 --> 0:00:29.440 Margaret Kiljoy, and this week we are going back the 0:00:29.560 --> 0:00:34.400 farthest we've ever gone. Well, okay, almost the farthest. We 0:00:34.400 --> 0:00:36.720 did do an episode about the domestication of dogs and 0:00:36.720 --> 0:00:39.640 why dogs are great, and that one goes back even further, 0:00:40.000 --> 0:00:43.600 but this one goes as far back into the written 0:00:43.640 --> 0:00:47.240 record as it is possible to go, because this week 0:00:48.120 --> 0:00:50.839 we're going to talk about the first labor strikes that 0:00:50.880 --> 0:00:53.840 we know about in history, the first ones that were 0:00:53.840 --> 0:00:58.520 ever written down. And with me is my guest. You 0:00:58.520 --> 0:01:02.280 you're my guest, So I invite you to speak aloud 0:01:02.520 --> 0:01:05.480 while listening to this. Interrupt me. Ask any questions that 0:01:05.520 --> 0:01:07.920 you have just wherever you are, wherever you're listening to this. 0:01:08.360 --> 0:01:11.319 I won't hear them, but it's entertaining to me to 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:13.960 imagine you all doing that. There's no guests. This week. 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:15.880 This is one of those ones where I just wanted 0:01:15.920 --> 0:01:19.000 to sit down and write this and get it out. 0:01:19.160 --> 0:01:24.240 So that's what I'm doing. Just like humanity, the labor 0:01:24.280 --> 0:01:29.800 movement was born in Africa, which shouldn't surprise anybody specifically. 0:01:30.319 --> 0:01:31.600 Now we're going to talk about this as the first 0:01:31.640 --> 0:01:34.360 labor strike. I actually going to make an argument that 0:01:34.400 --> 0:01:36.720 this is the first labor strike that we know about 0:01:36.760 --> 0:01:39.640 because it was written down and there's actually a decent 0:01:39.760 --> 0:01:44.880 reason to suppose that this was common elsewhere, because okay, 0:01:44.880 --> 0:01:46.320 well we'll get to it anyway, this is the first 0:01:46.319 --> 0:01:49.640 one we know about. The first strike happened in Egypt. 0:01:50.280 --> 0:01:55.520 It happened on November fourteenth, eleven fifty two BCE. That 0:01:55.680 --> 0:01:58.040 is more than three thousand years ago for those of 0:01:58.080 --> 0:02:01.120 you keeping track at home. It happened in a town 0:02:01.200 --> 0:02:04.360 of skilled workers who built the tombs for the Pharaohs, 0:02:04.880 --> 0:02:08.680 a town called Dierra al Medina, which fortunately for us, 0:02:08.840 --> 0:02:12.000 is one of the best preserved ancient towns in the world. 0:02:12.320 --> 0:02:15.079 In this case, the town was preserved because it was 0:02:15.120 --> 0:02:17.480 far enough back from the Nile that it didn't flood. 0:02:17.720 --> 0:02:20.600 People were building their houses with earth with mud, they 0:02:20.639 --> 0:02:24.040 would say, right, and so millennia. Flooding destroyed anything that 0:02:24.040 --> 0:02:26.440 the river could reach, but it couldn't reach here. And 0:02:26.480 --> 0:02:29.600 so when I say best preserved, it's not like you whatever. 0:02:29.639 --> 0:02:32.160 You can see pictures of it. It's like not totally there, 0:02:32.160 --> 0:02:34.640 but it's not not there. You know, it's doing pretty 0:02:34.639 --> 0:02:37.120 good for three thousand years. I'm not going to look 0:02:37.160 --> 0:02:39.560 so good three thousand years from now. Although this is 0:02:39.560 --> 0:02:42.280 also a story about mummies, so I guess there are 0:02:42.320 --> 0:02:45.519 people who look like mummies. I guess three thousand years later. 0:02:45.639 --> 0:02:49.480 That's besides the point. I am willing to guess that 0:02:49.520 --> 0:02:53.079 if you're not a big egypt fan, and we'll talk 0:02:53.080 --> 0:02:56.680 about the complications of ancient egypt fans and Orientalism later, 0:02:57.480 --> 0:03:01.160 I'm willing to bet you who grew up being told 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:03.960 the Pyramids were built by slave labor. I grew up 0:03:04.000 --> 0:03:06.120 being told that the Pyramids were built by slave labor. 0:03:06.480 --> 0:03:09.920 I mean, if you're lucky you got told that versus Aliens. 0:03:10.360 --> 0:03:14.919 But I just sort of assumed that any other Egyptian 0:03:14.960 --> 0:03:19.640 tomb had been too. But the thing is, slave labor 0:03:19.720 --> 0:03:21.960 wasn't involved in any of these things. We tend to 0:03:21.960 --> 0:03:25.240 have this flattened, simplified understanding of the past, of the 0:03:25.280 --> 0:03:29.400 ancient world, and in order to understand the origins of labor, 0:03:29.600 --> 0:03:33.200 of wages, of strikes, of organizing, we're gonna have to 0:03:33.320 --> 0:03:37.560 unflatten everything. We're going to have to do context my 0:03:37.680 --> 0:03:41.760 favorite thing. But don't worry, it'll be fun. This context 0:03:41.800 --> 0:03:45.080 is going to include ancient dream interpretations and it has 0:03:45.160 --> 0:03:50.200 grave robbers who were stealing from work, so can't go 0:03:50.240 --> 0:03:54.440 wrong with that. All right, we're gonna talk about ancient Egypt. 0:03:54.600 --> 0:03:56.480 There is a problem. We're going to talk about it 0:03:56.480 --> 0:03:58.560 again at the end when we talk about Orientalism. There 0:03:58.600 --> 0:04:01.200 is a problem with the way that people distinguish between 0:04:01.280 --> 0:04:03.880 ancient Egypt and modern Egypt as if they are like 0:04:04.840 --> 0:04:09.640 completely separate, you know. And it's used basically by the 0:04:09.680 --> 0:04:14.920 British to sort of justify stealing all the artifacts and 0:04:14.960 --> 0:04:16.919 all that shit, because they're like, oh, it's like a 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:22.560 totally different thing, and it's not. But obviously ancient Egypt, 0:04:22.960 --> 0:04:27.320 with hieroglyphics and shit, is different than modern Egypt. We're 0:04:27.320 --> 0:04:30.440 gonna talk about ancient Egypt. Egypt has been around for 0:04:30.480 --> 0:04:33.440 a really long time. It is more or less the 0:04:33.480 --> 0:04:37.320 oldest thing still going that we know of the oldest country. 0:04:37.640 --> 0:04:40.760 You could say people have been living there since six 0:04:40.839 --> 0:04:43.920 thousand BCE, and the first ruler of the region cropped 0:04:44.000 --> 0:04:47.040 up around thirty one hundred BCE, conquering the whole the 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:48.839 Nile River, at least the parts you could take a 0:04:48.839 --> 0:04:53.080 boat up. Even ancient Egypt is a sort of meaninglessly 0:04:53.160 --> 0:04:57.080 broad phrase. It changed a lot over the millennium. You've 0:04:57.080 --> 0:04:59.919 got prehistoric Egypt, that is, you know, before we have 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:03.200 history aka writing, we don't know as much about it. 0:05:03.760 --> 0:05:07.360 You've got the three kingdom periods, the Old Kingdom, the 0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:09.880 Middle Kingdom, and the New Kingdom. You can probably figure 0:05:09.920 --> 0:05:13.560 out which ones came when those kingdoms were relatively stable, 0:05:14.279 --> 0:05:17.560 And in between those various kingdoms you have these unstable 0:05:17.600 --> 0:05:22.800 periods called the intermediate periods. The Old Kingdom starts about 0:05:22.960 --> 0:05:25.520 three hundred years or so after the founding of Egypt, 0:05:25.880 --> 0:05:29.880 and it runs from two six eight six BCE to 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:33.839 twenty one eighty one BCE. And don't worry, there is 0:05:33.880 --> 0:05:36.600 not a test on these dates at the end. Personally, 0:05:37.240 --> 0:05:39.520 I only find actual dates interesting when you can use 0:05:39.520 --> 0:05:41.719 them to cross reference stuff and position things in relation 0:05:41.760 --> 0:05:43.760 to each other. It's part of why I actually didn't 0:05:43.839 --> 0:05:46.039 care much about the way I learned history in school. 0:05:46.160 --> 0:05:48.840 It was taught in a way that just flowed right 0:05:48.920 --> 0:05:52.440 over me with names and dates. And names and dates 0:05:52.480 --> 0:05:56.520 are great, stories are better. They stick in my brain more. 0:05:57.240 --> 0:05:59.359 I only care about the names and dates once I 0:05:59.400 --> 0:06:03.560 have the story and realize why I should care. In 0:06:03.600 --> 0:06:09.240 the Old Kingdom, the pharaohs the king's slash queens the 0:06:09.240 --> 0:06:12.599 people who ruled right. They were the head priest, the 0:06:12.600 --> 0:06:15.279 commander in chief of the military, and the owner of 0:06:15.360 --> 0:06:18.160 all of the lands. They were the ruler of all 0:06:18.279 --> 0:06:23.919 the people, and according to some interpretations and not others, 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:27.440 they were the only people who got an afterlife. They 0:06:27.440 --> 0:06:30.719 got big old tombs as a result of that, and 0:06:31.320 --> 0:06:34.359 most sources say only the Pharaohs got an afterlife, but 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:37.880 I think that might be slightly outdated because in early 0:06:37.920 --> 0:06:41.840 twenty ten new tombs of pyramid workers were uncovered and 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:44.799 they had some grave goods. They had jars of beer 0:06:44.839 --> 0:06:49.000 and bread buried with them to serve them in the afterlife, 0:06:49.160 --> 0:06:54.080 so they probably had an afterlife. Now, Okay, I am 0:06:54.440 --> 0:06:56.960 doing an episode, like always, especially when you do the 0:06:56.960 --> 0:07:01.760 ancient world, I am doing an episode that is a 0:07:01.960 --> 0:07:07.160 thing that people have dedicated centuries to studying, and I'm like, 0:07:07.240 --> 0:07:11.240 I read a lot about this really quickly, so you know, 0:07:12.040 --> 0:07:15.440 I'm not the world's leading egyptologist, and I also sort 0:07:15.480 --> 0:07:17.400 of hate that word, so we'll talk about in the 0:07:17.400 --> 0:07:23.440 Orientalism section. Anyway, it was the first pharaoh of the 0:07:23.480 --> 0:07:27.320 Old Kingdom who started the whole pyramid thing. Not a 0:07:27.360 --> 0:07:30.720 pyramid scheme, just a pyramid to be buried under, although 0:07:30.720 --> 0:07:33.800 you could sort of argue that monarchy is a pyramid scheme. 0:07:34.560 --> 0:07:39.600 This particular pharaoh, his name was Joseph. He was the 0:07:39.600 --> 0:07:42.760 first pharaoh of the Old Kingdom, the second pharaoh of 0:07:42.800 --> 0:07:45.760 the Third dynasty, and he had a step pyramid built 0:07:45.760 --> 0:07:49.920 for himself. The smooth sided pyramids at Giza, like with 0:07:49.960 --> 0:07:53.760 the famous big Pyramids, are also from the Old Kingdom, 0:07:53.880 --> 0:07:57.400 as is the famous Sphinx. Then you've got the Middle 0:07:57.480 --> 0:08:01.760 Kingdom from twenty fifty five BCE to sixteen fifty BCE, 0:08:02.760 --> 0:08:05.680 and in that one the upper classes like nobles and 0:08:05.680 --> 0:08:07.920 priests and shit started having a lot more of a 0:08:07.960 --> 0:08:11.400 say and more independence. And this is really interesting to 0:08:11.400 --> 0:08:13.160 me because this is a pattern that we are going 0:08:13.160 --> 0:08:17.400 to see replicated later with monarchy in say Europe, you 0:08:17.440 --> 0:08:19.600 know where you start off with these like while you 0:08:19.600 --> 0:08:22.760 start off with these very kind of low level kings 0:08:22.760 --> 0:08:25.679 who are almost coming out of a vaguely democratic thing, 0:08:25.760 --> 0:08:27.960 and then they start building up to more and more 0:08:28.000 --> 0:08:30.880 centralized power. And then underneath the centralized power you have 0:08:30.960 --> 0:08:34.719 like the rich and the rich who aren't necessarily nobility, 0:08:35.080 --> 0:08:37.719 start being like, but I want some power, And that's 0:08:37.720 --> 0:08:41.160 where all the anti monarchy stuff comes from. Quite unfortunately, 0:08:41.200 --> 0:08:44.200 it was a lateral move in which the bourgeoisie took 0:08:44.240 --> 0:08:48.240 power from the monarchs, and we're actually better able to 0:08:48.840 --> 0:08:52.320 not just centralized power, but exert power, like have power 0:08:52.400 --> 0:08:56.160 go further out from the core of their society. So 0:08:56.280 --> 0:08:58.800 they were actually better able to fuck up people's lives, 0:08:59.160 --> 0:09:00.720 which is why I was a lot to remove. Even 0:09:00.760 --> 0:09:02.640 though it seems like it'd be better to have oligarchs 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:06.320 than kings, it turns out it both kind of suck. Anyway. 0:09:06.520 --> 0:09:09.280 I just think it's interesting that we'll see patterns just 0:09:09.360 --> 0:09:12.600 repeat themselves over and over again throughout civilizations, you know, 0:09:12.760 --> 0:09:15.360 thousands and thousands of years ago. So in the Middle Kingdom, 0:09:15.400 --> 0:09:17.960 the upper classes, like the nobles and priests started having 0:09:18.000 --> 0:09:20.280 more of a say and more independence, and they started 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:23.680 getting fancier burials, and it's this period. Then we started 0:09:23.679 --> 0:09:27.959 getting literature from like the Coffin texts, which we'll talk 0:09:28.000 --> 0:09:31.000 about later, but their architecture didn't hold up as well 0:09:31.000 --> 0:09:35.080 and wasn't as spectacular as the Old Kingdom. Then there's 0:09:35.120 --> 0:09:39.559 the New Kingdom from fifteen fifty BCE to ten seventy BCE. 0:09:40.440 --> 0:09:43.600 By this point the pharaohs were like, you know what, 0:09:44.040 --> 0:09:46.640 we don't actually need whole pyramids. You can just put 0:09:46.720 --> 0:09:49.360 us in the valley of kings and big old rock 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:53.079 tombs that are kind of underground. And I don't think 0:09:53.080 --> 0:09:54.959 they did this because they were less arrogant than the 0:09:55.040 --> 0:09:57.440 kings and queens of old, because plenty of the pharaohs 0:09:57.440 --> 0:09:59.920 were women, as we'll get to, not like fifty to fifty, 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:02.920 but a fair number of them. But rather they did 0:10:02.920 --> 0:10:07.240 this because grave robbers were organized and persistent, so it 0:10:07.280 --> 0:10:11.320 was easier to have a more remote, hidden, underground place 0:10:11.760 --> 0:10:16.839 where you could centralize your security. And by the time 0:10:16.840 --> 0:10:18.800 we're in the New Kingdom, more and more people wanted 0:10:18.840 --> 0:10:22.760 fancy funerals, and the workers who built all their tombs 0:10:22.760 --> 0:10:25.720 were in fact free people inasmuch as anyone was free. 0:10:26.880 --> 0:10:29.240 But before we talk about them. We should talk about 0:10:29.240 --> 0:10:32.720 people who aren't free, But do you know what, before 0:10:32.760 --> 0:10:36.560 we talk about even that, we should talk about the 0:10:36.559 --> 0:10:48.000 products and services that support the show. And we're back 0:10:49.000 --> 0:10:51.239 when I say that the people who built the pyramids 0:10:51.240 --> 0:10:53.480 and the tombs were free people, and as much as 0:10:53.520 --> 0:10:56.720 anyone was free, this is not to say that Egypt 0:10:56.720 --> 0:10:59.680 didn't have slavery. If you've been listening to the show 0:10:59.679 --> 0:11:02.280 for a lot, especially in the past years I've explored 0:11:02.320 --> 0:11:07.760 the ancient world, you're likely tired of hearing me say, well, 0:11:07.920 --> 0:11:10.760 they had slavery. But it's not like you think. You're 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:13.920 likely tired of hearing me say the racialized chattel slavery 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:16.240 the American South was a unique evil that stands out 0:11:16.280 --> 0:11:18.960 in history. But I've got to say both those things 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:24.640 again here. Ancient Greece and Rome were slave societies, especially Rome, 0:11:24.800 --> 0:11:27.760 which honestly kind of matches America. It's not the same 0:11:27.800 --> 0:11:29.679 as the American South and how it did slavery. It's 0:11:29.679 --> 0:11:30.920 like a different way of doing it, but it was 0:11:30.960 --> 0:11:35.000 like fucking bad anyway. Ancient Greece and Rome were slave societies. 0:11:35.040 --> 0:11:38.720 Their economies were built on slavery. Rome, in particular, required 0:11:38.760 --> 0:11:42.120 a state of constant war to continue to enslave more 0:11:42.160 --> 0:11:44.640 and more people to work the fields and the mines 0:11:44.840 --> 0:11:48.680 and the houses of the wealthy. Slavery has been found 0:11:48.880 --> 0:11:52.280 all over the world across millennia, though was also far 0:11:52.320 --> 0:11:56.120 from universally practiced. Anyone who tries to sell you on 0:11:56.160 --> 0:11:59.440 a simple idea of what non civilized people did versus 0:11:59.480 --> 0:12:02.600 what civilized people did is trying to sell you on 0:12:02.720 --> 0:12:07.400 this or that ideology built an outdated anthropology. See the 0:12:07.400 --> 0:12:09.680 book The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David 0:12:09.720 --> 0:12:12.160 Wengrow the Davids, as we like to call them in 0:12:12.200 --> 0:12:18.040 this household for more about that. But basically, some groups 0:12:18.040 --> 0:12:21.400 of people did slavery and some groups didn't, and even 0:12:21.400 --> 0:12:25.160 those societies that practiced slavery did so wildly different from 0:12:25.200 --> 0:12:28.840 one another. The slavery of the Ottoman Empire, where civil 0:12:28.880 --> 0:12:32.120 servants and bureaucrats were owned by the empire itself, was 0:12:32.280 --> 0:12:35.599 entirely different from the American South with its famous racialized 0:12:35.640 --> 0:12:39.280 chattel slavery, which was entirely different from the serfdom common 0:12:39.320 --> 0:12:43.319 across medieval Europe and Renaissance Russia, where peasants were considered 0:12:43.360 --> 0:12:45.680 part of the property of the land and lived comparatively 0:12:45.720 --> 0:12:49.240 free lives, but were not free to travel or kind 0:12:49.240 --> 0:12:54.240 of self determine their lives. And even those descriptions are 0:12:54.280 --> 0:12:57.679 over simplifications of complex situations that changed decade to decade 0:12:57.920 --> 0:13:02.880 region to region. Ancient Egypt, slavery was I can't even 0:13:02.920 --> 0:13:06.240 really say relatively benign because it's slavery, so it wasn't. 0:13:06.800 --> 0:13:10.800 But in the scale of unfathomable evil, which gets infinitely deep, 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:15.280 this was still unfathomably evil, just way less unfathomably so 0:13:16.120 --> 0:13:22.480 almost fathomably fathomable. Fath of enslave people in Egypt were 0:13:22.520 --> 0:13:24.560 like the rest of the ancient world, mostly people who 0:13:24.600 --> 0:13:28.920 were captured in warfare, caught doing some crime, or were debtors. 0:13:29.559 --> 0:13:32.199 Debtors would choose and I think they get scare quotes 0:13:32.520 --> 0:13:35.839 to sell themselves off to cover their debts, which didn't 0:13:35.840 --> 0:13:38.280 work out great, I think because at that point your 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:40.920 family and kids are now enslaved too, because it was 0:13:40.960 --> 0:13:43.400 a hereditary condition. If your mother was enslaved when you 0:13:44.040 --> 0:13:46.640 gave birth to you, you were born in slave too. 0:13:47.920 --> 0:13:51.520 But also we see this elsewhere too, But in Egypt, 0:13:51.960 --> 0:13:55.920 poor people sometimes sold themselves and therefore their families into slavery, 0:13:56.480 --> 0:14:01.560 because being free and broke often starving to death, while 0:14:01.600 --> 0:14:04.880 if you were owned, there was someone who was responsible 0:14:04.920 --> 0:14:08.160 for you. This doesn't make it good, but in a 0:14:08.200 --> 0:14:11.440 world in which everyone is some degree of unfree, many 0:14:11.520 --> 0:14:17.439 people chose to enter involuntary servitude rather than starve. It 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:21.240 was for some a method of social mobility. Temples in 0:14:21.280 --> 0:14:24.960 particular often owned the people who worked there, and in fact, 0:14:25.320 --> 0:14:28.640 sometimes for like a brief period kind of later in 0:14:28.680 --> 0:14:32.200 the late BCE, like the Near Ce part of BCE, 0:14:33.080 --> 0:14:35.280 a lot of people didn't just sell themselves into slavery. 0:14:35.440 --> 0:14:39.800 They paid a monthly fee for the privilege of being enslaved. 0:14:40.920 --> 0:14:43.440 Because in ancient Egypt and up until the nineteenth century, 0:14:43.480 --> 0:14:45.960 I think I don't know as much about like medieval Egypt, 0:14:46.040 --> 0:14:49.800 and it relates to this, it relied heavily on CorV labor, 0:14:50.200 --> 0:14:53.720 which is basically labor as tax. You can think of 0:14:53.720 --> 0:14:57.080 it as like, ah, I owe the king three sheep 0:14:57.320 --> 0:14:59.600 and to two months. I'm making those numbers up. They 0:14:59.600 --> 0:15:02.560 have no really to reality. Or you can think of 0:15:02.600 --> 0:15:06.680 it like the mandatory military service, only it's for public works. 0:15:07.000 --> 0:15:08.160 It's been a while since i've been there, But I 0:15:08.200 --> 0:15:10.320 remember in Finland being told, like, you know, when you 0:15:10.360 --> 0:15:12.040 turn eighteen you can either do one year in the 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:16.040 military or two years in public service. So but think 0:15:16.040 --> 0:15:17.720 of that, only it's not just like once when you 0:15:17.760 --> 0:15:21.160 turn eighteen and so kind of recently there's there's still 0:15:21.240 --> 0:15:25.160 new things people are learning, finding old papyrieye papyri I 0:15:25.200 --> 0:15:30.360 don't know, and translating them. A recent papyrus translation is 0:15:30.400 --> 0:15:33.720 a contract that reads quote, I am your servant from 0:15:33.720 --> 0:15:36.040 this day onwards, and I shall pay two and a 0:15:36.080 --> 0:15:39.320 half copper pieces every month as my slave fee before 0:15:39.360 --> 0:15:43.160 sokenebtunis the great God. So that was like the contract 0:15:43.160 --> 0:15:46.960 of someone who sold themselves into slavery or paid to 0:15:47.680 --> 0:15:51.360 opposite of sold whatever I already covered it. They probably 0:15:51.400 --> 0:15:54.440 paid that fee by doing wage labor elsewhere, like a 0:15:54.480 --> 0:15:58.680 second gig after their primary job. And they probably did 0:15:58.680 --> 0:16:01.200 this to avoid the core vla that was just way 0:16:01.360 --> 0:16:04.280 way rougher of a life than being owned by a temple. 0:16:05.280 --> 0:16:07.920 This probably wasn't a long standing practice. We only have 0:16:07.920 --> 0:16:10.840 evidence of it happening from one ninety BCE to one 0:16:10.920 --> 0:16:14.120 thirty BCE, and that's well after the rest of this 0:16:14.120 --> 0:16:18.440 week's story. Takes place. I still found it interesting, and 0:16:18.480 --> 0:16:20.840 I've been thinking a lot because I've been doing all 0:16:20.840 --> 0:16:23.880 of these ancient episodes, I've been thinking a lot about 0:16:24.000 --> 0:16:27.120 freedom and how all throughout history up to including the 0:16:27.160 --> 0:16:31.040 present day, we're all in some sort of sliding scale 0:16:31.080 --> 0:16:34.600 of unfreedom. There's people who've like done a bunch of 0:16:34.600 --> 0:16:37.560 time in prison who will talk about the outside world 0:16:37.560 --> 0:16:43.400 as minimum security prison because like, you're still being surveilled 0:16:43.640 --> 0:16:46.440 and policed, and at any point they can take you 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:52.000 away to the higher security prison. And you know, there's 0:16:52.040 --> 0:16:54.400 the whole like, none of us are free until everyone 0:16:54.480 --> 0:16:57.400 is free. The fact that our quote unquote freedom is 0:16:57.400 --> 0:16:59.440 a thing that could be taken away from us so 0:16:59.560 --> 0:17:04.600 easily really indicates that we're not free. Early anti capitalists, 0:17:04.680 --> 0:17:08.320 including the formerly enslaved woman Lucy Parsons, refer to wage 0:17:08.359 --> 0:17:12.000 labor as wage slavery because your choice was work and 0:17:12.119 --> 0:17:15.760 build the wealth of your boss or starve. It always 0:17:15.800 --> 0:17:17.920 struck me as an insensitive phrasing, so I tend not 0:17:18.000 --> 0:17:20.600 to use wage slavery as a phrasing. But honestly, once 0:17:20.640 --> 0:17:23.320 I understood a more expansive look at freedom and unfreedom, 0:17:23.920 --> 0:17:28.600 I kind of get it, Like Theoretically, in an idealized 0:17:28.680 --> 0:17:32.200 understanding of the world, your boss should never be able 0:17:32.200 --> 0:17:35.720 to just talk down to you or treat you as 0:17:35.720 --> 0:17:39.280 a lesser because you've made an arrangement with them and 0:17:39.359 --> 0:17:42.640 which you freely agree to trade labor for a wage, 0:17:43.560 --> 0:17:47.720 you're still peers. Yet in practice, so many bosses treat 0:17:47.760 --> 0:17:51.240 their workers like shit. Yell at them, get mad at them, 0:17:51.400 --> 0:17:54.000 be like you're don't do the thing right. That's not 0:17:55.200 --> 0:17:59.240 how you talk to your peer. Most bosses will treat 0:17:59.240 --> 0:18:02.480 subordinates just subordinates in terms of a work structure, but 0:18:02.560 --> 0:18:06.919 socially because workers are fundamentally less free than employers in 0:18:06.960 --> 0:18:10.560 our society, which believes in the central myth of capitalism 0:18:10.600 --> 0:18:14.399 of free associations and contracts between people. Yet that's not 0:18:14.480 --> 0:18:19.520 what's happening. There's never been a binary between free and unfree, 0:18:19.960 --> 0:18:22.480 and I think it's important to understand that in order 0:18:22.520 --> 0:18:25.840 to understand someone who decides to sell themselves and therefore 0:18:25.840 --> 0:18:29.119 they're family into the permanent service of someone wealthy in 0:18:29.240 --> 0:18:32.199 order to be taken care of. It's like joining the 0:18:32.320 --> 0:18:35.960 army or a nunnery, basically saying like, all right, I'm 0:18:36.000 --> 0:18:38.520 going to be part of this larger unit that will 0:18:38.520 --> 0:18:40.399 take care of me. But I'm going to do it 0:18:40.440 --> 0:18:43.960 in a subordinate way because that's my option. I am 0:18:44.000 --> 0:18:46.320 not saying that this is a good way to structure society. 0:18:46.720 --> 0:18:49.520 I'm saying that this is a way that society has 0:18:49.600 --> 0:18:54.959 been into some degree is structured still. People in ancient Egypt, 0:18:55.160 --> 0:18:56.960 before they really kind of start hanging out with the Greeks, 0:18:57.000 --> 0:19:00.000 who are way into worse slavery, people enslaved in ancient 0:19:00.080 --> 0:19:02.760 Egypt could still own property and get married. I read 0:19:02.760 --> 0:19:05.159 one source that claims that people could buy their own freedom, 0:19:05.200 --> 0:19:07.960 but another sources there's simply no record of that ever happening. 0:19:08.480 --> 0:19:10.440 But it was possible for them to kind of advance 0:19:10.520 --> 0:19:13.640 up the social ladder without being freed, and many were 0:19:13.680 --> 0:19:18.119 freed by their owners. People still escaped, and as we 0:19:18.160 --> 0:19:21.720 talked about in episodes about ancient Greece, basically some of 0:19:21.760 --> 0:19:25.080 the first international treaties were you have to give your 0:19:25.119 --> 0:19:29.679 runaway slaves back. In particular, the first known peace treaty 0:19:29.680 --> 0:19:34.320 in history, from the twelfth century BCE, was between Ramses 0:19:34.359 --> 0:19:37.440 the Second from Egypt and the Hittites from the Assyrian 0:19:37.440 --> 0:19:43.159 Peninsula aka modern Turkey. That treaty included this quote. If 0:19:43.200 --> 0:19:45.800 a man or two men who are unknown flee, and 0:19:45.880 --> 0:19:48.520 if they escape from the country of Egypt, and if 0:19:48.560 --> 0:19:51.960 they don't want to serve him, then Hatusili the great King, 0:19:52.040 --> 0:19:54.639 the king of the country of Hati, has to deliver 0:19:54.760 --> 0:19:57.240 them into his brother's hands, and he shall not allow 0:19:57.280 --> 0:20:01.440 them to inhabit the country of Hati. You got to 0:20:01.480 --> 0:20:05.720 give the runaway and slave people back. We talk sometimes 0:20:05.760 --> 0:20:07.919 about how the concept of the police force in the 0:20:07.920 --> 0:20:11.080 modern sense was largely developed out of slave catcher societies 0:20:11.080 --> 0:20:14.199 in the United States, but it's worth understanding that the 0:20:14.240 --> 0:20:18.840 development of law, of borders and of international treaties also 0:20:18.920 --> 0:20:21.840 develop out of the same urge to hold on to 0:20:22.400 --> 0:20:26.040 private property, which for most of the history of civilization 0:20:26.720 --> 0:20:31.200 hinged around the ownership of people. Because people create all value, 0:20:31.600 --> 0:20:34.680 so owning people is the best way to generate value without, 0:20:34.960 --> 0:20:38.879 you know, working. Now we've discovered wage labor, which is 0:20:38.880 --> 0:20:41.040 another good way to do it, although they also would 0:20:41.040 --> 0:20:44.960 wage labor back then. Whatever, Okay. Maybe the most important 0:20:44.960 --> 0:20:48.280 difference though, was that compared to Greece or especially to Rome, 0:20:48.359 --> 0:20:52.000 both of which came way later, Egypt's economy didn't run 0:20:52.119 --> 0:20:55.280 on slave labor. It was a really complex web of 0:20:55.320 --> 0:20:57.280 people who are in some ways free and in other 0:20:57.320 --> 0:21:01.400 ways not. Much like I am both free and unfree 0:21:01.760 --> 0:21:04.760 when it comes to my job obligations like pivoting to 0:21:04.800 --> 0:21:19.000 ads and we're back. Essentially, everyone underneath the pharaoh was 0:21:19.040 --> 0:21:22.400 in some condition of being unfree. In ancient Egypt, most 0:21:22.400 --> 0:21:24.480 of the peasants were tied to the land they lived on, 0:21:25.080 --> 0:21:28.000 much like later serfdom, but this was less of a 0:21:28.080 --> 0:21:31.119 legal rule and more of a social rule. People were 0:21:31.200 --> 0:21:34.280 born into their jobs. Your dad does a thing, you're 0:21:34.359 --> 0:21:37.440 gonna do the thing. And as for those big, massive 0:21:37.480 --> 0:21:41.080 infrastructure projects, the one that still stand today, the ones 0:21:41.080 --> 0:21:44.240 that people from all over the world are fascinated by, 0:21:44.320 --> 0:21:47.159 they weren't built by enslaved people. They are built by 0:21:47.200 --> 0:21:50.760 cor v labor and wage labor. The myth of them 0:21:50.800 --> 0:21:53.639 being created by slave labor, though, is ancient. We're not 0:21:53.680 --> 0:21:56.639 like uniquely foolish. Usually you can blame every misunderstanding of 0:21:56.680 --> 0:21:58.920 the past on the Victorians, but sometimes you can blame 0:21:58.960 --> 0:22:02.520 it on the Greeks, because it goes back to Herodotus, 0:22:02.560 --> 0:22:05.000 a Greek who lived in much more of a slave society. 0:22:05.440 --> 0:22:07.399 I think he just made an assumption based on his 0:22:07.440 --> 0:22:11.119 own culture. The myth continued to pick up steam in 0:22:11.200 --> 0:22:15.760 nineteen seventy seven when former Israeli Prime Minister Menichem Begen 0:22:16.160 --> 0:22:18.119 claimed that it was Jews who built the Pyramids, that 0:22:18.119 --> 0:22:21.280 they were built by enslaved Israelites, but this was debunked 0:22:21.280 --> 0:22:26.080 by another Israelian Israeli archaeologist, Amahai Mazar, who put it bluntly, 0:22:26.600 --> 0:22:30.720 quote no Jews built the Pyramids because Jews didn't exist 0:22:30.760 --> 0:22:34.760 at the period when the pyramids were built. A German egyptologist, 0:22:35.040 --> 0:22:39.400 Dietzer Wildung said about the slave myth to the Guardian, quote, 0:22:39.920 --> 0:22:42.600 the world simply could not believe the pyramids were built 0:22:42.600 --> 0:22:45.800 without oppression and forced labor, but out of loyalty to 0:22:45.880 --> 0:22:51.400 the pharaohs. The pyramids were massive undertakings. Ten thousand workers 0:22:51.400 --> 0:22:53.840 worked for more than thirty years on a single one. 0:22:54.240 --> 0:22:56.920 They were recruited from poor areas. They worked in three 0:22:56.960 --> 0:22:59.800 month shifts. They were well fed and got to eat 0:22:59.800 --> 0:23:03.320 meat eat regularly. Most people didn't get to eat meat regularly. 0:23:03.400 --> 0:23:06.320 They mostly grain and vegetables, with some fish and rarely 0:23:06.359 --> 0:23:09.320 some meat. Best as I can put together, and the 0:23:09.359 --> 0:23:13.120 workers who died on site doing this work, they were 0:23:13.119 --> 0:23:15.960 buried on site as a sign of respect. Their heads 0:23:15.960 --> 0:23:19.479 were pointed west, their feet were pointed east in religious custom, 0:23:20.040 --> 0:23:22.320 and they, you know, were buried with bread and with beer. 0:23:23.160 --> 0:23:27.239 They also worked really fucking hard and died young. I 0:23:27.280 --> 0:23:30.080 personally find that they did it because they loved the Pharaoh. 0:23:30.119 --> 0:23:33.320