Egyptian Rations

[Queso]

I can recall memories of someone telling me or reading somewhere that the ancient egyptions who worked on the pyramids were given rations.

This bank of memories also recalls data stating that they were given 2 gallons of beer a day. This may have been a dream....

s'why I'm asking Hypography.

Does anyone know about the rations those workers were given?

For some reason

I'm very curious...

 

And...by who?

Was there an egyption government?

Or was there just some divine heiarchy that formed like an ant hill :hihi:

[Turtle]

I can recall memories of someone telling me or reading somewhere that the ancient egyptions who worked on the pyramids were given rations.

This bank of memories also recalls data stating that they were given 2 gallons of beer a day. This may have been a dream....

s'why I'm asking Hypography.

Does anyone know about the rations those workers were given?

For some reason

I'm very curious...

 

And...by who?

Was there an egyption government?

Or was there just some divine heiarchy that formed like an ant hill :D

 

i've heard about the beer, and apparently from the same lady. maybe it wasn't even about workers on the pyramids. tombs, tunnels, temples, streets, yada yada. i had to look this one up. >> :hihi: Making Beer in Ancient Egypt

[Queso]

the link is invalid

[Turtle]

the link is invalid

 

weird! it's bad for me here too, but when i repeat my Google search I can get to it. here it is again. Making Beer in Ancient Egypt

 

if it doesn't work, try Googling "ancient Egyptian beer" and it's the second link listed. :hihi: :D

 

...Beer was a very popular beverage, made from bread, the staple food in the Egyptian diet. If there was a constant supply of bread, one could guess that there was a constant supply of beer. Along with the bread flakes the beer was made with barley. The barley was left to dry, and then baked into loaves of bread. The baked barley loaves were then broken into pieces and mixed with dried grain in a large jug of water and left to ferment. Wine was a drink that was produced by the Egyptians; however, it was usually found only at the tables of the wealthy. Considering the vast majority of Egyptians were not wealthy, a vast majority of Egyptians drank beer.

 

...

[Giles Corey]

Yep, that link does function.

I know very little on this subject, but as far as i was aware, the slaves who built the pyramids (Maybe not all) were actually given wages to do so...

 

Im pretty sure i remember it from somewhere as being fact.

But i do not know.

[nutronjon]

I like this subject. I love time traveling, by learning of the past and gaining awareness of another consciousness and experience of reality.

 

Here are some googled esplanations. I went on to google ancient Egyptian money, because I assumed they did not begin with money.

 

Pyramids, Mummies & Daily Life

Daily Life: Food

We know what the Egyptians ate from pictures painted on tomb walls of food being prepared and eaten and from the remains of food left as offerings in tombs. Bread and beer were the main foods for many people in Egypt. Bread was made from a grain called emmer-wheat. As the wheat was ground into a flour, small bits of stone and sand often got mixed in and made the bread hard to chew. The teeth of many skeletons that remain from the time are worn down from eating the bread. Beer was made from a grain called barley. It was much thicker and more nutritious than the beer that is made now and was considered more of a food than a drink. Workers were paid with food rations. Emmer-wheat and barley were the most important items, but workers also received many of the vegetables that we eat today such as beans, onions, garlic, lettuce, and cucumbers. For all but the most wealthy Egyptians meat was a luxury that was only enjoyed at festivals and on special occasions. (Animals were also used as a source of fat and milk used in making cheeses.) The wealthy also drank wine made from grapes. The Egyptians used honey instead of sugar to make cakes and to sweeten beer.

Ancient Egypt: Domestic Trade

 

Barter

 

Trade was done by barter, a reasonably efficient method when mostly basic necessities were exchanged. Even after coined money was introduced in the second half of the first millennium BCE, barter continued to be widespread among the farming population for centuries.

Grain and oil often served as a kind of coinage [17]. This use of basic storable food stuffs had both advantages and drawbacks. If all one earned was expended on food anyway and there was practically no choice about the kind of food one could get, then eating one's wages was a system less cumbersome than being remunerated in specie and having to acquire the food afterwards. During famines which were quite frequent, one did not starve if one had savings; and many a peasant rose on the social ladder by exchanging hoarded corn for land during times of dearth.

On the other hand storing grain required facilities. Wastage because of groundwater, fire and pests such as rats and insects was high. Stores could not be hidden, neither from robbers nor from tax-collectors. Bulky commodities were more difficult to transport than precious metals. If your needs were out of the ordinary, you might have to use middlemen to get what you wanted. The question of measuring arose as well, as jars were not exactly of standardized size and weights and scales not easy to come by.

Then, as today, business went smoothly as long as there was goodwill and both parties were honest:

 

Understanding bartaring and the conditions of landless city living, gives a different prespective doesn't it? Many people such as the Hebrews were nomads. Not all land is good farm land, and how might have people determined who owns land and who does not? No land means no food. It appears these people did not have the luxury of forrest full of game and rivers full of fish. Nomads were meat eaters, either following wild animals or herding. If only the wealthy ate meat, or the temples needed it for sacrafices, with whom would the Hebrews associate?

 

The Hebrews had traditions that kept them separate, so with whom would they not associate? Wow, you really stimulated my thinking. A big thank you.

[TremendoS]

Hmm.. giving them beer would definitely satisfy their thirst, but only if it was kept consistently cold. At the same time, it would make some workers sleepy and physically relaxed, so what would be the point?:)

[Turtle]

Hmm.. giving them beer would definitely satisfy their thirst, but only if it was kept consistently cold. At the same time, it would make some workers sleepy and physically relaxed, so what would be the point?:)

 

Mmmm... Cold as in to refresh, or as in to keep the beer from spoiling? :) Fresh beer doesn't go bad for days or weeks because of the alcohol. The alcohol is also the answer to why bother with beer over water because the beer is germ free, wheras not so with the water. The higher the alcohol content, the longer unrefrigerated beer will keep, e.g. the IPA's developed in support of the Dutch East India Company voyages. I have never seen any evidence the Egyptians had water purification/treatment technology, so a relaxed happy worker is better than a worker not there 'cause they got the trots. :)

 

Welcome to the menagerie Trimendososo! :)

[Dr Kingslee Spurling]

Yep, that link does function.

I know very little on this subject, but as far as i was aware, the slaves who built the pyramids (Maybe not all) were actually given wages to do so...

 

Im pretty sure i remember it from somewhere as being fact.

But i do not know.

 

the pyramid age was a completely different age from ours during the 4 th dynasty they claimed to live in a thermo-nuclear age and the religion at the time was called "solar" no one was a slave and no-one draged rocks it has now been found that one person from each household was employed to build the pyramids as free citizens under the guidance of intergalactic comand to engineer Orion and the star Sirius this can be proven by the following calculations and observations when you go back through precesion the star Sirius can be seen up the southern shaft from the queens chamber the volume of the casket in the kings chamber displaces 1,250kg or v1.250Qm when you calculate this with the height of 146m being Khufu's pyramid you get the frequency of the star Sirius in angrom metres being 17500. Sirius is 5 stars nearly touching khufu built 5 pyramids the Main,3 Queens and a subsidury pyramid they built the whole of the Giza constallation in 7 years and they didnt work at night.:doh:

[Moontanman]

the pyramid age was a completely different age from ours during the 4 th dynasty they claimed to live in a thermo-nuclear age and the religion at the time was called "solar" no one was a slave and no-one draged rocks it has now been found that one person from each household was employed to build the pyramids as free citizens under the guidance of intergalactic comand to engineer Orion and the star Sirius this can be proven by the following calculations and observations when you go back through precesion the star Sirius can be seen up the southern shaft from the queens chamber the volume of the casket in the kings chamber displaces 1,250kg or v1.250Qm when you calculate this with the height of 146m being Khufu's pyramid you get the frequency of the star Sirius in angrom metres being 17500. Sirius is 5 stars nearly touching khufu built 5 pyramids the Main,3 Queens and a subsidury pyramid they built the whole of the Giza constallation in 7 years and they didnt work at night.:doh:

 

:Alien: :steering: :doh: :circle: :wave: :rant: :fly:

 

We really need more emoticons......

[Turtle]

I was just thinking how if they might have piled the King's chamber full of bicarb (they had that, right?:doh:) & then smashed jars of vinegar in there that you'd get giant fountains of spume spraying at high pressure out those serious Sirius shafts like with the coke & mentos or such-a-matter. That'll put the scare in the non-believers a'right. :confused: The people catch the falling foam in cups and drink it for rations. Voila! :doh: Manna from heaven. :shrug:

[Theory5]

yes the ancient egyptian slaves were fed a beer mixed with stuff like bread. This kept them from starving and it also put them to sleep at night so they wouldnt revolt or become rowdy. I do not know if they were fed this in the morning, they might have just gotten fed at night.

[alexander]

Lets start with the obvious mistake made by just about everyone who replied to this thread, let me correct by stating the following:

 

No slaves were used in building the pyramids, it's a fact, so stop calling them slaves, give them the respect they earned, and please refer to them workers!

[alexander]

mk, everyone got quiet here for some reason, so let me continue reasoning that part out.

 

No slaves were used in the building of the pyramids, because people that built the pyramids wanted to build them, and that already constitutes a workforce, not slavery. They were paid, they were fed, and they were buried under the stones left over from the pyramid construction. They had hierarchy, they had extensive medical care and normalize work schedule. They were also working for their own god, in their belief, and had a built infrastructure of people that were responsible for food and clothing of the pharaoh's workers, yes there is evidence that they made a sort of a barley wine, that workers were able to enjoy to relax and get better sleep. All this comes out of recently discovered tombs of workers, especially officers, on the walls of which designs depicting more-or-less everyday life of what you guys refer to as "slaves" were depicted (hehe literally)

[alexander]

speaking of ancient Egypt. Have a question to the general population that perhaps better suited for a strange claims forum, or at least its own topic.

 

The more i read about ancient Egypt, and the more i read about ancient Egypt technology and methods, the less it seems that ancient Egyptians could build some of the things they are given credit for building... Give you an example of something, let's say the obelisks, I have read reports on various ways that scientist believe that they could build them. I just saw a Nat Geo program on it, where one more scientist decided to attempt to show how one can move that much rock, to make the quarrying of such an immense rock quicker then the older methods proposed, by heating up the cracks and then pouring water and then chipping away the loosened stone. I still can not see how one gets perfectly smooth sides and perfect 90 degree edges... have you ever tried to chip at even a softer rock with a big round boulder to get a perfect 90 degree, smooth edge? and then multiply it by like 20-30 meters, and really hard granite... Something just does not make sense. Another example are the sarcophagi made of grey granite, an even harder material, sometimes polished to a grade 4-5, perfectly flat, or even perfectly concentric, with edges so tight that no light gets inside the inner chamber after the lid's placement on top. And even more mystery causes a look i got at a picture of an unfinished lid...

[Theory5]

mk, everyone got quiet here for some reason, so let me continue reasoning that part out.

 

No slaves were used in the building of the pyramids, because people that built the pyramids wanted to build them, and that already constitutes a workforce, not slavery. They were paid, they were fed, and they were buried under the stones left over from the pyramid construction. They had hierarchy, they had extensive medical care and normalize work schedule. They were also working for their own god, in their belief, and had a built infrastructure of people that were responsible for food and clothing of the pharaoh's workers, yes there is evidence that they made a sort of a barley wine, that workers were able to enjoy to relax and get better sleep. All this comes out of recently discovered tombs of workers, especially officers, on the walls of which designs depicting more-or-less everyday life of what you guys refer to as "slaves" were depicted (hehe literally)

 

Are you sure? Because I seem to recall a passage from Temple about pass-over. Does the phrase "let my people go" mean anything? I am going for historical accuracy because I am jewish and I belive in everyone being on the same page.

One common practice of slavery was to promote certain slaves over others and have them answer to the slavers, which might answer your last sentence.

[alexander]

theory... that's all you are going to base your point of view on? a religious scripture?

 

ok fine, here is the one that sort of breaks your reasoning... The last pyramid was completed be 1550-1525bc. The exodus dates Moses to be born in 1393. At this point there has not been a pyramid built in 200 years. they were not building a pyramid, and at the time egypt may have started using slaves for building other structures. If you recall, i said that no slaves were used in building of pyramids, that only implies pyramids, not later structures...

 

also i wont claim that egyptians were not using slaves for other projects, but pyramids, i believe, were not built by slaves...