What was life like for an ancient Egyptian farmer?

[@rserserserse]

Nice! Yes, definitely more stuff about ordinary egyptians

[@ejk6304]

Solidarity with modern farmworkers in their struggle to organize for safe working conditions and fair wages! Climate change is currently killing a horrific number of agriculture workers in the US because farm owners aren't required to provide anything approaching reasonable access to water, shade and breaks when temperatures reach deadly heights so yeah, the more things change etc. I definitely always want to hear more about everyone who wasn't of the ruling class, some of the bits and pieces of writing recovered from the workers village at Deir el Medina are fascinating, and occasionally hilarious, like the guy who rolled up to the house of the woman he wanted to marry, all his stuff in tow, and got rejected only to do it a second time aaaaaaand get rejected lol If anyone is interested and just a galaxy sized nerd like myself there's a paper by Maria Jose Iberra-Rivas, Thomas Kastner and Sandrine Nonhebel titled "How Much Time does a Farmer Spend to Produce My Food?" that compares mechanized and non-mechanized systems of food production, and gives a breakdown of how many people a non-mechanized farmer can feed assuming an 8 hour work day 250 days a year, and their estimate is about 5 people eating a basic non-western (e.g. low meat, low dairy, low sugar) diet. It's not a perfect comparison because even without mechanization, a farmer today might still access chemical fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides etc. but it certainly gives a hint of the magnitude of labor hours required to feed all of ancient Egypt.

[@8jmDays]

great video! i would love to hear more about the lives of ordinary Egyptians, especially in the old kingdom. i also think a video about pre-dynastic Egypt would be really interesting. keep up the great work!!

[@ArmchairEgyptology]

I like that suggestion! Have to look into it for sure.

[@SLBLADE]

Excellent brother 🙂

[@babynautilus]

def want to hear more about life as a normal person in ancient civilizations! just in case i fall into a time portal i know what im getting into

[@ArmchairEgyptology]

Hope there’s a universal translator in operation!

[@bootstrap_paradox]

Being sent to work on construction as a kind of an involuntary draft is an interesting idea. Was it at least safer than going to war, or were you just as likely to get crushed to death by a stone block? Also, the parallels to the modern world are both depressing and fascinating.

[@ArmchairEgyptology]

In some ways you were in for a better time working construction. You were much better fed (the army had to forage if it wanted more than basic rations) and less likely to die (although life-altering strains and injuries were a fact of life). Another factor is that working on a sacred construction - a pyramid, say - made you sacred. The graves of workers on the Giza Plateau show that they were honoured with burial at a site reserved for royalty and favoured nobles. A soldier dying in Egypt, unless they were high ranking, wouldn't likely be brought back for burial if the campaign was far away. Without burial in sight of the Nile, you weren't going to have any kind of afterlife worth afterliving. And yes, you would hope that the excesses of theocratic absolute monarchy wouldn't have made it as far as democratic society but there we are.

[@dr.banoub9233]

Your vids are short, sweet, concise and to the point, perfect for people with short attention spans like myself😛. For me , living stateside, your British accent adds a little je ne sais quoi , an air of intelligentsia 🧐we lack over here sometimes; especially, during the MAGA right-wing, nut-job nonsense we’re still coping with rn.

[@ArmchairEgyptology]

Sounding smarter than we are is a defining trait of the English, I'm glad to be carrying on the tradition!

[@dr.banoub9233]

@@ArmchairEgyptology Keep up the good work🥰

[@dr.banoub9233]

Where’s the boop guy?

[@ArmchairEgyptology]

I have faith the boop shall be soon.

[@dr.banoub9233]

@@ArmchairEgyptology Lol

[@amritsanders9243]

👍

[@loganosmolinski4446]

Boop

[@Smoker2777]

FIRTS!?