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Monumental Record: the lives of the workers building the Great Pyramid of Giza

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Re: Monumental Record: the lives of the workers building the Great Pyramid of Giza

#41

Post by MomoXenosaga »

Spooky23 wrote: post #35
guerrilla wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Had it not been for Alexander the Great, the Greeks would not have stomped all the way to India How do you know that? Leadership and management are real jobs but there's often existing demand, goals and plans that these people are employed by those around them for. I'm willing to go out on a limb and wager that's the way it always is actually. Everyone's a product of their environment and their times, standing on t…

But someone leads. Look around you. Most leaders are really managers phoning it in. But when the right person with the right resources at the right time is there, magic happens. All three legs of the stool have to be there.

Absolutely, in war it's not just about how many soldiers you have or what guns they carry.

You need a leader to inspire your troops. Otherwise they start thinking "what am I doing here I just want to survive and go home".

Re: Monumental Record: the lives of the workers building the Great Pyramid of Giza

#42

Post by decafninja »

gherkinnn wrote: post #12
MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #4

This reminds me of a poem by Berthold Brecht: Questions From A Worker Who Reads Who built Thebes of the seven gates? In the books you will find the names of kings. Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock? And Babylon, many times demolished Who raised it up so many times? In what houses of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live? Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finished Did the masons go? Great Rome I…

I'm torn. Had it not been for Alexander the Great, the Greeks would not have stomped all the way to India. Same foot soldiers. Same cooks. But it was Alexander who got them there. And yet we loose so much by glossing over the cooks and masons and smiths and horsemen. Stories lost. Lives lost. Knowledge lost. It's been a mere 70 years and the logistics that went in to D-Day are never talked about. It's all cliffs, Pri…

We can apply this to the present day too.

Take a huge city like New York or Los Angeles or London or Tokyo. You think of investment bankers, celebrities and entertainment industry execs, or other hotshot professionals.

But underneath all that glamor are the waiters, the cooks, the janitors, the security guards, the sanitation workers, etc. etc. who are often overlooked. But the city would utterly fall apart without them.

Re: Monumental Record: the lives of the workers building the Great Pyramid of Giza

#43

Post by bambax »

Jeff_Brown wrote: post #39
bambax wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of what you're describing happened after the Industrial Revolution, and most in the last 20 years. Yet the cutoff between Ancient Times and "our era" (?) happened 2000+ years ago, for some reason. Also, we don't fly "like birds". We are flown, crammed into metal tubes that are more similar to ancient galleries carved in mountains, mentioned in the OP, than to any bird. Edit: As a matter of fact I don't understand…

I think you're both right. We live completely differently now, but it's not clear that our essence has greatly changed. In particular, that our values have changed is wonderful. But that's a cultural development. I'm convinced most of the people I've known would have shrugged at slavery like most Romans did, had they grown up with it. (Maybe they would have questioned it as children, but by adulthood they would have…

The modern, western world still had slavery as recently as 150 years ago, so that too is not really a marker to differentiate between our era and antiquity.

Not to mention all the wars and genocides of the last two centuries, unprecedented in scale and ferocity, which make it hard to pretend we are morally better than any previous generation.

Re: Monumental Record: the lives of the workers building the Great Pyramid of Giza

#44

Post by kerneloftruth »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #4

This reminds me of a poem by Berthold Brecht: Questions From A Worker Who Reads Who built Thebes of the seven gates? In the books you will find the names of kings. Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock? And Babylon, many times demolished Who raised it up so many times? In what houses of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live? Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finished Did the masons go? Great Rome I…

Which reminds me of a quote from Agatha Christie's "Death on the Nile":

“Take the Pyramids. Great blocks of useless masonry, put up to minister to the egoism of a despotic bloated king. Think of the sweated masses who toiled to build them and died doing it. It makes me sick to think of the suffering and torture they represent."

Mrs. Allerton said cheerfully: "You’d rather have no Pyramids, no Parthenon, no beautiful tombs or temples—just the solid satisfaction of knowing that people got three meals a day and died in their beds."

The young man directed his scowl in her direction. "I think human beings matter more than stones.”

Re: Monumental Record: the lives of the workers building the Great Pyramid of Giza

#45

Post by Der_Einzige »

kragen wrote: post #5
bambax wrote: post #3

> The documents are laid out like a modern spreadsheet > a wonder of the ancient world Very slightly OT, but it's a shame history has been divided between "Ancient Times" and "our era", because it's obvious we are contemporaneous to these people who wrote down their daily activities in a journal and kept track of what was owned to whom on a paper table that looked like a spreadsheet. Not just contemporaneous: we are…

We use coinage and alphabets, transmute rocks into metal, have near-universal literacy, fly through the air like birds, bring the fire of the Sun to Earth to slay our enemies, walk on the Moon, transplant hearts and kidneys from one person to another, and bring forth plentiful harvests within glass temples in frozen wastelands. We craft elephants of iron that swallow us when we wish to travel from one city to another…

By writing in this style, you try to imagine what an ancient person who sees the world today would describe it as.

I do not know exactly why, but this style of writing is profoundly alienating to me. I think it's because it sounds like it is before our "rational turn" during the enlightenment and renaissance.

I don't mean this in a bad way, but I think your utilization of it is not compelling on its own for your point.

Re: Monumental Record: the lives of the workers building the Great Pyramid of Giza

#46

Post by afarrell »

gherkinnn wrote: post #12
MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #4

This reminds me of a poem by Berthold Brecht: Questions From A Worker Who Reads Who built Thebes of the seven gates? In the books you will find the names of kings. Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock? And Babylon, many times demolished Who raised it up so many times? In what houses of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live? Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finished Did the masons go? Great Rome I…

I'm torn. Had it not been for Alexander the Great, the Greeks would not have stomped all the way to India. Same foot soldiers. Same cooks. But it was Alexander who got them there. And yet we loose so much by glossing over the cooks and masons and smiths and horsemen. Stories lost. Lives lost. Knowledge lost. It's been a mere 70 years and the logistics that went in to D-Day are never talked about. It's all cliffs, Pri…

> It’s been a mere 70 years and the logistics that went into D-day are never talked about.

False.

Loads of books have been written about the subject. Here is a video from a video series titled The Logistics of D-Day: https://youtu.be/zpFLLGkNm7I

Re: Monumental Record: the lives of the workers building the Great Pyramid of Giza

#47

Post by tacoluv »

gherkinnn wrote: post #12
MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #4

This reminds me of a poem by Berthold Brecht: Questions From A Worker Who Reads Who built Thebes of the seven gates? In the books you will find the names of kings. Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock? And Babylon, many times demolished Who raised it up so many times? In what houses of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live? Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finished Did the masons go? Great Rome I…

I'm torn. Had it not been for Alexander the Great, the Greeks would not have stomped all the way to India. Same foot soldiers. Same cooks. But it was Alexander who got them there. And yet we loose so much by glossing over the cooks and masons and smiths and horsemen. Stories lost. Lives lost. Knowledge lost. It's been a mere 70 years and the logistics that went in to D-Day are never talked about. It's all cliffs, Pri…

These are great links. I am not sure we are necessarily glossing over these details. The logistics of war/major construction/other big projects are actually heavily studied, and I'd dare say are interesting to the general public - see this book for example: The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great. I'd call it history inspired fiction, but the author goes into a lot of detail about what it could have taken to motivate various peoples to join you for war, what goes into feeding said people etc.

I do agree that for some reason this information is more difficult to obtain - I want to blame popular movie directors who are obsessed with the lone genius trope, that however doesn't reflect reality well.

Interesting discussion/poem though - perhaps if we did a better job at reflecting the importance of all the moving pieces of the machine we'd have a better a priori idea of what it takes to create something big.

Edit: Here is something I watched recently about what it takes to feed 6000 miners somewhere in Mongolia - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-Vvw3Cy_Rw

Re: Monumental Record: the lives of the workers building the Great Pyramid of Giza

#48

Post by deepsun »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #4

This reminds me of a poem by Berthold Brecht: Questions From A Worker Who Reads Who built Thebes of the seven gates? In the books you will find the names of kings. Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock? And Babylon, many times demolished Who raised it up so many times? In what houses of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live? Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finished Did the masons go? Great Rome I…

Modern:

Elon Musk builds the best rockets, and cool cars.

Linus Torvalds created GNU/Linux. (Well he corrected on several occasions that he did not built Linux, he only started it).

Higgs discovered Higgs boson. Einstein created Theory of Relativity.

Putin attacked Ukraine.

Re: Monumental Record: the lives of the workers building the Great Pyramid of Giza

#49

Post by guerrilla »

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #41
Spooky23 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But someone leads. Look around you. Most leaders are really managers phoning it in. But when the right person with the right resources at the right time is there, magic happens. All three legs of the stool have to be there.

Absolutely, in war it's not just about how many soldiers you have or what guns they carry. You need a leader to inspire your troops. Otherwise they start thinking "what am I doing here I just want to survive and go home".

Propaganda (however it's delivered) and self-interest serve that role just fine.

Re: Monumental Record: the lives of the workers building the Great Pyramid of Giza

#50

Post by kragen »

bambax wrote: post #43
Jeff_Brown wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're both right. We live completely differently now, but it's not clear that our essence has greatly changed. In particular, that our values have changed is wonderful. But that's a cultural development. I'm convinced most of the people I've known would have shrugged at slavery like most Romans did, had they grown up with it. (Maybe they would have questioned it as children, but by adulthood they would have…

The modern, western world still had slavery as recently as 150 years ago, so that too is not really a marker to differentiate between our era and antiquity. Not to mention all the wars and genocides of the last two centuries, unprecedented in scale and ferocity, which make it hard to pretend we are morally better than any previous generation.

As I mentioned, the Burj Khalifa was built to a significant extent with slave labor, being completed only ten years ago, while the Great Pyramid probably was not, despite what the Greeks thought two thousand years later. In the United States there are some two million prisoners, most of whom also perform slave labor, as did the victims of GULAG.

Perhaps the Khwarazmians would disagree that the genocides of the last two centuries were unprecedented in scale and ferocity.

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