How state-supported health care worked in ancient times.
By Anne Austin
We might think of state-supported health care as an innovation of the 20th century, but it’s a much older tradition. In fact, texts from a village dating to Egypt’s New Kingdom period, about 3,100 to 3,600 years ago, suggest that ancient Egypt had a state-supported health-care network designed to ensure that workers making the king’s tomb were productive.
Health care boosted productivity on the royal tombs
The village of Deir el-Medina was built for the workmen who made the royal tombs during the New Kingdom (1550 to 1070 BCE). During this period, kings were buried in the Valley of the Kings in a series of rock-cut tombs, not the enormous pyramids of the past. The village was built close enough to the royal tomb to ensure that workers could hike there on a weekly basis.
These workmen were not what we normally picture when we think about the men who built and decorated ancient Egyptian royal tombs — they were highly skilled craftsmen. The workmen at Deir el-Medina were given a variety of amenities afforded only to those with the craftsmanship and knowledge necessary to work on something as important as the royal tomb.
The village was allotted extra support: The Egyptian state paid them monthly wages in the form of grain and provided them with housing and servants to assist with tasks such as washing laundry, grinding grain and porting water. Their families lived with them in the village, and wives and children could also benefit from these provisions from the state.
Showing posts with label Family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Family. Show all posts
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Sunday, February 1, 2015
Ecrire à ses morts: enquête sur un usage rituel de l'écrit dans l'Egypte pharaonique - A Bryn Mawr Classical Review
Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2015.01.53
Sylvie Donnat Beauquier, Ecrire à ses morts: enquête sur un usage rituel de l'écrit dans l'Egypte pharaonique. Collection Horos. Grenoble: Jérôme Millon Editions, 2014. Pp. 286. ISBN 9782841372522. €26.00 (pb).
One of the most characteristic aspects of pharaonic culture is undoubtedly the funerary domain. Massive monuments like the pyramids, beautifully decorated royal and private tombs, extensive ritual texts carved on temples or inscribed in coffins, even contemporary popular icons of the Egyptian past like mummies or the Book of the Dead, attest to the importance of death and deceased people in Egyptian beliefs and in contemporary interpretations of pharaonic civilization. In fact Egyptology has devoted most of its archaeological and philological work to the study of texts and monuments related to the mortuary sphere, especially those belonging to members of the royalty and of the elite who ruled the country. Furthermore, these researches have been mainly focused on art and religious history, while the social aspects of death and its importance in cementing interpersonal ties among the living ones, especially among common people, have not received as much attention. In the last decades Egyptologists have become increasingly aware, however, of the existence of extensive kin networks in Egyptian society, a circumstance usually concealed behind the use of rather general and imprecise kinship terms like “brother”, “sister”, “son” or “child” to refer, in fact, to collateral or descendant members of one's family as well as to subordinates. The epigraphic and ritual sources of the end of the 3rd millennium suddenly contain a plethora of terms evoking extensive kin groups, but the precise meaning of many of them still eludes us and in many cases it is only possible to suggest approximate translations like “household” or “extended family”. Irrespective, the influence of these networks left their mark in the domain of funerary beliefs.
Sylvie Donnat Beauquier, Ecrire à ses morts: enquête sur un usage rituel de l'écrit dans l'Egypte pharaonique. Collection Horos. Grenoble: Jérôme Millon Editions, 2014. Pp. 286. ISBN 9782841372522. €26.00 (pb).
One of the most characteristic aspects of pharaonic culture is undoubtedly the funerary domain. Massive monuments like the pyramids, beautifully decorated royal and private tombs, extensive ritual texts carved on temples or inscribed in coffins, even contemporary popular icons of the Egyptian past like mummies or the Book of the Dead, attest to the importance of death and deceased people in Egyptian beliefs and in contemporary interpretations of pharaonic civilization. In fact Egyptology has devoted most of its archaeological and philological work to the study of texts and monuments related to the mortuary sphere, especially those belonging to members of the royalty and of the elite who ruled the country. Furthermore, these researches have been mainly focused on art and religious history, while the social aspects of death and its importance in cementing interpersonal ties among the living ones, especially among common people, have not received as much attention. In the last decades Egyptologists have become increasingly aware, however, of the existence of extensive kin networks in Egyptian society, a circumstance usually concealed behind the use of rather general and imprecise kinship terms like “brother”, “sister”, “son” or “child” to refer, in fact, to collateral or descendant members of one's family as well as to subordinates. The epigraphic and ritual sources of the end of the 3rd millennium suddenly contain a plethora of terms evoking extensive kin groups, but the precise meaning of many of them still eludes us and in many cases it is only possible to suggest approximate translations like “household” or “extended family”. Irrespective, the influence of these networks left their mark in the domain of funerary beliefs.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)