The Egypt Story ......... People's management !

The quest for the past is discovering how the people in ancient Egypt lived thousands of years ago. While people in the rest of the world were still living in caves and chasing animals, how did the Egyptians manage to build the civilization which is still fascinating us until this day? Most people now focus on the great stone work, especially when it comes to the building of the pyramids. How did they cut the stone? How did they move them? How did they put them all together in that perfect way, in a very advanced and complicated form? All very valid questions. 

Yet the most important question of all is, how did they manage the 100,000 builders and stone masons who were gathered there? As Herodotus mentioned (even if it was not 100% correct),people management was the secret of success in ancient Egypt! Over thousands of years, how did they manage to move, train, educate and control those thousands of people? Every one of them knew exactly what he was supposed to do, which might be different from what he did yesterday, or what he might do tomorrow. How can we imagine feeding that number of people? What sort of catering was used that long time ago? What was the health condition? The medical care? The death and accident rate? How did they manage all of that? 

A popular theory is that the ancient Egyptians used slaves to build those pyramids. This theory is so wrong if we just think of all the logistical issues. How can you control thousands of slaves in the open desert without the fear of every one of them rising up to fight for his freedom? The pyramids, as well as the rest of the Egyptian civilization, were built with love, not fear; with happiness, not slavery. It was an immensely great honor to be among the team selected to build the house of eternity for the god king. If we keeping trying to understand the ancient Egyptian civilization through our backgrounds of today, we are making a big mistake; we have to see life through their eyes.

Written by :

Hisham El Meniawy
Guest lecturer & Egyptologist
www.hegyptology.com