Primitive like slave holders of ancient Egypt.

[Carl]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026254988

Fri Feb 20, 2015, 07:17 PM

KamaAina (58,175 posts)

Revealed: Unlike most Walmart workers, ancient Egyptians got paid sick days
 
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/revealed-unlike-walmart-workers-ancient-egyptians-got-paid-sick-days/

Ancient Egyptians, who relied on slave labor, weren't exactly known for their generous employee benefits packages. However, some texts from Egypt's New Kingdom period, about 3,100-3,600 years ago, suggest that highly skilled craftsmen working on royal tombs did get paid sick leave....

Ancient texts show that tomb workers were out sick from time to time. However, their wages were never docked due to these absences, records show.

The texts also tell of a paid physician that was supplied to the workers by the state. The physician and his assistant would have probably cared for the workmen with therapies and incantations from his medical papyrus. Both healthcare workers were also allotted days off from treating patients....

Despite what sounds like a robust state-sponsored healthcare system, some Deir el-Medina workmen still came to work sick. One text describes a worker named Merysekhmet who showed up sick at the King's Tomb two days in a row, but was unable to work. He then returned to the village where he recovered for the next ten days.

What the???

Response to KamaAina (Original post)

Fri Feb 20, 2015, 07:22 PM

 marym625 (5,367 posts)
1. Who knew!?

That's really interesting. I guess they saw the benefit of healthy slaves, unlike the Waltons.

I didn't know they had cell phones back then, texting each other. Hehe. (Sorry, that was bad - but cracked me up)

Response to KamaAina (Original post)

Fri Feb 20, 2015, 07:25 PM

hifiguy (18,353 posts)
3. Actually, most of the work on the pyramids was done

by farmers who signed on for wages during idle time - the inundation of the flood plains during the Nile's annual flood. They weren't doing anything anyway, just waiting for the river to recede, and working for Pharaoh beat sitting around. Slave labor in Egypt was mostly provided by those captured in war.

Pharaohs took their responsibility for their people, and they were literally their people, seriously.

Yes, I am an Egyptology geek.

Guess slaves are cool as long as they are Jews.

[thundley4]

The Walmart CEO kind of addressed that problem, but they're are not going to spend that kind of money.

They are talking about giving employees more flexibility in their work schedules, so they can make up missed work without losing pay.

Give a DUmmie and inch and they want a trip to the moon and back.

Just allowing one paid sick day per year for 500K employees at $10/hr per 8 hour day would cost $40 million.

[I_B_Perky]

Ancient Egyptians, who relied on slave labor, weren't exactly known for their generous employee benefits packages. However, some texts from Egypt's New Kingdom period, about 3,100-3,600 years ago, suggest that highly skilled craftsmen working on royal tombs did get paid sick leave....

Ancient texts show that tomb workers were out sick from time to time. However, their wages were never docked due to these absences, records show.

The texts also tell of a paid physician that was supplied to the workers by the state. The physician and his assistant would have probably cared for the workmen with therapies and incantations from his medical papyrus. Both healthcare workers were also allotted days off from treating patients....

Despite what sounds like a robust state-sponsored healthcare system, some Deir el-Medina workmen still came to work sick. One text describes a worker named Merysekhmet who showed up sick at the King's Tomb two days in a row, but was unable to work. He then returned to the village where he recovered for the next ten days.

I saw some TV show, think it was on the history channel, that said the Egyptian did not use slaves at all to build the royal tombs. They used Egyptians and paid them well.

If you think about it logically it makes sense. I mean here you are, the pharaoh of all of Egypt, a god, and are you gonna have lowly slaves build your tomb?  I doubt it. 

Another dummie fail.

[thundley4]

I saw some TV show, think it was on the history channel, that said the Egyptian did not use slaves at all to build the royal tombs. They used Egyptians and paid them well.

If you think about it logically it makes sense. I mean here you are, the pharaoh of all of Egypt, a god, and are you gonna have lowly slaves build your tomb?  I doubt it. 

Another dummie fail.

They have found the "company towns" where the workers lived.

[98ZJUSMC]

What the???

http://www.rawstory.com/

No further explanation required.  Stop right there.

[SVPete]

Cute "analogy" - failed, but cute.

The 3000-5000 year time gap is just the start of the fail in this "analogy".

Nothing hinders people dissatisfied with their compensation from Walmart from changing jobs, from starting their own business, from getting further education and a career with better compensation. In Pharaonic Egypt, Pharaoh wasn't merely a player in the Egyptian economy, or even a major player. Pharaoh was the Egyptian economy.

The Egyptian workers who lived in "company towns" and got sick days and such were not the drudges hauling bricks & stone or chiseling the tombs into the hillsides in the Valley of the Kings. They were the architects, the civil engineers, and the skilled artisans. IOW, just as in the modern US, the people with skills and education got the better "compensation".

Just another stupid emotive Gotcha that cannot stand up to the slightest examination.

[Karin]

The texts also tell of a paid physician that was supplied to the workers by the state. The physician and his assistant would have probably cared for the workmen with therapies and incantations

   

Got to love that state-sponsored healthcare!

And if they were slaves, they wouldn't be "docked" anyway. 

[DumbAss Tanker]

highly skilled craftsmen

An appellation that has never ever been applied to WalMart employees, or anyone else in big box retail, for that matter.

[Delmar]

Response to hifiguy (Reply #3)Fri Feb 20, 2015, 08:38 PM
Cleita (71,742 posts)
4. They actually had a pretty good functioning society that lasted thousands of

years with some interruptions from invading armies, but pretty much continuous all in all.

Kinda like what the democrat elite had going on down in our south except it lasted a little longer over in Egyptland.

I went nadining for something on the myth of happy slaves and I stumbled across this gem that conservatives understand intuitively but leftists just don't get:

Finally, if slaves were contented and happy, that fact alone should be the everlasting condemnation of slavery, and hunt the monster from human society with curses on its head. What! does it so paralyze the soul, subvert its instincts, blot out its reason, crush its upward tendings, and murder its higher nature, that a man can become “contented and happy,” though robbed of his body, mind, free choice, liberty, time, earnings, and all his rights, and while his life, limbs, health, conscience, food, raiment, sleep, wife and children, have no protection, but are subject every moment to the whims and passion-gusts of an owner, a manstealer?
Nobly was it said by Burke, in reply to a vaunting slaveholder, who boasted that his slaves were “contented and happy“: “If you have made a contented slave, you have made a DEGRADED MAN.’


More History at: http://www.accessible-archives.com/2012/04/the-myth-of-the-happy-slaves-in-the-north-star/#ixzz3SQW6DNu1