[Ramius]

He’s good on TV, I’ll grant that. My biggest quibble with him is that he’s the one (or the highest profile one anyway) that’s pushing the nonsense that ancient Egypt never had slaves. He insists that the workers who built the pyramids and other such works were in fact paid laborers.

I’m willing to assume that there were skilled artisans involved in all those projects, and they were likely paid professionals. I think it is ludicrous however to contend that Egyptian culture was such that slavery never happened. He pushes a condition of moral superiority because of this... and it’s annoying. Egypt had slaves and lots of them. So did everybody else.

[Tax-chick]

My understanding is that the great building projects were done by corvee, forced labor draft. During the off-season, peasants were drafted for a period of work on the Pharoah's buildings, one group for a month or so, then they went home and another group was brought in. These workers were housed and fed, but not paid wages. Only the highly skilled were actually paid professionals.

It's not chattel slavery in the sugar-plantation sense, although Egypt also had that on a smaller scale. However, it's based on the concept that every man's labor belongs to the God-King and is available when he wants it. Same with the land, which all belongs to Pharoah since (according to Genesis) that sharper Joseph the Israelite made the peasants surrender their land in exchange for food.

[Sherman Logan]

For most of Egyptian history, all the people were theoretically slaves of the Pharaoh. Obviously, the extent to which theory aligned with reality varied with the power and status of the individuals involved.