This week's reading concerns the social category that composed the majority of ancient Egypt's population: the peasant farmers!
Please read the assigned chapter by Caminos in the Donadoni volume as well as Ray's chapter and the Heqanahkte letters on Blackboard.
This week I am happy for you to post any thoughts or questions about this reading but here are some ideas to get you started.
How does the content of the Heqanakhte letters reflect society at the end of the First Intermediate Period/beg of Middle Kingdom?
What can you glean about family life and structure in ancient Egypt from the Heqanakhte letters?
How do Heqanakhte and his family reflect (or not reflect) the portrait Caminos paints of the peasant's life?
What are your reactions to the Caminos and/or Ray chapters? Part of your training as college students is to learn to evaluate the scholarship of others. In this vein, I always encourage you to express your thoughts on the secondary reading. I will share my opinions on Tuesday but I want to hear yours first!
The Caminos chapter includes other primary sources so please comment on those if you wish and/or connect them to the main primary material for this week, the Heqanakhte letters.
Happy Reading!
Unfortunately, there is no doubt that the life of a peasant was hard in ancient Egypt. Just like in countless other societies over the ages, Egyptian serfs and peasants were forced to work the land for their superiors (pharaohs, nobles, wealthy landowners, etc.) and get little in return. Serfs were tied to the land they were born on and were treated as such. They were the lowest members of society and pitied by no one.
ReplyDeleteIn Egyptian society, as well as our own, people tend to treat each other with the level of respect they think they deserve. You always have those people who talk down to others because they think people with lower stations in life are a lesser people. While it is immoral and results in prejudice, bias is apparent in the social class system.
In "A Farmer's Problems," we see just how insignificant farmers were to the people they worked for, despite their importance. Egypt was primarily an agricultural society (Donadoni 1), but the royalty ruled and tax collectors held a lot of power.
When the head of the household leaves on a business trip, Heqanakhte writes to Merisu the farmer:
"Whatever can be inundated on our land, you are the one who ploughs it. A warning to all my people, and to you! Listen, I consider you responsible for it. Put your back into ploughing, do your utmost; look after my seed corn, look after all my property. See, I consider you responsible for it; take care with all my property" (Farmer's Problem 34).
The first thing I noticed when I read through this is that the noble who dictated this letter clearly feels that he has to repeat himself to get his message across, as if Merisu would be to illiterate (or uneducated) to understand. The letter also shows that the landowner is holding Merisu responsible for everything that happens while he is away. The farmer is being warned of his responsibility.
In another letter, Heqanakhte writes:
"Take great care! Hoe all my land, sieve with the sieve, hack with your noses into the work. Look, if they are diligent god will be thanked for you and I will not have to make things hard for you" (34).
It makes me wonder if serfs were used to being threatened and whether or not it had any effect on their lives...or sanity.
In his writing, Caminos talks about how peasants were the backbone of society. Indeed, the letters to Merisu prove that as well, when the merchant gives the responsibility of the land to him when he is away. It's hard, however, to understand that the serfs were both important and completely ignored at the same time. They were the base, the simplest, most important factor that kept the Egyptian economy running. But they had nothing to show for it. Cramped into small houses that contained their entire families and the farm animals, one would believe that serfs and peasants were illegal immigrants trying to survive in a new country. As society dictated though, they were to live like that their entire lives and had to be resigned to know their fate. There were no hoped and dreams because once you were a farmer, you would always be a farmer.
I think that together, Caminos and Heqanakhte's letters to Merisu give an accurate representation of what it was like to be in the lower social class of ancient Egypt. After reading about it, I can't say I would've been pleased to have been born into a farming family...
One thing that I found particularly interesting from the Donadoni reading was the almost undying obedience that the peasant had to his work. On first glance of the reading, it may seem as if this strict obedience came from the wrath of the overseer, who constantly berated and punished the peasant, but I also wonder how much of this obedience stemmed from the Egyptian religious system. In theory, the peasant was almost the right hand of the Gods. The God would create the floods, as was the case with the God Hapi, which lead way to the fertile land and without the peasant Egyptian existence, as shown when the peasants revolted, would nearly cease to exist. Because of this I wonder if it was not only a chore but also a religious duty that was a heavy burden but given to the strong, or was it a punishment from the gods given to the downtrodden for one sin or another. I also think this idea ties in well with the Heqanakthe letters because it shows a more favorable side of life for the peasant. I think the Heqanakthe letters are important because they illustrate the contrast of the peasant who only knows work to a peasant that actually has other duties and complaints, to me this illustrates that there were decent periods for the peasants. Knowing that the peasants could have decent times hints to some form of reward for their work, as was the case with Heqanakthe because he was chosen to guard the Pharaohs tomb.
ReplyDeleteAnother concept from the reading that I found interesting was when peasants would abandon their lives in order to avoid labor and punishment. This again hints to a religious aspect for me because it shows that for a peasant to stop working is to lose their life. I think that Egyptians were very much about the family aspect of culture and for a man to abandon his family in turn throwing his family into the mouth of the crocodile so to speak, shows a huge deviation from the belief system. I also wonder why there were not more revolts against the labor, because so many revolts and uprisings can be seen in American slavery. I believe this might be because they had nowhere to run; they were as much prisoners to the pharaoh as they were to their geography.
In the Caminos reading, the abominable lives of the peasants were vividly described, and although this type of cruelty towards the lower class is shown repeatedly throughout history, I was still outraged and indignant by the treatment of the Egyptian peasants. There were descriptions by writer Philo Judaeus of Alexandria of the horrible plight of not only the peasants, but the peasants’ families and neighbors as well. Philo Judaeus describes the cruel punishments given to the families of peasants who were unable to produce their tax payments due to poverty. The families are said to have been tortured for information and money that they did not have, and then eventually executed in the streets as punishment (Caminos 21). It is stated that the peasants were barely piad with money; often times, the lords’ agents paid them with grain, or a glass of beer if the peasants were lucky. It seems infinitely unreasonable to me that the lords and the lords’ agents would expect the peasants to be able to produce anything other than flour or a measly few grains of corn to pay for the taxes.
ReplyDeleteI completely understand why peasants would eventually abandon their homes and families to escape the devastating fate that would await them if they stayed. I just wonder why they don’t take their families with them, if they were to escape. Perhaps it is just harder to hide four people than to hide one. The peasants’ anachoresis, or flight from the fields, created a strain on the Egyptian labor force, which is to be expected, since the peasants were the people doing most of the farm labor. I feel like if enough peasants left the fields, not only in escape but as an act of rebellion, the lords and the lords’ agents will be forced to change they torturous ways in which they were treating the peasants. But I guess, after reading about the failed attempts at upheaval by the peasants, a revolution is not an easy thing to be established.
In the Hekanakht letters, I feel as though the Hekanakht priest, when addressing his household, is trying to conceal his own circumstances. I have the nagging suspicion that the Hekanakht priest is living in better conditions than he lets on. It seems as if Hekanakht tries to repeatedly convince his households that he is taking the best care of them, and he even states that despite their measly portions of food, “[t]o be half alive is better than dying outright” (61). It also feels as though, just like the Caminos reading described, that the Heknanakht priest is quite overbearing on his households. He repeatedly reminds them of things they should do, always adding phrases like “take great care!” (61) or “don’t be unmindful!” (61). I personally find that to be a tad annoying and not very helpful. It seems a bit condescending as well, like Hekanakht doesn’t trust the people in the household to remember what he says, or to be extremely careless. But maybe that was what Hekanakht felt had to be said in order for his orders to be carried out.
Reading about the peasants did cause me to pity them—perhaps because as the readings said they were not pitied at all. I too wondered what Jamie closed her blog comment on: why weren’t there more revolts? I suspect she is correct that a major factor was they had nowhere to run; the peasants were prisoners to the pharaoh and to the land they tended to.
ReplyDeleteIn his writing, Caminos says peasants were a fundamental part of society; something that Dan mentioned in his blog comment that stuck out for me was this idea that serfs were both essential and invisible within the fabric of Egyptian culture. He puts emphasis on the letters to Merisu as evidence that the merchant gives the responsibility of the land to the serf when he is away—which clearly makes them important. So I agree with Dan that it's hard to understand that the serfs were holding this much power but still completely ignored in other senses. The peasant had a huge connection to the Gods since the two forces worked in tandem to capitalize on the flooded/fertile land. When the peasants revolted the structure of society was rocked.
I found it very interesting that in the Donadoni reading we learn that the tools were hardly modified once created. “The simplest rural implements once developed continued to be used with hardly any modification for centuries” (Donadoni, 3). One example of this continuity is that the farming operations depicted from the tomb of Petosiris were virtually identical to the once that were built twenty-three or twenty four centuries earlier (3).
Besides the continuity of serfing practices over time, there is another interesting factor I noticed when reading the Donadoni section of this week’s assignment. I thought it was fascinating that there was a sense of community built between the serfs. “The peasant seldom plows alone” (Donadoni, 7).
It is easy to picture an idyllic village life, with a natural hierarchy and organic power-structure that experiences ebbs and flows of drama like the Nile flooding its terrain—but was Egyptian life utopian? With donkey droppings and fierce sun glare, hard toil and bad nutrition the Egyptian peasants were at risk for disease. Villages were often stricken with bilharziasis or hepatitis and bread was the staple of their diet. These diseases and low wages are things that often don’t come to mind when trying to envision Egyptian peasants since their rich culture and impressive advances seem to overshadow their hardships.
But a more informed birds-eye view brings these realities into focus. “Incessant arduous toil, paltry wages, destitution, hunger, chronic ill health, sordid living conditions, overbearing masters, onerous taxation--- each of the woeful circumstances besetting the peasants from the cradle to the grave was by itself severe and hard to endure (28). Perhaps this had something to do with the emphasis on afterlife? A focus on the promise of a better tomorrow to fuel the work required to sustain the community at present.
The Heqanakhte letters depict the mandatory subservience that Heqanakhte expects from his family members. He considers himself the “master” of the house, which introduces the vision of a patriarchal family structure (Ray,7). Filial piety may have been exercised, in which devotion to one’s parents (specifically the father in this case) is customary. Heqanakhte is simply abusing his powers to its limits. Although Heqanakhte is a farmer, his acquisition of the role of a “ka-servant” might have allowed him to validate his incessant hovering over his family (Ray, 5). His constant disparagement of his children by calling them “unmindful” are a demonstration of someone who is either extremely meticulous or paranoid about not having order in his home (Heqanakhte Letters). This may be indicative of the chaotic time in which he was living, particularly because it was a time of “political transition” (Ray, 9).
ReplyDeleteCaminos’ deems the peasants as the “backbone of the nation” and discusses the many hardships that they must endure in ancient Egypt, yet he does not focus on distinct relationships within the family as Ray does (Caminos, 1). He discusses the typical duties which a peasant must observe, such as being attentive to the flooding of the Nile, cultivating crops, harvesting, viniculture work etc. (Caminos, 4-13) The peasants’ degree of suffering is focused on as he describes them as “the first to suffer from the vagaries of the Nile” and as the first to deal with “heavy loss of human life, crops, and beasts” (Ray, 6). The flooding of the Nile dictated their lives, as the peasants were the individuals who were forced to deal with the disastrous aftermath firsthand and were held responsible for reemerging to bring forth order.
In the letter of Heqanakhte wrote to Merisu, he demands Merisu to do things all the time. He keeps saying “I am holding you responsible for this” and “you should...” all the time (Heqanakhte letter, 58-9). In addition, Hekanakht uses many exclamation marks in the letters. It is obvious that Heqanakhte is very strict and to Merisu because he believes that all his family members are spending on his money and depending on him. In the following letters he still uses those strong words which means that Merisu listens to what he says. In the letter it also reveals some features of the society at that time in ancient Egypt, such as food shortages and male dominance.
ReplyDeleteAs I mentioned before, the entire family depends upon the father or the husband who earns living by labor. Therefore, the family listens to him and obey what his orders. In the letter he especially mentions his small son Snefru. In his letter he writes, “Now if, as you say, Snefru wants to be in charge of the bulls, you should put him in charge of them” (Hekanakht letters, 62). From this I can see that Heqanakhte favors Snefru over his other sons. Also, I can read from his letter that the conflicts in his family are complicated. The conflicts between his new wife and the maid and the conflicts between the wife and his sons. Obviously, the new wife does not receive the respect she should get.
The Heqanakhte letters definitely suggest a strong focus on respect within the family structure. Heqanakhte seems to hate his son's failure to share his wealth/resources with his family; not only this, but he seems particularly upset about it, with the emphasis laid on his lack of food. This suggests that he expects to receive help from his son, but he isn't asking for it in a way that suggests he needs it desperately; instead, he is more frustrated, disappointed, perhaps. Heqanakhte's son's failure to provide barley, then, is seen as a show of disrespect he cannot abide. Interestingly, Heqanakhte defends his new wife in a later letter, which shows his desire for her to be respected at well. He is clearly the patriarch, the "master" of the house, so it's good to see him protecting his wife with some of that power. Heqanakhte clearly is looking to outward gestures of respect; not seeing this from his son, he feels he is not being respected as a father and the ruler of the household.
ReplyDeleteOk... I was writing this response directly on this page... then I clicked "back" button by mistake... to every one,
ReplyDeleteDON'T WRITE DIRECTLY ON THIS PAGE
or you might lose everything you wrote and panic so much that you won't be able to remember what you wrote...! I learned it the hard way tonight... now, let me try to re-organize my thoughts.
The peasants of Egypt were the “backbone” of the nation, but they have been treated very poorly and harshly, and the depictions of them in the reading are very depressing. But I guess that’s the case in most of the society in the history, and even today, in some aspects. There is no doubt that these lowest members on the social scale were very important element of the society and the nation wouldn’t be able to maintain itself without them. But in a big picture, they were close to nothing. It is obvious that the hard work of peasants were not fully appreciated by the upper classes. There is a passage on the Caminos reading about “men in positions of authority pride themselves for having given “bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothes to the naked”” (19) while peasants are not even appreciated working so hard to support the people of the nation. And these illiterate people had no way to keep the records for themselves, so they left no written accounts about there days presumably consist of work after work after work. They dedicate their entire life for the nation, and once they die, it is like as if he/she never existed: they “passed away leaving no trace in this world” (2) Now we have to “guess” from the archaeological findings or secondary materials what their life was like. What bothers me is that how belittled they were, that no one has even bothered to write, or “mention”, about them in the records.
Seems like living as a peasant in ancient Egypt must have been very frustrating. Not only they were not treated equally by the fellow humans (I guess the other classes at the time disagree with the such a term), they were having a hard time from the nature such as “sudden storms of thunder and hail in Egypt that would destroy the ripening grain” or “swarms of locusts that would eat all” (9) It must have been very frustrating that just like they couldn’t do anything about the mother nature, they couldn’t do anything about their class. They were unescapably tied to the land they toiled upon. (3)
Which brings me to a question. It is mentioned in the reading A Farmer’s Problems that the farmer Heqanakhte “at some point acquired the job of ka-servant for the tomb of Ipi.” (31) Although the duties were “relatively light” it is a significant improvement over being a peasant, and he even gets a “reading acquaintance” to solve his illiteracy problem. How did he get the job when they were “unescapably tied to the land they toiled upon,” and I think Nancy mentioned that if you are a farmer, you even marry a farmer, and your son will be a farmer? Maybe I just happened to miss that part, but does anyone have an answer for me?
The aspect of the readings I found most interesting was how the secondary sources brought the historical/mythological context of the primary source to the foreground through investigative and archaeological work. After reading the Heqanakhte letters I was pretty confused how to interpret it. I know plenty about farmers and peasants in feudal Europe, but I couldn't use that same framework to extrapolate information from completely different culture/society. Of course, after reading the secondary sources, especially Ray's interpretation, the picture became a lot clearer.
ReplyDeleteRay writes that the letters Heqanakhte wrote to his son are found in the tomb of Mentuhotpe II, so the letters can be reliably dated to his reign. This paints a much richer picture as to the kind of lives Heqanakhte and his family lived during that period. In the Heqanakhte letters, there are several mentions of shortages of rations and dire circumstances, “Look, they are beginning to eat people over here” (Heqanakhte letters, 61). This would imply that the regular life of an farmer was a hard one, but since we know more about the time period we can examine the reign of Mentuhotpe II as opposed to examining the broad sense as to how it was like to be a peasant in ancient Egypt.
Mentuhotpe II reign was filled with military campaigns to reunify Egypt under one King, and it's pretty clear he had a love for his soldiers since he bestowed on them high funeral rites for 60 of his best fallen soldiers. Mentuhotpe's main responsibility was to his army, and as Napoleon famously said, “An army marches on its stomach”. And, I can imagine Egyptian armies were pretty large and had big appetites. This would put pressure on Mentuhotpe II to have large surpluses available to his army and to accomplish this he would pressure his subordinates to exert pressure on the peasant farmers to produce. This would put extraordinary pressure on the farmers family and may explain the strictness and dire immediacy the Heqanakhte seemed to convey.
I'm not saying that the life of a peasant farmer in ancient Egypt was anything but back-breaking, toil-filled days with little compensation. But, the letters did seem to have a several subtle layers of truth that provides a richer picture as to what the real truth was, and not just what one person says.
Peasants undoubtedly led a very depressing and hard life. Not only were they on the bottom of the social ladder, but they were paid in mere barley, if that. In a way, these peasants can be more viewed as slaves: slaves for the tax collectors, noblemen, and pharaohs. However, each of the different readings did portray a somewhat different aspect of the average life of a peasant.
ReplyDeleteIn Caminos’ The Egyptians, we get a gruesome account of how tax collector’s actually treated these peasants and their families; “and when there were no relatives left, the severe punishment spread even to their neighbours, and sometimes even to villages and towns” (Caminos 21).
However, this cruel punishment did not stop there. These cruel tax collectors could even force the corvee upon peasant, which was “a system on forced, unpaid state service exacted of the peasants… who could at any time be conscripted for specific tasks” (21). In this respect, peasants were very close to slaves. They would have to be at the beckon call of their superiors all the time. As I was reading the rest of the Caminos reading, I couldn’t help but think about how terrible this life must have actually been. It even describes how glorious life was as a scribe, though scribe propaganda. However, would the peasants really have a choice? How could someone born into a poverty-stricken house raise themselves up in this highly structured society, if they even could?
As Jamie, Yen, and others have stated, I completely understand why these peasants would choose to runaway from this horrible life, but I would just want to know what their new lives were actually like. Could it have been that much better than their peasantry life, in which they at least had their family and friends?
When I read Heqanakhte letters and the Ray chapter accompaniment, I felt a more personal connection to the peasants, as we were able to get a glimpse into actual family life. To be completely honest, in the part of the letters where Heqanakhte goes on and on about his favoritism to the younger Sneferu, I couldn’t help but laugh. We got a hint of this stubborn man’s personality, which adds a more humanizing quality to our understandings. Through this crucially honest interaction, we are able to understand the family relationships and dynamics—obligations and hard work. Because of the unstable social infrastructure of the Intermediate Period, the economy and, therefore, the lives of the peasants, were in shackles. Family life, we can conclude, was heavily concentrated on work and money. Sons were expected to carry out the father’s work. Respect was also very important, especially respect for elders and parents. The father in the letters even threatens his son if he won’t do his bidding. However, we never get an accurate portrayal of the life of women during this time. What would the wives do? What if peasants only had daughters, and no sons? How would they continue their work?
What is so devastating about the treatment of these peasants is that they, essentially, built the society. Between roads and pyramids, ancient Egypt and our knowledge about it would not be the same without these hard workers, and yet, they were treated like scum.
The contents of the Heqanakhte letters showed that some peasants were somewhat well off that others. The person narrating the letters complained about his lack of basic necessities but actually held a position that was slightly higher than a peasant. One question that came to mind while reading the Heqanakhte letters and the "Peasant" chapter in Donadoni's book was how much did the service of a scribe cost. I found it odd that a peasant had enough money to pay a scribe to write a letter for him, but also odd that there are not a significant amount of peasant letters.
ReplyDeleteThe Hequanakhte letter differs quite a lot from description of peasant life that the Caminos chapter suggests. The letters show the peasant life in a much lighter tone. The writer talks a lot about children who slack off. The Caminos chapter shows a group of people who are constantly toiling away under the reign and hard gaze of the Pharaoh. The Caminos chapter differs significantly from the letters because most of the descriptions were taken from short texts "which reproduce, or pretend to reproduce," peasant work. (Donadoni, 7)
Like Jonathan said, I agree that the Heqanakhte letters and Caminos’s passage differ from each other. In the Heqanakhte letters, I got a glimpse of the family life for peasants, yet it is evident that Heqanakhte was better off than most. It is interesting to see his relationships with the members of his family, like his preference towards Sneferu and the ordeal with his newly acquired wife. Yet this depiction of family life had little to do with the Caminos’s portrayal. Reading Caminos, I envisioned a hell-ish life for the peasants, bedridden with hard work, exhaustion and diseases due to the unsanitary conditions. I was shocked to read that “the village was full of the bleary-eyed the one-eyed, and the blind, with inflamed festering eyelids.”
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, it enraged me to read the depictions of people being beaten nearly to death because they could not pay taxes. Not only did those individuals suffer, but there were repercussions for their family members as well. Even though Jaeus’s depiction seems slightly exaggerated, it isn’t hard to imagine the cruelty they faced. Also, to top it all off, there was the corvee, and it only shows how coldhearted those in charge were that the only reason it was eliminated later on was for political convenience, which had nothing to do with sympathy for the peasants.
Throughout history, peasants are known to have difficult and abusive lifestyles, but I never really thought much into it. However, the Caminos reading presented the hardships of the Egyptian peasants so vividly that it made me pitied them. The different vignettes painted through the letters presented a lifestyle that we, as modern human beings, would never fully understand. It amazes me how, “peasants were the backbone of the nation,” (Donadoni 1), yet our knowledge about them are very limited and one-sided. If peasants were so important to Egypt’s legacy, why were their stories not preserved? To the Egyptian lords, peasants were only needed to do work; only their bodies and strengths were important. The peasants were responsible in cultivating food during the harvest, yet some died from starvation. Blood and sweats were put into work in order to get a grain of wheat, yet they were still invisible to society. This makes me wonder (like Jamie and Kayla) why were they so obedient? What motivated them to keep living in hardships and inequity? Their motivation to live was a big key to their survival. Their endurances towards abusive powers were unimaginable. From the brutality of the tax collectors to the forceful system of the corvee, it was nearly impossible for the peasants to escape horror. “Anachoresis, or secessio, the flight form the fields and abandonment of agricultural work, was the last refuge of the overburdened Egyptian cultivator” (22). For me, it is hard to believe that running away was a peasant’s last resort because it would have been the first thing I would do if I were in their positions. Similarly to Yen’s comments, if enough peasants left the fields, this could have been represented as a sign of rebellion, and the lords may be forced to change their rulings. However, this was not the case in ancient Egypt: the lords were too heartless to care about anyone but they themselves (an reoccurring theme throughout historical rulings). Without the hardworking peasants, Egyptian economy would be nonexistent, the pyramids would be unconstructed, and the lords would have been helpless.
ReplyDeleteHowever, from the Hekanakht’s letters and Ray’s “A Farmer’s Problems,” it seemed that peasantry was not always centered on hardships and sufferings. Hekanakht was not just a regular peasant-farmer; he was also a ka-servant. “The duties of a ka-priest were to attend to the cult of the dead man’s soul, and to keep an eye on the state of the tomb” (Ray 31). This showed that it is possible for peasants to be more than just peasants and to receive more income than just a grain of wheat. Through the tone of Hekanakht’s letters to his son, Merisu, we can tell that Hekanakht asserted himself as the master of the house by using commands in every statement. But his constant usage of “Listen,” and “Look,” made it seemed that Hekanakht is straightforward. His emphasis on those words and other phrases showed his pride as the master. In his letters he stressed the importance of his favorite son, Snefru, and his new wife, Iutenhep, instead of addresses his family as a whole. Though he may have been a little bit arrogant, he did, after all, dedicate his time to write to his son. In a letter to Merisu about Snefru, Hekanakht said to “Take great care, for there is no one more important than he in the house, including yourself. Don’t be unmindful of this” (Hekanakht Letters 60). What kind of a father was he? It must have been very hard for Merisu to accept those disparaging words from his father’s mouth (If I was Merisu, I would not be able to stand favoritism). This brings us to the importance of respect. Even though, Hekanakht may act unfairly, sons’ duties are to follow orders and respect the elders. All in all, Hekanakht’s letters were shockingly real to me. It showed a lighter perspective of peasantry. Behind hardships and privations, there was always a sense of family and community that help support peasants’ lifestyle.
The lives of peasants and farmers seemed difficult, and unrelenting. In ancient Egypt, no one cared about how hard the life of a peasant was despite the difficulty of their work, for they were low on the class scale. Many were beaten and even killed by higher officials. It is made clear though, that without these farmers, Egyptian life and economic system would have never survived. Grain was a huge source of currency and a sign of wealth; without farmers producing it, the barter system would have failed. Seen often in Donadoni’s text, many peasants were angry of the work they had to do and their maltreatment. I asked the same question Jamie and Kayla asked above. Why were there so few revolts? Were these people cowards, or did they just like to complain a lot? The answer to this question seems to be that peasants were subjects of the king and revolts would probably often lead to death.
ReplyDeleteThere were different classes of farmers, some were more well of than others, as seen in the Heqanakhte text. I found the Heqanakhte letters interesting and actually amusing to read because you can really tell how angry the father is at his son. You can tell how upset he is is because the father “has a habit of haranguing the recipient with short sentences beginning ‘Look’” which emphasizes the stern point he is trying to make (Donadoni, 32). The father clearly plays favorites, spoiling the youngest son and giving him whatever he wants. The father in my opinion, is a jerk because of this. I’m curious to know why he was the favorite and not one of the other brothers. I noticed that these letters were written during an intermediate period, for the father refers to a lack of food and even people resorting to cannibalism. I find that the cannibalism aspect to be a bit of an exaggeration, but can be looked at as more of a projection of what may come in the future if change doesn’t occur.
The readings of this week, I thought, were pretty easy and interesting to read.
ReplyDeleteThe detail that stuck out to me most was the way they punished those who could not pay their taxes. The fact that they literally sold themselves and their family members, their wives and children, to slavery just to flee from beatings just gave me the chills. It explains why they would much rather flee from their own homes and everything that they have than to suffer from the excruciating pain they were destined to. But at the same time, keeping the religious aspect of the Egyptians' lives, it makes me wonder about the difficulty they had in making this decision. If they fled from their homes and labor, and from the responsibility of paying their taxes, wouldn't the condition of their afterlife be affected negatively? Would they really sacrifice the greater chance of having a better afterlife to avoid getting beaten up by the tax collectors?
Moving onto another point of the readings, I couldn't help but to notice that, like many other cultures, Egyptians were focused on the paternal aspect in their society. Wives, as it seemed in Heqanakhte's writings, had little power and respect. All the decisions of their agricultural responsibilities were determined by the father, which explains the importance of bearing a son instead of a daughter, let alone the fact that men had more "man power" to help out on the fields. But at the same time, even though the father directed most, I got a sense that there was still a cooperation among the family and communnity.
The Hekanakht letters provide an insight to the life of a farmer and family relations in the Middle Kingdom. In these letters, it becomes clear that the relationship between Hekanakht’s family members were strained. Although Hekanakht provided for his family, his letters to his eldest son had a commanding tone and often instructed Merisu on how to run the house. In his letter, he writes “If you overstep this, I will hold it against you as a misappropriation. Now regarding what I’ve just told you saying, “Give him one khar-measure of northern barley for the month,” it is only 8-kehat-measures of northern barley that you should give him for the month. Take great care!” Not only are there little trust between Hekanakht and his son, Hekanakht repeats his words to stress his point, as though his son needs a second reminding. In addition, the letters reveal the strain between Hekanakht’s sons and his new mistress. In times of scarcity, an extra mouth to feed would have been resented. The letters also show a complex number system as Hekanakht records food rations for the household.
ReplyDeleteEgyptian society is well known for having rigid, structured social classes. Once you were put in that rung of the social ladder, there was no moving out of it. Unfortunately for peasants this meant a life of never ending hardships and poverty. The image of the peasant as portrayed by Caminos is a very negative one. Peasants were poor, abused individuals who were “despised by all [and] pitied by none” (28). In other words, they were the lowest of the low. They were constantly kept busy; when they weren’t working the fields, they were forced to do strenuous work for some higher power, and with the little time that they did have to themselves, they used it to try and do what little they could to provide for their families.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what Dan had stated earlier in his blog post in that I too found it interesting that even though peasants were the “backbone” of society, and without them society wouldn’t be able to even function, they were still treated with little to no respect.
The letters between Heqanakhte and Merisu further exemplified the abusive relationship between master and farmer. In the letters, Heqanakhte constant talks down to Merisu, using repetitive and threatening language as if to drill it to Merisu that he practically owns him and holds Merisu’s well being, as well as the well being of his family, in the palm of his hand.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe Heqanakhte letters server to show that the ruler or owner of a plot of land had absolute control and dominance over his property. The letters didn’t just go to show that one has control of his plot of land, but that one also has control of everyone in that plot of land. Heqanakhte is seen giving orders to his subordinates as to how to run his property in order to do things such as distribute rations amongst his family and friends. One thing to note is that he is pretty harsh yet favorable at times. As long as one does what they are told, they will be rewarded decently. The converse is not true however, as Heqanakhte continually advises his subordinates to obey him and stay in his favor. This reveals that, as Dan Rosenthal said, the life of a peasant is not pleasant at all.
ReplyDeleteWe can also see that the Egyptians were very precise. Throughout his letters, Heqanakhte puts precise measurements as to how much rations his family and friends would receive. Society around this time (the first intermediate period) seemed to be very similar to the caste system as there were social groups and classes of which everyone belonged to. It tends to remind me of the middle ages and the way that knights would have their own castles with a full stock of servants and workers. In the end they still submit to the king, but we see the similarity here. From these letters we can also see that polygamy was quite alright. Heqanakhte continued to reference his “new” wives and made sure that his subordinated respected and serviced them.