workingclasshistory:

thatlittleegyptologist:

biestcallisto:

workingclasshistory:

On the day which translates to 14 November in the year approximately 1155 BC, the first recorded strike in history took place. In ancient Egypt, gangs of construction workers building for Ramses III launched sit-down strikes in protest at insufficient food rations. This is a history of the strike: https://libcom.org/history/records-of-the-strike-in-egypt-under-ramses-iii https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1263169723868175/?type=3

@thatlittleegyptologist 

#can you confirm?

Having read both the above post, and the article linked in it, I can confirm the only thing they got right was the fact that there was a strike. I honestly didn’t think it was possible for people to be this wrong when translations of the papyrus they’re talking about exist. 

Well let’s put it this way; Ramesses III came to the throne in 1186 BC and  died in c.1155 BC, total 31 years. The strikes take place in his 29th year, 1157 BC. So strike one for the above post. Looking at the article linked above by OP it reads:

Oh boy. That ain’t it chief. 

For starters, Ramesses III was born in 1217. He comes to the throne in 1186 aged 31. The above quote, and the papyrus it’s apparently quoting say this strike happened in year 29. Let’s add 31 and 29 together shall we? Oh he was 60??? My boy Ramesses isn’t waging any wars at that age. His last major campaign was in Year 11 of his reign when he was 42. The above linked article is twisting the narrative to make him look like a cruel king who denied his workers food because he was too busy waging war and forcing them to build things. What was the cause of the state not being able to pay the workers was an economic crisis, brought on by famine due to a series of poor inundations (meaning no fertile silt to grow crops, so less crops). But, y’know, why use facts amirite?

Really, if you read the actual papyrus it says:

rnpt sp 29 Abd 2 prt hrw 10 pn hrw sStA  5 inbt n pA xr in tA ist r-Dd.tw=n Hqr=n iw hrw 18 aq m pA Abd iw=sn Hm Hr pH.wy n tA Hm.t mn-xpr-ra

Regnal Year 29, Month 2 of Peret (Emergence), Day 10. On this day passed the 5 walls of the Necropolis saying ‘We are hungry. It has been 18 days gone by this month.’ And they sat down behind the temple of Menkheperre

Here are the Hieroglyphs, with handy numbers so I can break it down for you: 

1. Recto 1, line 1. This is the place in the papyrus in which we get the first date of the strike. It’s clear from the context of the papyrus (called the Turin Strike Papyrus) that they had already been striking before this, we just don’t know when or why it started. This date here is just the first recording we have of the strike.
2. Peret is the season of ‘emergence’. In the Egyptian calendar there are three seasons: Akhet (inundation), Peret (Emergence/Sowing - new crops are planted), and Shemu (Harvest). So the strike is occurring in the second month of the second season, not the second month of the year. The second month of Peret is actually the sixth month of the Egyptian year. 
3. inbt are the ‘walls’ of the necropolis. Now this is basically Egyptian metaphor. There were no walls surrounding the necropolis, but there were 5 look out posts where the Medjay (security force) would be posted on the lookout for intruders.
4. 18 days. Since workers in Egypt were paid in food and other goods (non monetary economy and all that) they’re ‘paid’ more often than modern people. If I remember rightly, they got their ‘payments’ every other day, or at least a few times a week, maybe as little as once a week. A week in Egypt was 10 days long, with a rest day on the 10th. A month is made up of 30 days, so there are 3 weeks to each month. The workers are saying they’ve not been paid for 18 days. That’s nearly 2 weeks, or 2/3 of a month, for the Egyptians! We don’t know how much they were paid before this, but considering there’s an economic crisis at this point and they supposedly just got done with the harvest only 4 months ago…I would say fairly little, and if they’ve had to stretch that ‘little’ out for another 2 weeks when they’re supposed to be paid each week then…well you’ve got some very angry and hungry people.
5. ‘Sat down’ yes this is basically a sit in behind a temple
   
6. Menkheperre is Thutmosis III. They’re sitting behind his mortuary temple.

So we can reliably date the strike to this specific date, and not any of the dates given by OP or the linked article. 

Now as for when this strike took place in our calendar…well that’s a little more tricky. As I mentioned before each month in the Egyptian calendar is made up of 30 days, split into 3 weeks of 10 days. Each season in Egypt has 4 months. So this makes about 360 days in a year. 

Anyone notice the problem yet? Yeah there’s 5 days missing. This was fine to begin with, but over the millennia the Egyptians were a civilisation (yes they were 6000 years in the making. Fight me Romans) this of course caused a slippage by one day every 4 years in the calendar matching up with the seasons. Eventually they fixed this by adding 5 epagomenal days, and made them birthdays of the gods (Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, Seth, and Horus) who couldn’t be born in the normal year (Look up Geb and Nut and their forbidden love). They were still out by ¼ of a day (ahh the pesky solar calendar) so the calendars only lined up every 1460 years. Eventually this problem was solved by the Romans who invented the leap year. So everyone born on February 29th, please blame Ancient Rome. 

So what I’m saying is, with this slippage in the calendar we cannot say for sure whereabouts in the year this Month 2 of Peret day 10 occurred. It could have been at any point because we don’t know when this slippage started, and this is the problem with precise ‘dating’ on any Egyptian event. However, if we just say for the sake of this post that the calendar was on it’s correct line, and none of the slippage was occurring, then with Wepet Renpet (the Egyptian New Year) occurring on the 1st day of the calendar year in Akhet (inundation) and the actual inundation in Egypt always started in August followed by the Seasons of Peret and then Shemu.

So between the opening of the year and the date of the strike we have 160 days. 

• Wepet Renpet is the 1st August the start of Akhet.
• We then have the 4 months of 30 days to get us to the 1st Month of Peret (120 days) makes Akhet end on the 28th November, and Peret begin on the 29th. 
• Then you have 30 days of the 1st Month of Peret. Taking you to the 28th December. Month 2 begins on the 29th December. 
• Then with the date of the papyrus being 10th Day of Month 2 of Peret, we count 10 days in from the 29th December. 
• Which gets us to….7th January. 
• If we account for the slippage, and my maths is shite, but bear with me: in 1000 BC (157 years after the event) the Heliacal rising of Sothis (used to mark the New Year) was recorded on the 3rd Month of Akhet day 19, which in our calendar is 8th July. Akhet 1 day 1 would be April 23rd (+/1 2 days for slippage), and Peret 2 day 10 would be September 4th (+/- 2 days). Every 4 years the calendar would slip by one day. In 157 years prior that’s 39.25 (or 39 for ease) after. So you have to add 39 days to the date of September 4th to get what it was in 157 years earlier, which gives a date of October 13th (+/- 2 days). So the actual date maybe around mid October if we mess about with the slipping. 

So, if the Egyptians did not have calendar slippage the actual date for the first recorded strike is the 7th January 1157 BC. Otherwise, accounting for slippage in the Egyptian calendar it’s between the 10th-17th October. I’d go with the 13th October. So there you have it: celebrate either the 13th October or the 7th January for the first recorded strike in human history. 

Sources:

Edgerton, W.F. 1951. The Strikes in Rameses III’s Twenty-Ninth Year, in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies. Vol 10 (3), pp.137-145

Frandsen, P.J. 1990. Editing Reality: The Turin Strike Papyrus, in Studies in Egyptology: Presented to Miriam Lichtheim, Israelit-Groll, S & Lichtheim, M eds. Magnes Press, Hebrew University. pp. 166-199.

Gardiner, A.H. 1948. Ramesside Administrative Documents. Oxford. Griffith Institute

UCL Festivals In the Egyptian Calendar (Accessed 14th November, 2019, 2:32pm)

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