For Ancient Egyptians, death did not mean the end of labor.

Cover photo: Goats treading seed and cattle fording a canal, painted limestone reliefs in the mastaba of Ti, Saqqara, Egypt (circa 2450–2350 BCE). Via the University of Buffalo.

The Art of Labor

At the height of the Industrial Revolution in the United States, American workers — including children — suffered twelve hour work days and seven day work weeks. Labor Day originated in 1882 as an annual mass rally in New York organized by socialists and leftist organizations to demand shorter hours, higher pay, safer working conditions, and a labor holiday. President Grover Cleveland would declare Labor Day a federal holiday in 1894.

COVID-19 has revealed who are the essential workers and who performs the unnecessary “bullshit jobs”. This once-in-a-century pandemic has also demonstrated the global interdependency of resources, labor, and supply chains — what we commonly refer to as globalization.

Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, and likely their healthcare. This has inspired me to create a new series on the art of labor through the centuries, with a focus on how work has been valued and represented.

This is the second work of a twenty part series.

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt is one of the oldest civilizations on earth, dating as far back as 8000 BCE. Ancient Egypt was settled on the Nile, because the river allowed for transportation and the fertile flood plain supported agriculture.

The Ancient Egyptians called themselves remetch en Kemet or “people of the Black Land”, referring to the rich black soil left after the annual flooding of the Nile river. Other natural resources like grain, fish, and papyrus made daily life possible.

Flooding of the Nile occurred from July to September, with the river reaching its highest levels in October, then receding to its lowest between April and June. The annual flooding was vital for the land’s fertility and so this event was interpreted as a renewal of life and triumph over death. Fording the Nile was thus considered a metaphor for passage to the afterlife.

King Menes unified Upper and Lower Egypt around 3110 BCE and later founded the city of Memphis around 2925 BCE which would serve as the first capital of Ancient Egypt.

Mastaba of Ti

The mastaba (tomb) of Fifth Dynasty official Ti is located in the Funerary Complex of Djoser in Saqqara, also known as Ṣaqqārah or Sakkara, the necropolis of the city of Memphis. The complex is known for its wonderfully preserved reliefs depicting daily life in Ancient Egypt.

In 1979, the complex was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site. According to UNESCO, Saqqara “contains the first complex monumental stone buildings in Egyptian history”. The Saqqara Funerary Complex was built during the 3rd Dynasty (circa 2649 - 2575 BCE) of the Old Kingdom (circa 2659 - 2150 BCE), at the order of King Netjeriket who would later be known as Djoser.

Men with donkey, filling water skins on the Nile, Omdurman, Sudan (1936). Nitrate negative by Matson Photo Service and via the Library of Congress.

As is characteristic of nonroyal tombs, the elaborate carved limestone reliefs of Ti’s Tomb portray the official with his subordinates, who cared for his land and generated his produce. Reliefs include depictions of men herding goats, cattle fording a canal, and a hunched youth carrying a calf on his back.

Barley and wheat were the main crops. Land was tilled twice by a wooden plow drawn by an ox or donkey. Seeds were sown by a funnel on a plow or trodden by sheep. Such scenes of daily life served to ensure the deceased successfully transitioned into the afterlife and were provided for.

Another relief can be seen of Ti supervising the hunt of hippopotami, considered by Ancient Egyptians to be the most dangerous animal in the world. The killing of a hippopotamus was an act of supreme courage and strength, and thus symbolic of the ruler’s ability to maintain order.

Class Hierarchy

The king, known as the pharaoh, was the godlike ruler of Ancient Egypt. The Pharaoh governed all aspects of life, including the spiritual, judicial, and political.

The Ancient Egyptian upper class — consisting of bureaucrats, architects, doctors, engineers, priests, and artists — was restricted solely for the literate, which accounted for an estimated one percent of the Egyptian population.

By the Fifth Dynasty, high officials were no longer members of the royal family. Officials were instead appointed by the pharaoh on the basis of merit, however succession was still largely hereditary.

Apart from the literate upper class, nearly all Egyptians were engaged in agriculture, many of whom were peasant farmers who did not own the land they worked or the homes in which they lived. Outright slavery was uncommon, restricted solely to captives, foreigners, or indebted people forced to sell themselves into service.

Canons of Proportion

19th Century pioneering German Egyptologist Carl Richard Lepsius — considered the founder of modern Egyptology — observed Ancient Egyptian art employed a consistent system of proportions. In the following century, Danish Egyptologist Erik Iverson agreed that Ancient Egyptian artists originally developed a canon 18 squares high and then later adopted a canon of 21 squares high.

According to German historian Eduard Meyer, by the Fifth Dynasty, “the many traditional rules had come to be fused into an inviolable canon of proportions that had to be learned in the school and schematically applied to every drawing”.

All Egyptian art and architecture followed the canon, including sculptures, reliefs, and paintings. The grid was also used for hieroglyphics. Works were prepared with red guidelines; outlines were then corrected in black. Tempera with mineral-based pigments was used for painting.

Wooden drawing board with red grid depicting an enthroned Thutmosis III (circa 1479-1425 BCE). Via the British Museum.

Human figures were portrayed in a twisted perspective, with the head in profile and the rest of the body in three-quarter view. Scale was used to denote relative importance, with the Official Ti appearing twice as large as his workers.

Death and Immortality

“In Egyptian religion, where a latent horror of death and extinction was always reconciled and assuaged by a frantic faith in immortality, art was always an active principle,” wrote Iverson.

Ancient Egyptians viewed death as a mirrored experience of life on earth. The word necropolis is derived from the Greek nekropolis, meaning “city of the dead”, suggesting a continuation of mundanity into the afterlife.

Deceased Egyptians were preserved by the drying and embalming of the flesh, known as mummification. Organs such as the liver, the lungs, the stomach, and the intestines were removed from the body to be stored in canopic jars.

The dead would also be gifted with mundane objects they would need in the afterlife. Ancient Egyptians of every class — from the poorest to the king — were entombed with small mummiform figures known as shabti. These enchanted funerary figures often held agricultural tools such as a hoe and seed bag, as they were meant to perform labor on behalf of the deceased in the afterlife.