There's a Viking myth- not a story from Viking mythology, mind you, but a supposition about Viking culture that was completely false but believed for a long time- about a thing called the Ättestupa, pronounced "atteshtup," where elders were allegedly guilted into jumping or forcibly thrown off of certain sacred cliffs to spare their families the burden of caring for them, and that this was seen as a deeply honorable sacrifice.
The problem is that it never existed at all. Quite a few aspects of Norse culture are deeply distorted by deliberate rewrites from later Christian scholars who were often the only ones who could translate the old stories, which they then highly editorialized or reframed for updated morality. The notion of Ättestupa was based on ONE parable story about a legendary family that was so greedy that the elders killed themselves instead of being forced to spend money on giving hospitality to guests.
There is no evidence that anything like a real-life Ättestupa ever happened.
Most cultures do not regard homicide as a solution to "useless eaters," even the ones we tend to think of as harsh or brutal.
We "know" a surprising amount about history that is blatantly false.
I've gotten more than one person extremely upset by pointing out that there is no historical basis for the biblical Exodus, for example. The cultures involved maintained some of the biggest, best-organized record-keeping bureaucracies until the modern era. If a third of the population of the Egyptian Empire got up and walked off one day, it would have had repercussions across the economies and kingdoms of the entire classical world and would have made the "news" of every western civilization to have contact with Rome or Egypt which was all of them. The sudden disappearance of an entire slave labor force would have immediately collapsed the Egyptian economy and probably all of its trading partners.
But plenty of people, even non-Christians, assume this is rooted in some thing that actually occurred.
It's extremely frustrating for people who are fascinated by history and ancient history and would love the REAL answers to its mysteries. But the history of most ancient people have, at at least some point, become the political propaganda of a successor culture, at which point it fades into the realm of folklore in the absence of archaeology or primary source documents.
I have read something similar. In addition to what you mention, this other article said they were not slaves, but regular workers that were paid pretty well for their work.(Because they were really good workers.) I read this a year or two ago.
There's actually no historical record of mass-enslavement of Israelites by the Egyptian empire of the time. There are official records of "Asiatics" being the bulk of the slave population but this was never used to refer to Jews.
And your other point is spot-on; slaves were very rarely anything other than unskilled labor, and the construction of the pyramids required a large contingent of highly skilled masons and engineers.
There's a Viking myth- not a story from Viking mythology, mind you, but a supposition about Viking culture that was completely false but believed for a long time- about a thing called the Ättestupa, pronounced "atteshtup," where elders were allegedly guilted into jumping or forcibly thrown off of certain sacred cliffs to spare their families the burden of caring for them, and that this was seen as a deeply honorable sacrifice.
The problem is that it never existed at all. Quite a few aspects of Norse culture are deeply distorted by deliberate rewrites from later Christian scholars who were often the only ones who could translate the old stories, which they then highly editorialized or reframed for updated morality. The notion of Ättestupa was based on ONE parable story about a legendary family that was so greedy that the elders killed themselves instead of being forced to spend money on giving hospitality to guests.
There is no evidence that anything like a real-life Ättestupa ever happened.
Most cultures do not regard homicide as a solution to "useless eaters," even the ones we tend to think of as harsh or brutal.
Okay, China.
Thanks for this. I didn't know anything about that myth.
We "know" a surprising amount about history that is blatantly false.
I've gotten more than one person extremely upset by pointing out that there is no historical basis for the biblical Exodus, for example. The cultures involved maintained some of the biggest, best-organized record-keeping bureaucracies until the modern era. If a third of the population of the Egyptian Empire got up and walked off one day, it would have had repercussions across the economies and kingdoms of the entire classical world and would have made the "news" of every western civilization to have contact with Rome or Egypt which was all of them. The sudden disappearance of an entire slave labor force would have immediately collapsed the Egyptian economy and probably all of its trading partners.
But plenty of people, even non-Christians, assume this is rooted in some thing that actually occurred.
It's extremely frustrating for people who are fascinated by history and ancient history and would love the REAL answers to its mysteries. But the history of most ancient people have, at at least some point, become the political propaganda of a successor culture, at which point it fades into the realm of folklore in the absence of archaeology or primary source documents.
I have read something similar. In addition to what you mention, this other article said they were not slaves, but regular workers that were paid pretty well for their work.(Because they were really good workers.) I read this a year or two ago.
There's actually no historical record of mass-enslavement of Israelites by the Egyptian empire of the time. There are official records of "Asiatics" being the bulk of the slave population but this was never used to refer to Jews.
And your other point is spot-on; slaves were very rarely anything other than unskilled labor, and the construction of the pyramids required a large contingent of highly skilled masons and engineers.
Thank-you for the assist.