In these chambers
in addition to a room for a sarcophagus were associated rooms in which
every imaginable need of the dead was stored: food, clothing, furniture,
jewelry, weapons.
Adjacent to the royal tomb favored nobles received permission to build
their own tombs, similarly equipped but on a smaller, less grandiose
scale than that of the pharaoh. By this means the courtiers who had
attended the pharaoh in his life-time would be at hand to perform
similar services in the after death existence.
Construction and maintenance of temples and tombs absorbed a
considerable part of Egypt's economic surplus. These drains on the
economy grew more extensive as the country became more populous and more
productive. Thanks to the lack of rain in and near the Nile Valley and
despite the depleting activities of persistent vandalism these
constructs have stood for thirty centuries as monuments to one of the
most extensive and elaborate civilizations known to historians. Despite
the absence of detailed records, Egyptian achievements under the Old
Kingdom indicate an abundance of food, wood, metal and other resources
far in excess of survival requirements; a population sufficiently
extensive to produce the necessaries of existence and a surplus which
made it possible for the lords temporal and spiritual to erect such
astonishing and enduring monuments; high levels of technical skills
among woodsmen, quarrymen and building crews; the transport facilities
by land and water required to assemble the materials, equipment and man
power; the foresight, planning, timing and over-all management involved
in such constructs as the pyramids, temples and tombs which have
withstood the wear and tear of thousands of years; the willingness and
capacity of professionals, technicians, skilled workers, and the masses
of free and slave labor to co-exist and co-operate over the long periods
required for the completion of such extensive structural projects; the
utilization of an extensive economic surplus not primarily for personal
mass or middle-class consumption but to enhance the power and glory of a
tiny minority, its handymen and other dependents; and a considerable
middle class of merchants, managers and technicians.
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