Latest / Ramses the Great: Egypt's Most Powerful Pharaoh — Fexingo History / Ramses the Great's Builders: The Workers Behind the Monuments
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about Ramses the Great's monuments — the statues, the temples, the propaganda. But I got to thinking: who actually built all of that? We say 'Ramses built the Ramesseum' or 'Ramses carved Abu Simbel,' but he wasn't out there with a chisel. Luna: Right, it's like saying 'Steve Jobs built the iPhone.' Lucas: Exactly. The real work was done by thousands of people — craftsmen, laborers, slaves — and we actually know quite a bit about them. Not from Ramses's own inscriptions, obviously, but from the records of the work crews themselves, especially at Deir el-Medina. Now, Deir el-Medina was the village of the royal tomb builders, mostly from the 18th and 19th Dynasties, so it wasn't built specifically for Ramses's projects, but it's our best window into how large-scale construction was organized. Luna: So these weren't slaves, then? Skilled workers? Lucas: Exactly. The Deir el-Medina crew were free men — highly skilled artisans, not slaves. They were organized into two gangs, the 'Left Side' and the 'Right Side,' each with a foreman and a scribe. They worked eight-day shifts with two days off. They were paid in grain, beer, oil, fish, vegetables — and they kept meticulous records. We have ostraca and papyri that document everything from tools issued to complaints about late wages. In fact, the first recorded labor strike in history happened at Deir el-Medina, in year 29 of Ramses III, but the system was already in place under Ramses II. Luna: Wait, a strike? They just downed tools? Lucas: They did. The workers sat down in front of the mortuary temple of Thutmose III and refused to work until their rations were delivered. And the administration took it seriously — they eventually paid up. But that was for the royal tombs. For Ramses's huge monuments, the workforce was much larger and more diverse. At the Ramesseum, his mortuary temple, and at Abu Simbel, you had not just local craftsmen but also prisoners of war — Sherden pirates, Libyans, Canaanites — pressed into service. The quarrying alone was enormous. Luna: Especially for those giant statues. Where did the stone come from? Lucas: Most of the sandstone for temples came from Gebel el-Silsila, about 100 kilometers north of Aswan. That was the main quarry for the New Kingdom. But for the really hard stone — granite and diorite for statues and obelisks — you had to go to Aswan itself. And it was brutal work. You'd pound a groove into the rock with dolerite hammerstones, then wedge it with wooden wedges that were soaked with water to expand and crack the stone. The Turin Papyrus — actually a map, the oldest surviving geological map in the world — shows the quarrying routes in the Eastern Desert for bekhen-stone, a type of graywacke used for statues. Luna: So they had maps, they had planning. It's not just brute force. Lucas: No, it was highly organized. The state had a bureaucracy that tracked every stone. And the scale is mind-boggling. The Ramesseum's pylon alone weighs thousands of tons. The fallen colossus of Ramses there — the one that inspired Shelley's 'Ozymandias' — was originally nineteen meters high and weighed over a thousand tons. It was dragged from the quarry to the temple site by hundreds of workers pulling on ropes, with water poured in front to reduce friction. The logistics of feeding that workforce were staggering. We know from records at Deir el-Medina that each worker got about 5.5 liters of grain per day, plus beer, which was a staple. And the water supply — they dug wells, built canals from the Nile. Luna: And all of this was happening while Ramses was fighting the Hittites and building his new capital. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the part I find incredible: Ramses was waging war, conducting diplomacy, and running an empire — but he also had this massive construction program going simultaneously. It was a statement of power, sure, but also an economic engine. Those projects employed thousands of people, and they circulated wealth through the country. The stone wasn't just for temples — it was for obelisks, statues, sphinxes, and they were set up in temples all over Egypt and Nubia. The workers left their mark, too. We find graffiti from work gangs at the quarries — things like 'The crew of the Horus, Mighty Bull, has worked' — little signatures of pride. Luna: I love that. They had their own sense of identity. Lucas: Absolutely. And it's a reminder that history isn't just about the one name at the top. The monuments of Ramses are also the monuments of those thousands of anonymous hands. And if you've been stepping into history with us episode by episode, you know that kind of story is what we try to uncover — the layers beneath the famous names. This show is ad-free and listener-supported, and if you'd like to help keep it that way, you can buy me a coffee at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Even a small contribution makes a difference. And speaking of layers — let's talk about one specific group of workers that we haven't mentioned: the children. Luna: Children? They had child labor on these sites? Lucas: They did. And we know it from the evidence. We have ostraca that record rations for 'young ones' — not full rations, half rations. And from the Deir el-Medina tombs, we have tiny tools, child-sized. They likely did simple tasks: carrying water, fetching tools, maybe even some of the less skilled chipping work. It wasn't the brutal child labor of the Industrial Revolution, but it was still work. And some of those children grew up to be master craftsmen, inheriting their father's trade. The system was hereditary. Luna: So it was like a family business, in a way. Lucas: Very much so. And it's through those families that we get the continuity we see in Egyptian art — the same styles persisting for centuries. The masters taught their sons, and the sons taught their sons. Ramses benefited from a tradition that was already a thousand years old by his time. He didn't invent monumental building; he just did it on the grandest scale. Luna: Do we know the names of any of these workers? Lucas: A few. From Deir el-Medina, we know of foremen like Qaha and his son Inherkhau, who worked on Ramses's tomb, KV7. And there's a scribe called Amennakht, who wrote some of the most detailed records we have. But most names are lost. What we do have are the work gang marks — little symbols painted on the stones inside the Ramesseum that tell us which crew placed them. There's one that shows a cat and a cobra. Another has a lion. It's like a secret signature. Luna: So the workers were literally leaving their mark on history, just in a smaller font. Lucas: Exactly. And it's those small details that bring the past to life for me. The next time you see a picture of the Ramesseum or Abu Simbel, you can imagine the foreman shouting orders, the scribe ticking off rations, the young boy running with a waterskin, and the stone mason smoothing the surface for the next hieroglyph. That's the real story behind the colossus.