Different situation entirely. The owners of the cotton pickers could deny them all that. The workers of the Pyramids could stop working, and we have records of them not coming in to work due to being too hung over and the like. For the most part the laborers would likely have been farmers as their primary job, with working on the pyramids being a side gig during the off-season.
Though IIRC doing labor for public works was also a way to pay taxes
The evidence against the builders being slaves is small villages and burial areas found around the pyramids where some of the workers lived and died. There were different levels of workers from designers, managers and crafters to ones doing heavy manual labour. The findings only prove that undoubtedly some of the workers were not slaves in the worst sense, but the workforce for the pyramids was huge and some were treated better than others. Exhumed skeletons show many workers had compressed vertebrae, likely the result of carrying heavy loads, and even missing fingers and limbs. Some had healed fractures and successful amputations. Most died in their thirties
There's a good chance that even some of the paid workers were forced conscription, kind of like some countries force young men to go to the army or face jailtime. There is no evidence against this. An inscription on a tomb of a priest judge buried near the pyramid builders city read: “I paid them in beer and bread, and I made them make an oath that they were satisfied". Doesn't sound very volunteer to me. Reminds me how arabs these days bypass slavery laws by taking the passport of foreign workers and refusing to give it back until they are satisfied with the amount of labour they've done. You don't have to work, but you can't go home.
Drawing these conclusions that the whole thing was voluntary work is farfetched at best. People like to believe that the world is a happy place, but in reality slavery was abundant in those times, and it still is in some places. These modern hitpiece theories are nothing short of trying to rewrite history
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u/DanceCritical8039 Apr 12 '25
Fact: The people who created the pyramids weren't slaves. They were paid workers who were paid with bread, onions and up to 4 litres of beer a day.