Harvard archeologist Mark Lehner believes that the pyramids built Egypt.
I'd like to make a much less supportable claim... Finishing the pyramids doomed Egypt.
Many civilizations built pyramids. From Egypt to the Far East to Meso-America and the Mississippi Valley, untold workers labored for generations to errect huge mounds of earth and stone. Curiously, all of the civilizations that contructed these pyramids fell apart.
So what happened?
Rather then bothering with facts, I'd like to offer a pure conjecture… These civilizations failed because they finished their pyramids.
Conventional wisdom tells us that pyramids were built for the glorification of a ruler or a god. My bet is that we've missed the essential motivation for building pyramids. Pyramids were constructed to employ excess population.
Put yourself in Pharaoh’s sandals back around 5000 BC. Times are good. The fields are green, the silos are bursting with grain and all your subjects have full bellies. With plenty to eat, more children survive. The population swells, but the bounty from the fields keeps famine at bay. The labor of a few easily fills the bellies of many.
Alarmingly, Pharaoh comes to realize that a large proportion of the populace has very little to do. Boredom leads to mischief, particularly among the young, and there are a growing number of bored young folks.
Pharaoh could always start a war to occupy the young, but wars are destructive and risky. A better option is to put the young to work.
The project must be ambitious and perceived to be of great importance, or the young will just shirk their assignments and sneak off to do something socially unacceptable.
Enter the pyramid. It's big, it's bold, and it’s ambitious. The pyramid will consume the labor of an entire generation. Engineering must be mastered to overcome hurdles. Solving logistical nightmares will engage planners for years. Many will develop skills and become great craftsmen. All will have plenty to do, and all can point with pride to the edifice as it rises on the plain (contrary to belief, the pyramids were constructed by free men, not slaves).
To inspire the laborers, Pharaoh tells them that the pyramid is being built for some great purpose. He tells them that this pyramid will insure his ascension as a god. Once immortal, Pharaoh will care for them and their descendants forever.
All of this talk of gods is hogwash, but the clever realize that they will profit during the construction phase and the dull blindly grasp at any straw to give meaning to their lives.
As construction precedes all is well. Society improves from the shared goals and unity of purpose. People can see the fruit of their labor growing before their eyes day after day, year after year.
Finally, after years of effort, the final capstone is levered into place and the great pyramid is complete. Imagine the rejoicing. Imagine the shared feelings of satisfaction and pride. Imagine the parties.
Now imagine the hangover.
For decades folks have been happily chipping away at stones, hauling blocks from the quarry, manhandling slabs into place, and completing thousands of other tasks necessary to raise the great monument.
Now all the tasks are done. Now all the jobs are complete. What next?
In many cases the answer was to build another pyramid. This worked for a while, but eventually the fatal flaw was exposed and the civilization fell into decline.
The flaw was the lie about the pyramid's true purpose.
Completed pyramids do not make rulers into gods. Pyramids do not insure fair weather or guarantee the crops. Pyramids just sit there like the mountains that they imitate.
The pyramid's primary worth was in the act of its construction. The end result serves no concrete purpose. The completed pyramid is like artwork, it stimulates the imagination and pleases the eye, but it doesn't do anything.
Unfortunately, Pharaoh hid from the laborers the pyramid's true value as a public works project. When completed, the pyramid failed to accomplish its religious function, so the laborers rebelled, the rulers fell and the civilization declined.
This same scenario was repeated with minor changes on every habitable continent. Some used stone, some used brick and others used mud. Some used their pyramids as tombs, others as temples. Some built one pyramid after another; others chose to build new layers on the old. All made the same mistake of lying to the laborers.
Building pyramids was a good idea, fabricating their significance was not. The "failure" of the completed pyramids halted further construction. Halting pyramid construction was a disaster since the root cause, excess population, still existed.
Obviously I'm playing fast and loose with the historical record, but the moral of my fabricated history is important.
Massive projects and undertakings can improve society by uniting excess population in a common effort. The danger comes when rulers lie about the project's true motivation.
This lesson is of great importance today. With ever increasing automation fewer and fewer people are needed to provide food and shelter for the rest of us. More and more of us are superfluous, and fewer of us have meaningful jobs.
We long for a pyramid to build. We want to build something we can be proud of.
Our danger is that we could be co-opted by religious or patriotic fervor to work on projects that leave us feeling jaded rather then fulfilled.
We need to let today's Pharaohs know that it's okay to level with us.
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