Construction: an economic engine yesterday and today
A translation of La construcción: motor económico ayer y hoy by Egyptologist José Miguel Parra Ortiz, member of Proyecto Djehuty
It is finally happening, the housing bubble created by builders, speculators and municipalities has deflated. Given that construction is one of the main engines of the Spanish economy, the slowdown has been felt. Nor is the first time in history that the channels of economic construction become one of the most important economic assets. After all, that is what happened in ancient Egypt.
Egypt was always an agricultural society, whose prosperity depended almost exclusively on the river Nile and its annual flood. The construction of the first pyramid (Djoser in Saqqara) ultimately defined what would be the three main economic circuits of the Old Kingdom. The first we might call “general” , because it was designed to obtain the resources to maintain the state and support the actual construction of royal monuments. The second was a more specific circuit, as its role was to maintain the supplies for daily worship (theoretically eternal) that took place in the temples of the pyramids. The last of the circuits was essentially a redistributor and involved offerings and the staff of the temple. We, therefore can see that all three circuits created the economic foundations that allowed the pharaoh to keep the state structure upright and enabled him to implement those projects and public works believed necessary.
Each farmer was given a land that he worked and whose production was under heavy taxation. The entire collection was accumulated in the halls of the Treasury’s royal palace, which served as a payer. One of its main commitments was paying the many workers employed in the construction of the royal funerary complex, who were not slaves, but officials at the service of the pharaoh. It is estimated that for the construction of the largest of the pyramids, that of Khufu in Giza,15,000 people were employed for 23 years, not all within the necropolis.
As we see, building the Egyptian pyramids required more than just knowledge of engineering. Only a centralized control of the country’s resources helped create the necessary foundation for later use in the construction of a public work of the size of a pyramid. However, this dependence on a single constructive project had its risks and they were evident by the end of the Old Kingdom, just when everything was working to perfection and the Administration made itself felt throughout the country.
For centuries, the Egyptian climate had been deteriorating and becoming drier. At the time that such condition strongly affected the Nile floods, the system had almost completely collapsed. To keep up society in function, the pharaohs had to build pyramids, their main economic engine. The problem was that resources that could be achieved with bad floods were limited and people could not dispense with their meager income to feed the Treasury. With hunger, there is but little thought in Pharaonic works. When (the ruling classes) required more than they (the population) could provide, the social tensions inherent in the system aroused and the country was plunged into an economic and social crisis which saw the demise of the Old Kingdom and centralized state. It would take several centuries for the country to reestablish a centralized administration. It is impossible for such a thing to happen in the globalized world economy of which Spain is part, but considering that in 1985 construction accounted for 11.51% (measured in value of production) of GDP and in 2004 stood at more than 18%, the country is increasingly dependent on construction, economic engine of the ancient Nile civilization, and also of modern Spanish society.
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