[✐fan essay] kul elna speculation spectacular part 1
So I'm trying to figure out Kul Elna!
The manga states that it used to be a tomb-builders' village, but the people there "went bad"; the current village for tomb-builders in Atem's time is Deir el-Medina (not the ancient Egyptian name, mind you: that was "Place of Ma'at", though the workers always just called it "the Village" - but Siamun says "Deir el-Medina" so we're stuck with the Arabic, thanks ever so). At first I thought that perhaps after Kul Elna went bad the government abandoned it and established Dear el Medina instead, but the historical record indicates that Deir el-Medina's founding coincided with when kings began to be entombed in the Valley of the Kings, so so much for that unless I say that's when Kul Elna was founded instead etc etc.
I am still trying to figure out where and how the village was founded, then, as well as why they "went bad" and became a big enough problem that everyone basically left them alone (until the Items were created). Workers' villages like that one were state-operated so it'd be easy enough to just stop sending rations to the village, but since the population comprised mostly skilled workers that just doesn't seem to add up, practically speaking: wouldn't you want to either make an example of the rebels or ensure their continued loyalty? The authorities seemed concerned with ensuring these villages didn't "go bad", since workers are indeed necessary for building the king's tomb.
But let's back up for a moment and talk about what we can say, based on the records from Deir el-Medina. This village is something of a celebrity in Egyptology because the artifacts and records found there provide the clearest look at village life. But why were there so many records, why was there so much evidence?
Deir el-Medina was a state-run town. The population consisted of state employees, mostly skilled workmen or craftsmen, who lived there because they had been hired to construct the Pharaoh's tomb. Quite a lot of them seem to have been at least rudimentarily literate, including perhaps the women, as we have records of messages being passed from husband to wife, etc, from the work site to the village. Draftsmen and other artisans would have needed to be literate to read blueprints, and the foremen and of course the village scribe, the people with the most power in the village and the most contact with their government employer, would have needed to be able to read and write in order to send records to the king (vizier, technically - head civil servant) and properly handle the materials sent to the village.
These people supplemented their work week (which, all things considered, wasn't that strenuous) with additional skilled work after hours, which they could then barter in neighboring villages for additional goods. There are some records of owning and cultivating land, though the pay from the state came in the form of rations (being near the Valley meant not having a heck of a lot of very fertile ground, nor the time to tend to it).
Long story short: workmen's villages were middle class. Deir el-Medina, and by extension Kul Elna since it seems to have been founded for the same reason, would have been populated by skilled workers with a rudimentary education and a considerably higher social standing than the average farmer (though the priests in the village were higher still). And it was, as mentioned, in the king's best interest to keep them happy, though of course corruption was common among officials. Yet that was just how things worked. Supposing an outright rebellion would be anachronistic. And theft, while it occurred in Deir el-Medina a lot (most tomb robberies occurred prior to the tomb's completion) - Deir el-Medina functioned while the pharaoh's power was waning, in the 19th-21st dynasties though it was founded in our target dynasty, the 18th (I'll address timing more again later). For Kul Elna's theft problem to have gotten bad enough that it was considered a "village of thieves" --
Who were these people?
It wouldn't be the remains of the whole village. 100 people in a village is not a lot, if you consider that in Deir el-Medina 100 people was often the number of just the men and that there were always KIDS EVERYWHERE - it wasn't uncommon for a woman to have 8 to 10 kids out of twice that many pregnancies. However Kul Elna was allowed to persist (and presumably without being taxed, as well - unless the officials were all WE WANT A CUT OF THE STOLEN GOODS, I am not sure how to handle the tax issue), it seems likely that its population would have to consist of stragglers who sought to get rich out of plundering the tomb but needed a place to stay, and the remnants of those skilled workers who were, apparently, dedicated enough to this ROBBING FROM THE KING business that they didn't mind losing their employment and salary (ie, FOOD) from said king. I can imagine perhaps trying to move the workers to Deir el-Medina or other projects instead - maybe taking them away from tombs and the temptation to plunder - but a core of dissenters remaining behind in an abandoned complex (waste of funds as it would be to just leave the whole damn place). If the thieves kept up the skilled-work side jobs, in addition to funds for the stolen goods they'd probably be able to eke by. But I still don't think it would have been a superior life to working for the king. So what was in it for them?
I'll fill in this gap with something, I'm sure, but the gist of my argument is -- Kul Elna doesn't sound like it was a nice, normal village minding its own business with a heavy black market on the side. Sure, I'm positive they had some kind of community, and Thief King's memories of the place are probably both faded with time and skewed from being a kid, but lots of stuff about this village would have to have been fundamentally wrong, somehow. They didn't get the reputation in canon out of nowhere, and research only cements the fact that these people would have to be serious, serious anomalies. Aside from drifters using the village as a base while hitting up the tombs - when you're a skilled worker, there are so many other venues open to you that don't involve living in a valley away from water/super-fertile land where the temperature hits 130 degrees Fahrenheit. SOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF KUL ELNA.
Does it matter for the big picture of my Thief King AU? Probably not, since a major point of her story is how little she remembers about the place. But it's the culture that would have shaped her formative years, and come this point it's a puzzle that I just want to figure out.
WHICH BRINGS US TO ANOTHER IMPOSSIBLE TASK - dating Yugioh: yanking out a historical Pharaoh and sticking Atem and his relatives in their stead. We know it's 18th dynasty, and that for me trumps all the "3000 years" talk - exactly 3000 years would mean the pharaohs were on the decline, not in the prime of their power as seems to be in canon, while 18th Dynasty would support that. It's not early 18th dynasty, because by Atem's time burying the king in the Valley of the Kings is a common practice and Deir el-Medina is up and running. For all intents and purposes Atem's father bears more than a passing historical resemblance to Amenhotep III, under whom Egypt flourished. Atem himself smacks of King Tut, given the whole "boy king" angle.
But lordy, Akhenaten. What to do with Pharaoh freaking Akhenaten. Atem & co have to either come before this weird period or supplant it.
For those unfamiliar with what I'm talking about, Akhenaten is the king who historically got the most of that 'let's strike him from the historical record, whoops, how'd that happen' done to his memory. He's the guy who decided to scrap the religion and artistic styles - basically a heck of a lot of Egyptian culture - and establish a new style and a new, monotheistic religion in its place. (A new capital, too.)
Said changes only lasted during his reign but after it completed pharaonic Egypt just wasn't the same. The balance of power began to shift and the whole affair was just very very "wut". Heck, Deir el-Medina itself was abandoned during this period because he really did throw out everything. It's weird and fascinating. Look it up.
But anyway, yeah, he has no place in Takahashi-Egypt with the glory of the Pharaoh and tamed monsters flying everywhere. I'm tempted to just shove Atem's dad in instead of him and then just systematically rewrite the end of the 18th dynasty from there, though I'll have to look up if anyone invaded during his reign (I'd like to time the creation of the Items to an actual invasion of Egypt). Pharaonic power can be weakened and shaken by Zorc nearly destroying everything instead (sorry, Set). But that involves cutting Tut from the historical record and aaaargggh.
Here, have a list of things that Takahashi got right, to end this ramble on a positive note!
-The vizier (Siamun) was, in fact, in charge of overseeing the royal tomb's construction. Pharaoh governed, but the vizier was the civil service get-it-done guy in charge of organizing and actually executing everything. Which Siamun does in canon - and this would mean Mahaad works for him, maybe, if Mahaad is in charge of the guards. I'm not sure if guards fall under civil service or military.
-Heka is the word for magic, even if the "magic" practiced differed from what little we see (and was all mixed up in religion and science, too).
-Scribes were important enough that generals would rather be depicted in tombs as men of letters than of military prowess. The proto-Ishtars, the first tombkeepers, I could definitely see as being scribes, and scribes were pretty indoctrinated to think super, super highly of themselves. Malik has historical precedence for considering himself a special snowflake if he's following the scribal tradition. (Though the whole Tombkeeper concept also smacks of real priestly obligations up to eleven…some sort of scribe-priest combo, looks like?)
-Being bitten by a snake was tantamount to being "temporarily delivered to the powers of chaos". As if we needed any more backup for Thief King to have snakes associated with him (though snakes mean basically everything ever in every tradition ever, they're super-flexible symbols based on the context in which they appear.)
-My brain started making weirdass connections between stelae for honoring ancestors and the whole sealing-monsters-in-slabs thing, which clearly is just around because LOL TORADINGU CAADO.
-Half a "right", half a "wrong": would people really have picked on Kisara for looking different when there was such cultural diversity in Egypt? It was acting "Egyptian", not looking "Egyptian", that meant you belonged. (The half that's a "right" is that "Bakura" is a foreign name and has definitely non-Egyptian physical traits - Deir el-Medina, and presumably Kul Elna too, had a pretty high foreign population).
The book I'm getting this speculation from (sans a listing of 18th Dynasty Pharaohs, that was from Wikipedia) is called Pharaoh's Workers and it was an awesome read and I have two more Deir el-Medina books to get through so YAY, MORE RAMBLING LATER, but for now….enough is enough! XD
The manga states that it used to be a tomb-builders' village, but the people there "went bad"; the current village for tomb-builders in Atem's time is Deir el-Medina (not the ancient Egyptian name, mind you: that was "Place of Ma'at", though the workers always just called it "the Village" - but Siamun says "Deir el-Medina" so we're stuck with the Arabic, thanks ever so). At first I thought that perhaps after Kul Elna went bad the government abandoned it and established Dear el Medina instead, but the historical record indicates that Deir el-Medina's founding coincided with when kings began to be entombed in the Valley of the Kings, so so much for that unless I say that's when Kul Elna was founded instead etc etc.
I am still trying to figure out where and how the village was founded, then, as well as why they "went bad" and became a big enough problem that everyone basically left them alone (until the Items were created). Workers' villages like that one were state-operated so it'd be easy enough to just stop sending rations to the village, but since the population comprised mostly skilled workers that just doesn't seem to add up, practically speaking: wouldn't you want to either make an example of the rebels or ensure their continued loyalty? The authorities seemed concerned with ensuring these villages didn't "go bad", since workers are indeed necessary for building the king's tomb.
But let's back up for a moment and talk about what we can say, based on the records from Deir el-Medina. This village is something of a celebrity in Egyptology because the artifacts and records found there provide the clearest look at village life. But why were there so many records, why was there so much evidence?
Deir el-Medina was a state-run town. The population consisted of state employees, mostly skilled workmen or craftsmen, who lived there because they had been hired to construct the Pharaoh's tomb. Quite a lot of them seem to have been at least rudimentarily literate, including perhaps the women, as we have records of messages being passed from husband to wife, etc, from the work site to the village. Draftsmen and other artisans would have needed to be literate to read blueprints, and the foremen and of course the village scribe, the people with the most power in the village and the most contact with their government employer, would have needed to be able to read and write in order to send records to the king (vizier, technically - head civil servant) and properly handle the materials sent to the village.
These people supplemented their work week (which, all things considered, wasn't that strenuous) with additional skilled work after hours, which they could then barter in neighboring villages for additional goods. There are some records of owning and cultivating land, though the pay from the state came in the form of rations (being near the Valley meant not having a heck of a lot of very fertile ground, nor the time to tend to it).
Long story short: workmen's villages were middle class. Deir el-Medina, and by extension Kul Elna since it seems to have been founded for the same reason, would have been populated by skilled workers with a rudimentary education and a considerably higher social standing than the average farmer (though the priests in the village were higher still). And it was, as mentioned, in the king's best interest to keep them happy, though of course corruption was common among officials. Yet that was just how things worked. Supposing an outright rebellion would be anachronistic. And theft, while it occurred in Deir el-Medina a lot (most tomb robberies occurred prior to the tomb's completion) - Deir el-Medina functioned while the pharaoh's power was waning, in the 19th-21st dynasties though it was founded in our target dynasty, the 18th (I'll address timing more again later). For Kul Elna's theft problem to have gotten bad enough that it was considered a "village of thieves" --
Who were these people?
It wouldn't be the remains of the whole village. 100 people in a village is not a lot, if you consider that in Deir el-Medina 100 people was often the number of just the men and that there were always KIDS EVERYWHERE - it wasn't uncommon for a woman to have 8 to 10 kids out of twice that many pregnancies. However Kul Elna was allowed to persist (and presumably without being taxed, as well - unless the officials were all WE WANT A CUT OF THE STOLEN GOODS, I am not sure how to handle the tax issue), it seems likely that its population would have to consist of stragglers who sought to get rich out of plundering the tomb but needed a place to stay, and the remnants of those skilled workers who were, apparently, dedicated enough to this ROBBING FROM THE KING business that they didn't mind losing their employment and salary (ie, FOOD) from said king. I can imagine perhaps trying to move the workers to Deir el-Medina or other projects instead - maybe taking them away from tombs and the temptation to plunder - but a core of dissenters remaining behind in an abandoned complex (waste of funds as it would be to just leave the whole damn place). If the thieves kept up the skilled-work side jobs, in addition to funds for the stolen goods they'd probably be able to eke by. But I still don't think it would have been a superior life to working for the king. So what was in it for them?
I'll fill in this gap with something, I'm sure, but the gist of my argument is -- Kul Elna doesn't sound like it was a nice, normal village minding its own business with a heavy black market on the side. Sure, I'm positive they had some kind of community, and Thief King's memories of the place are probably both faded with time and skewed from being a kid, but lots of stuff about this village would have to have been fundamentally wrong, somehow. They didn't get the reputation in canon out of nowhere, and research only cements the fact that these people would have to be serious, serious anomalies. Aside from drifters using the village as a base while hitting up the tombs - when you're a skilled worker, there are so many other venues open to you that don't involve living in a valley away from water/super-fertile land where the temperature hits 130 degrees Fahrenheit. SOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF KUL ELNA.
Does it matter for the big picture of my Thief King AU? Probably not, since a major point of her story is how little she remembers about the place. But it's the culture that would have shaped her formative years, and come this point it's a puzzle that I just want to figure out.
WHICH BRINGS US TO ANOTHER IMPOSSIBLE TASK - dating Yugioh: yanking out a historical Pharaoh and sticking Atem and his relatives in their stead. We know it's 18th dynasty, and that for me trumps all the "3000 years" talk - exactly 3000 years would mean the pharaohs were on the decline, not in the prime of their power as seems to be in canon, while 18th Dynasty would support that. It's not early 18th dynasty, because by Atem's time burying the king in the Valley of the Kings is a common practice and Deir el-Medina is up and running. For all intents and purposes Atem's father bears more than a passing historical resemblance to Amenhotep III, under whom Egypt flourished. Atem himself smacks of King Tut, given the whole "boy king" angle.
But lordy, Akhenaten. What to do with Pharaoh freaking Akhenaten. Atem & co have to either come before this weird period or supplant it.
For those unfamiliar with what I'm talking about, Akhenaten is the king who historically got the most of that 'let's strike him from the historical record, whoops, how'd that happen' done to his memory. He's the guy who decided to scrap the religion and artistic styles - basically a heck of a lot of Egyptian culture - and establish a new style and a new, monotheistic religion in its place. (A new capital, too.)
Said changes only lasted during his reign but after it completed pharaonic Egypt just wasn't the same. The balance of power began to shift and the whole affair was just very very "wut". Heck, Deir el-Medina itself was abandoned during this period because he really did throw out everything. It's weird and fascinating. Look it up.
But anyway, yeah, he has no place in Takahashi-Egypt with the glory of the Pharaoh and tamed monsters flying everywhere. I'm tempted to just shove Atem's dad in instead of him and then just systematically rewrite the end of the 18th dynasty from there, though I'll have to look up if anyone invaded during his reign (I'd like to time the creation of the Items to an actual invasion of Egypt). Pharaonic power can be weakened and shaken by Zorc nearly destroying everything instead (sorry, Set). But that involves cutting Tut from the historical record and aaaargggh.
Here, have a list of things that Takahashi got right, to end this ramble on a positive note!
-The vizier (Siamun) was, in fact, in charge of overseeing the royal tomb's construction. Pharaoh governed, but the vizier was the civil service get-it-done guy in charge of organizing and actually executing everything. Which Siamun does in canon - and this would mean Mahaad works for him, maybe, if Mahaad is in charge of the guards. I'm not sure if guards fall under civil service or military.
-Heka is the word for magic, even if the "magic" practiced differed from what little we see (and was all mixed up in religion and science, too).
-Scribes were important enough that generals would rather be depicted in tombs as men of letters than of military prowess. The proto-Ishtars, the first tombkeepers, I could definitely see as being scribes, and scribes were pretty indoctrinated to think super, super highly of themselves. Malik has historical precedence for considering himself a special snowflake if he's following the scribal tradition. (Though the whole Tombkeeper concept also smacks of real priestly obligations up to eleven…some sort of scribe-priest combo, looks like?)
-Being bitten by a snake was tantamount to being "temporarily delivered to the powers of chaos". As if we needed any more backup for Thief King to have snakes associated with him (though snakes mean basically everything ever in every tradition ever, they're super-flexible symbols based on the context in which they appear.)
-My brain started making weirdass connections between stelae for honoring ancestors and the whole sealing-monsters-in-slabs thing, which clearly is just around because LOL TORADINGU CAADO.
-Half a "right", half a "wrong": would people really have picked on Kisara for looking different when there was such cultural diversity in Egypt? It was acting "Egyptian", not looking "Egyptian", that meant you belonged. (The half that's a "right" is that "Bakura" is a foreign name and has definitely non-Egyptian physical traits - Deir el-Medina, and presumably Kul Elna too, had a pretty high foreign population).
The book I'm getting this speculation from (sans a listing of 18th Dynasty Pharaohs, that was from Wikipedia) is called Pharaoh's Workers and it was an awesome read and I have two more Deir el-Medina books to get through so YAY, MORE RAMBLING LATER, but for now….enough is enough! XD