Construction: an economic engine yesterday and today

All About Egypt

Many thanks to Ben Morales-Correa for translating an article that I posted a few days ago. See Ben's website, above, for the full translation:

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.