Labor in ancient Egypt is a strange from our perspective. Everybody was essentially a serf in a very collectivist society with a command economy. Creating any form of discord was not just against the will of the state but a denial of the authority of the gods.

For example, they had a labor strike for the monument builders, and that was a big cultural moment for them that eventually signaled the downfall of a dynasty. The laborers even threatened to damage the tombs, showing just how much they were rebelling against cultural norms. But to get to that point, they hadn’t fed those laborers for a month.