Khazar-khum Wrote:
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And while we have some
> of the records as to its cost, we don't have a GDP
> to compare it with. Again, it's the problem of
> calculating the GDP/GNP of an essentially agrarian
> society.

I don't think it's overly difficult to imagine the total amount of work and human effort necessary to plant the crops and provide the vatious goods for the economy.

It wouldn't seem much of a stretch to imagine that hauling stones into a massive pile in the desert accounted for about a quarter of the total energy (effort) (cost) expended.


> What we don't know is how much the funerary
> complexes generated for the temples/kings'
> coffers. Did they pay for themselves in donations?
> Did people take what they learned from the actual
> building & apply it somewhere else?
>
> Those are far more important in the long run than
> just the actual cost of the building.


My understanding (please correct me iff I'm wrong) is that these tended to still be a drain on the economy even after completion. Most of the ancients offered sacrifices of wealth to the kings and Gods in order to stay in their good graces. There would also still be a cost associated with care and maintenance.

I suspect that it was fairly natural for primitive people to "waste" their goods offering them to heaven in order to gaurd against starvation. It was much more difficult to store foods and more individuals were dependent on a good harvest each year. If only enough for current needs were produced then they might always be on the verge of catastrophe. To counteract this they simply destroyed much of their surplus. If there were shortages then most offerrings would be the first thing to be curtailed rather than populations.




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Man fears the pyramid, time fears man.