First and foremost – by “slave”, most western people envision chattel slavery, like when you *own* a person like an object and can do whatever you want with them. That’s *definitely not* what was going Egypt at all.
What Egypt had was a sort of make-work system, like the US had during the Great Depression, but with slightly more “we’ll kill you if you don’t” in the background. Most Egyptians were farmers and during the off season you had tons of farmers who didn’t have much to do, so the government used them.
Based on copious written records (like the record keeping of food, material, and shelter purchased), things like graffiti and written accounts by the workers themselves, and also just our general knowledge of how Egyptian society functioned, we have created a picture of tens of thousands of people being fed, sheltered, paid, given medicine and healing, though with admittedly little choice in the matter, and essentially well cared for as citizens of ancient Egypt.
So calling them “paid workers” is maybe a little overly generous, but calling them “slaves” like we might use the term in modern days isn’t correct either.
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