The Managerial and Organizational Role of Scribes as Bureaucrats in Ancient Egypt: Human vs Non-Human Machines and Obsessive Consumption as De-Humanization of Individuals

Roitman A L

Published on: 2019-08-05

Abstract

Scribes in ancient Egypt functioned as the ancient equivalent of a bureaucrat or white-collar worker. The social organization structure in ancient Egypt has been compared to other vertical structures in modern states. This organization, like other bureaucracies, can be interpreted as a supra-human machine where each human worker is a cog in it. However, this repurposing of human labor as specialized parts for a larger machine might have resulted in a negative-reinforcement cycle of increased materialist consumption and human alienation to feed into a separate materialist consumption machine. We will study the impacts of supra-human systems in the motivations and efficiency of our economy and daily lives.