3,100 years ago, ancient Egyptian workers defeated a God-King – without using any weapons

“1768 is really when the word ‘strike’ begins to develop out of the UK.”

That’s the view of classicist Sarah E Bond, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast.

As Bond explains, the word ‘strike’ comes from a moment when sailors in the port of Sunderland decided to literally strike down the topsails of their ships, immobilising them until their demands were met by their bosses. The tactic worked, spread south to the shipyards of the Thames, and quickly entered the political vocabulary.

But the behaviour the word came to describe – the collective withholding of labour – is actually far older. “What that word represents is an action that goes all the way back to the second millennium BC,” Bond says.

Before the concept of money or coinage, workers had figured out a fundamental principle: stopping work was a way to force those in power to negotiate.

The ancient Egyptian origins of strikes

“Even if these words were not familiar to those within the ancient world, there are still methodologies within labour disputes that have been happening for thousands of years,” says Bond.

One of the earliest, clearest examples of what would now be termed a ‘strike’ comes from ancient Egypt – a civilisation that was rigidly hierarchical and dominated by unquestionable royal authority. Beneath the monumental architecture and other cultural feats, Egyptian society depended on a vast pool of labour.

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In the second millennium BC, during the reign of Ramesses III, Egypt had passed the peak of imperial expansion it had enjoyed a century earlier. Ramesses III ruled during the early 12th century BC, at the end of the New Kingdom, a period marked by mounting economic pressure, as well as internal and external instability.

Ramesses III presented himself as a traditional warrior-pharaoh, defending Egypt against repeated Libyan incursions and threats from other foreign enemies, such as the mysterious ‘Sea Peoples’. Reliefs and inscriptions depict the pharaoh’s decisive victories, but modern historians view his reign as one of crisis management, with Egyptian prosperity faltering. Not only was the kingdom embroiled in expensive wars, but agricultural output was stalling.

Despite these pressures, Ramesses III occupied an impossibly powerful position. The Egyptian pharaoh was viewed as a divine intermediary, responsible for maintaining maat – a religious notion of cosmic order that guaranteed harmony between gods, people and nature. Feeding workers, paying temple staff and sustaining major construction projects were all part of that sacred duty.

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However, Egypt didn’t yet have a system of coinage, and instead operated a redistributive economy centred on agricultural surplus.

According to Bond, workers were paid in barley and emmer wheat, which would have been enough to feed entire households. The state also collected agricultural produce as tax, stored it in granaries, and redistributed it to soldiers, officials, priests and specialised workers.

The system proved effective if harvests were stable and administration functioned efficiently. But during periods of disruption, the impact of shortages rippled through society.

The workers of Deir el-Medina

The strike itself unfolded at Deir el-Medina, a purpose-built village housing the highly skilled artisans who carved and painted the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings. These workers were salaried state employees, exempt from agricultural work, housed by the government and supplied directly from royal granaries. Many were literate, and they left behind letters, complaints and administrative records that give historians a rare view into the lives of non-elite Egyptians.

But because they didn’t farm their own food, missed deliveries of their payment left them vulnerable. When Ramesses III’s administration fell badly behind on promised rations, families at Deir el-Medina faced serious consequences.

“The necropolis workers decided that they were going to go on strike until they got the rations and payment that they were promised by the pharaoh,” Bond says.

The workers peacefully withdrew their labour entirely and carefully chose their protest site. Their actions were documented by local scribes, making this the earliest recorded labour strike in human history.

“They decided that they were going to go and sit in the back of a temple, and that they were simply going to refuse to work until they were given the back payments.”

Temples in ancient Egypt were sanctuaries of non-violence. Fighting and bloodshed within them was taboo. It’s for that reason that “going and sitting in peaceful protest at the back of a temple, or just outside a temple, was something that became extremely common in Pharaonic Egypt, and continued well into the Ptolemaic period and beyond.”

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The protest worked – or at least in the short term. After several days, grain was released from nearby temples and emergency rations were distributed to the workers of Deir el-Medina. Over the following years, delays in payment recurred because of the broader political and administrative trouble, and the artisans repeatedly downed tools.

“That, to me, was very much what we would today call a strike – even if that’s not what they were referring to it as,” concludes Bond.

As for Ramesses III, the strike was a warning sign of deeper systemic failure, and Egypt’s economic strain only worsened towards the end of his reign. In the final years of his rule, the pharaoh was caught up in the so-called ‘harem conspiracy’ – a palace plot involving members of his own household.

Modern forensic analysis suggests that Ramesses was assassinated, likely having his throat cut, bringing his 31-year reign to a violent end. But, even before that, the God-King had already been defeated by a band of striking necropolis workers.

Jon Bauckham was speaking to Sarah E Bond on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.